Hidemi Ishikawa -- Yu-re-te Shonan（ゆ・れ・て湘南）

The sudden passing of 70s aidoru legend Hideki Saijo（西城秀樹）last month caught everybody by surprise, including the above TV personalities. One person in the brief video above who was especially shocked was veteran Hirohide Yakumaru（薬丸裕英）, formerly one of the boys in 80s aidoru group Shibugaki-tai（シブがき隊）. He's the one in glasses seated at the far right of the guest panel.

His wife happens to be former aidoru Hidemi Ishikawa（石川秀美）, and there was another video that had later footage of that show in which Yakumaru related the fact that if it hadn't been for Saijo, his wife wouldn't have had that career as a singer 30+ years ago. According to a book titled "Hachi-juu Nendai Aidoru Collection"（80年代アイドルcollection...Eighties' Idol Collection）(via J-Wiki), when Ishikawa was a junior high school senior back in the summer of 1981, she entered a contest called "Hideki no Ototo/Imoto Boshuu Audition"（HIDEKIの弟・妹募集オーディション...Hideki's Younger Sibling Invitational Audition） which was looking for some new talent. The teenager ended up getting selected out of a total of 55,460 contestants. Saijo himself had pushed hard for Ishikawa's selection. Several months later, she would make her debut as an aidoru in early 1982.

Ishikawa's 2nd single was "Yu-re-te Shonan" (Sway Me, Shonan), a number that seems to hint at a bit of 50s and a bit of disco within the melody by Yuuichiro Oda（小田裕一郎）. Prolific lyricist Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）handled the story of summer love on the famous Japanese beach, and it's a comforting piece of musical nostalgia with the strings, bass and horns in there backing the high tones of the new singer.

Strangely, although there is no listing of how it did on Oricon on J-Wiki, according to the Yahoo Japan Q&A, "Yu-re-te Shonan" did modestly well by getting as high as No. 29, selling around 87,000 records. However, it did earn raves during awards seasons by getting at least three Best New Artist prizes from sources such as the Japan Record Awards.