Naoya Matsuoka -- Higasa no Kifujin（日傘の貴婦人）

This particular small aspect of Japanese pop culture is definitely something that I could put into the quaint category, but I often used to see a lot of women of all ages in Tokyo put up parasols whenever the summer sun came beaming on down. Parasols were frankly to me something that I had once assumed belonged in the history books of the late 1800s and early 1900s...or sported by Abby Sciuto on "NCIS". Well, silly ol' me. Still, watching the ladies holding these frilly and gaily decorated parasols as they walked down the main avenues of the megalopolis, I kinda felt that there was a certain gentility proffered to the streetscape during the hot season. Mind you, my attention was soon diverted by the desperate need to get a can of Calpis Water or Max Coffee down my throat.

https://recochoku.jp/song/S1004653117/

https://music.apple.com/jp/album/%E5%A4%8F%E3%81%AE%E6%97%85/892391793

(excerpt only)

Well, allow me to smoothly segue into the late pianist Naoya Matsuoka's（松岡直也）first track from his 1984 album "Natsu no Tabi"（夏の旅...Summer Travel）, the funky yet elegant "Higasa no Kifujin" (Parasol Lady). Some of that keyboard work just seems to describe that parasol-sporting woman taking a walk on the fashionable side. And I think that the song would have been ideal as the theme for a character in a Japanese trendy drama back in those high-flying days of the Japanese Economic Miracle. It's a nice reminder of the summer in these days when things are starting to change for the colder.