Yumi Matsutoya -- Mizu no Naka no ASIA e（水の中のASIAへ）

Two weeks ago, an old friend of mine called me up to say that his wife was giving away a lot of her Japanese pop albums, and of course, knowing that I'm the big kayo kyoku fan, offered me some of the discs including a number of Yumi Matsutoya（松任谷由実）releases. The only thing is that they were coming in naked, so to speak; without any jewel cases or cover booklets. But that's OK...as long as the music is coming across fine, I'm fine.

One of those albums is Yuming's（ユーミン）"Mizu no Naka no ASIA e" (To ASIA in the Water) from May 1981. What I found out is that although it had been released originally as a 12-inch EP with just four songs back then, it's been considered to be the singer-songwriter's 11th studio album.

Amazon.jp

The cover for "Mizu no Naka no ASIA e" is one of the more striking ones that I've seen on a Yuming album. According to the J-Wiki article for the album, the singer was photographed at The Raffles Hotel in Singapore, wearing a kimono that she brought over herself and dressed herself in. I think the fact that her family operated a Japanese fabric store may have given her some expertise. However, in the same paragraph, she also conceded on a radio show that she had gotten the position of her obi wrong.

Short but sweet "Mizu no Naka no ASIA e" seems to be a musical travelogue through the various nations of the titular continent itself. I've already written about one of the four tracks, "Hong Kong Night Sight", a pretty giddy traipse through the then-British colony.

"Hong Kong Night Sight" is Track 2 but what starts the album off is "Subaraya Douri no Imouto e"（スラバヤ通りの妹へ...To The Little Girl on Subaraya Street）which Yuming based on her encounter with a little girl in Jakarta, Indonesia some years before. Unlike the exciting urban tour of that second song, "Subaraya Douri no Imouto e" takes things a lot slower and easier as if Yuming herself was musically relating a very pleasant walk on Subaraya Street which is apparently famous as an area of antique shops. She also uses an Indonesian phrase repeatedly, "Rasa sayange" (Loving Feeling), which refers to a popular Malay folk song.

(cover version)

Track 3 is "Dairen Bojou"（大連慕情...Dalian Yearnings）, another mellow tune in which a young woman finds an old crumpled letter from her dead father, who had lived and died in Dalian, China, to her mother. Despite the perhaps bittersweet feeling from the lyrics of a time long passed by, the arrangement by Yuming's husband, Masataka Matsutoya（松任谷正隆）, is pretty breezy and kinda straddles the line between urban and suburban.

To wrap up the album, here is "Wakiyaku de Ii kara"（わき役でいいから...Just Happy Being A Sidekick）. The music by Yuming is pretty darn uplifting but the song is actually about a final wish from a woman to an ex-boyfriend who's now working in another country, with the hint that he simply didn't want to get married. She simply gives a final request that he remembers her once in a while. Pretty sad and I wanted to encourage the lass to let go of the heel and find someone worthier.

"Mizu no Naka no ASIA e" broke into the Top 10 by peaking at No. 9 and won a Best Album prize at the Japan Record Awards for 1981. I will always treasure Yuming's voice in the early days.