Akina Nakamori -- Jouken Hansha（条件反射）

Commenter kaz and I were conversing on my last Seiko Matsuda（松田聖子）article a couple of weeks ago, and he related about the intention by her and lyricist Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）to make the B-sides of her singles in the early 1980s to be as good as those A-sides. Of course, they along with the various composers succeeded nicely.

I then wondered about one of the other great aidoru during that time, Akina Nakamori（中森明菜）. How were the B-sides on her singles? It's something that I've already started exploring and one of the gold nuggets that I managed to dig up was the great "Lonely Journey"（ロンリー・ジャーニー）, the B-side to her massive hit, "Meu Amor e"（ミ・アモーレ）from 1985.

The exploration continues here with the B-side to Akina's 1982 debut single, "Slow Motion"（スローモーション）whose KKP article I provided all the way back in March 2012. "Jouken Hansha" (Conditioned Reflex) is quite the contrast with that first song, and in my opinion, the harbinger for a certain number of her songs early in her career. Those songs, including her 2nd single, "Shojo A"（少女Ａ）, are the harder-edged ones (punctuated by rock n' roll guitars) depicting Akina as the big-haired troubled teen in a difficult situation.

I hadn't heard of "Jouken Hansha" until just a few months ago, and I gotta say that the intro with the guitar caught my attention and held it for the rest of the song. There was no conditioned reflex from me; my reaction was rather proactive. Written by Tsuzuru Nakasato（中里綴）and composed by Noboru Mimuro（三室のぼる）, "Jouken Hansha" is about a woman who still gets attracted to a man despite the fact that he seems to treat her at best as a trophy girlfriend.

The main observation that I've had so far about the song is that even though this was part of her debut single, I could really sense here that Akina already had the beginnings of a great voice, compared to the A-side. One particular point in the song that impressed me was how she almost seemed to breathe out the title. That one point had me thinking of Momoe Yamaguchi（山口百恵）, the 70s aidoru that this future 80s superstar had often been compared to in terms of her singing style.

For me, there are more Akina B-sides to explore. "Jouken Hansha" is also a track on Nakamori's debut album "Prologue (Jomaku)" ( プロローグ〈序幕〉) from July 1982. I've already written up an article about that one, but luckily, "Jouken Hansha" hadn't already been covered there, so I could happily take care of it here.