Fujiro & Miwako Hiro -- Walking in the Rain

Found this one last night on the New J Channel radio and I tried to see if I could track it down elsewhere on YouTube. Hurrah! I could.

I had never heard of either singer involved in this duet with Fujiro & Miwako Hiro（ふじろう＆広美和子）that seems to have elements of City Pop, AOR, and even some gentle country, but "Walking in the Rain" does feel like that pleasant tandem stroll in the midst of precipitation. And dang, if that is indeed Fujiro on the cover for his 2nd single from January 1980, he really looks like an old friend of mine who suddenly went into "Miami Vice" mode. That joke aside, I do like hearing the drawl in Fujiro's voice.

Fujiro's full name is Fujiro Sugitani*（杉谷夫二朗）, which is the name he uses for his songwriting credits, a singer-songwriter from Tottori Prefecture who started his career around 1970. Working as a studio musician for most of the decade, he recorded his debut single, "Ai no Uta nado Utaenai"（愛の唄など歌えない...Can't Sing Love Songs or the Like）in 1979. He released a total of 3 singles and one album "I'm In Love" in 1980. According to his J-Wiki bio, unfortunately he passed away a little over a year ago in July 2018.

As for Miwako Hiro, because the arrangement of her kanji was different between the YouTube title and what I saw on the liner sheet in the video, I just had to make sure that the name was indeed Miwako Hiro（広 美和子）, and not Kazuko Hiromi（広美 和子）. I think that I got my confirmation that it was the former through this page, and apparently Ms. Hiro has gotten her reputation as an anison singer.

*I've gone with Sugitani here although the kanji for that name has four different readings according to Jisho.org, since it seems that Sugitani is the most popular reading. However, if I have made a mistake here, please let me know.

September 28th 2019: Jerry from Come Along Radio just told me that Fujiro also performed the same song with another partner, Mai Yamane（山根麻衣）.