Akiko Mizuhara -- Love Duet

The first Hump Day of June sees the new daily infection rates take another swan dive into the low 300s. It's rather like seeing the government and medical experts acting like that fisherman trying to wrest that fighting muskie representing the rates into submission. Meanwhile, I'm starting to wonder what's happening in Japan, especially Tokyo and Kita-Kyushu.

Anyways, the subject of this article is another one of those obscure-but-grand City Pop finds. There's perhaps a thimble's worth of information on Akiko Mizuhara（水原明子）aside from the fact that she released at least two albums: "Love Message" in 1982 and then "So Crystal" in 1984. I couldn't even find anything on her in my "Japanese City Pop" guide.

Regardless, the track "Love Duet" is a splendid introduction to Mizuhara within "Love Message" which has been described as an album of cover songs. Indeed, "Love Duet" was originally performed by singer-songwriter Michael Franks and S. Renee Diggs from Franks' 1982 album "Objects of Desire". Franks is already on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" for his duet with Anri（杏里）on a cover version of his own "Antonio's Song". Listening to both original and Mizuhara's cover, there doesn't seem too much daylight at all between them in arrangement. There's that great meshing of keyboards and violins along with the sax solo; for Mizuhara, Yasuaki Shimizu（清水靖晃）was behind the solo.

The only other information that I could find about Mizuhara is that she was also responsible for a couple of songs in the movie version of the anime "Densetsu Kyojin Ideon"（伝説巨人イデオン...Space Runaway Ideon）in that same year. But getting back to the album "Love Message", there are a few more tracks listed on YouTube, so have a listen to those and let me know how you feel about them, if you can.