Kyoko Suga -- LOVE, TWO LOVE

Well, Japan's 99th national government administration started up today with new Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga（菅義偉）at the helm. Suga had been the Chief Cabinet Secretary for now-former PM Shinzo Abe for 7 1/2 years and I've always seen the post as a stepping stone to the top job. I'd seen him as a rather quiet type so I'm wondering how's he going to do in the rough-and-tumble world of the Prime Minister, especially in the reality of COVID-19 and a damaged economy.

Bringing out my midweek whimsy today, I've decided to introduce a singer whose name in Japanese is a homophone for the new PM. This is Kyoko Suga（須賀響子）, a Tokyo-born lass who had been initially scouted as a model in Harajuku, but then went onto a brief career as a singer-songwriter in the mid-1990s.

According to her J-Wiki profile, she was touted as someone who could bridge the gap between aidoru and Shibuya-kei in terms of her style but apparently with the Komuro Boom going on strong at the time, Suga couldn't quite make the big time and her releases went from the end of 1994 to the end of 1995 with 5 singles and 3 mini-albums, although her official retirement didn't come until 1997.

For someone who had been recruited as a model, Suga didn't do too badly as a singer if her 5th and final single is any indication. "LOVE, TWO LOVE" which was written and composed by her and released in November 1995. I wouldn't say that it's Shibuya-kei by any means, but it's that sort of down-home sunny girl pop that I knew from the late 1980s and early 1990s represented by singers such as Mariko Nagai（永井真理子）.

"LOVE, TWO LOVE" was used as the second ending theme for the anime "Bonobono"（ぼのぼの）adapted from the original manga which ran from 1986 to 1987. The TV Tokyo show was broadcast for almost a year from April 1995 to March 1996, and it deals with the titular sea otter and his buddies by the sea.

Apparently, a second series of "Bonobono" has been running since 2016 in 8-minute shorts on Fuji-TV on Saturdays in the late afternoon.