Well, true to Hump Day today, my computer has been giving me some conniptions and I'm currently on an assignment so to be on the safe side, I've just performed some cleaning and other administrative details while taking a short break. I'll see about finishing off the task sometime later this evening.
Meanwhile, I would like to note that once again March 3rd has come around which means Hina Matsuri（ひな祭り）in Japan. The Doll Festival has families putting up those tiers of dolls in their homes to celebrate the daughters of the family.
As such, I was trying to find something appropriate to start off "Kayo Kyoku Plus" today and indeed I found "Shojo Ningyo" (Little Girl Doll) which happened to be actress Tsukasa Ito's（伊藤つかさ）debut single as an aidoru in September 1981, so this wasn't particularly released to commemorate the observed holiday today.
I mentioned in Ito's first article last year that the Tokyo-born lass had already long been a child actress before starting the music part of her career. However, with her star role in the second series of the famous TBS drama "San-nen B-gumi Kinpachi-sensei"（3年B組金八先生...Mr. Kinpachi in Class 3B）between October 1980 and March 1981, the powers-that-be must have decided that, yeah, it was time to get Ito into the recording studio.
Nope, Ito may not have had the greatest chops behind the microphone but she had the cuteness factor on her side and of course, being touted as an aidoru, any singing deficiencies could be easily forgiven. Folk singer Minami Kosetsu（南こうせつ）composed the sweetly innocent music while Hiroko Asano（浅野裕子）, who is not only a lyricist but was also a novelist, essayist and actress, provided the words here. Motoki Funayama（船山基紀）arranged everything into a cute and fluffy bundle of aidoru tune for Ito.
"Shojo Ningyo" managed to hit as high as No. 5 on the Oricon weeklies and ended the year as the 43rd-ranked single of the year. I'm sure that hearing the song again in the decades hence have had folks my age swooning in nostalgia.
I hear a little bit of France Gall’s “Poupee de cire Poupee de son” in this song. Not surprising though since i think Japanese love France Gall. I’ve also heard a few idol tunes that reminds me of France Gall’s songs.. the latest one i’ve found is Momoko Kikuchi’s “MAY SICK” which i think is heavily inspired by France Gall’s “Attends ou Va-t’en”, then i found out that Tomoyo Harada actually covered that song in one of her album..
ReplyDeleteHi there. Yeah, I certainly got the impression that the Japanese has had a long love affair with Gall. One anime even adapted one of her songs:
Deletehttps://kayokyokuplus.blogspot.com/2018/04/d-pi-le-temps-de-la-rentree.html
Oh, that's interesting! I wonder why the showrunners picked that tune as the ending theme because the lyrics is all about school holiday.
DeleteI also know that Sugar Sugar Rune has opening and ending songs that is heavily inspired by France Gall