Junko Yasuda -- 50 MOONS

 

Frankly, I was too young to remember the first moon landing in 1969 but I do remember NASA's launch of the space shuttle program including the naming of the demonstration model, the Enterprise, since I was such a Trekkie back then. And then of course, came the April 1981 launch of the first shuttle to actually head off into orbit, the Columbia. I remember watching the live coverage on ABC as Frank Reynolds got as giddy as he could get professionally speaking when the Columbia took off, and even watching the YouTube video again, I still got that thrill up and down my spine.

A couple of years later, we were told here in Toronto that for some reason, one of the space shuttles that has traditionally been transported via piggyback on a plane, would be flying right over our city. We were told that if it were a sunny day, then it would be extremely visible. So a bunch of us got outside our high school and we got to see shuttle and plane fly right over us.

I gather that Japan was rather quite excited about space exploration as well. In fact for a year between 1983 and 1984, there was an event there called The Great Space Shuttle Exhibition to commemorate the 25th anniversary of NASA. It was a traveling show that set up in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya and the star was the space shuttle simulator the Pathfinder.

Of course, for an event of this magnitude, an official song had to be whipped up and in this case, it was called "50 MOONS". Sung by Junko Yasuda（安田純子）, it's a surprisingly mellow and romantic number that was written by Yoshiko Miura（三浦徳子）and composed by Tsugutoshi Goto（後藤次利）. It's got a hint of 50s puppy love song and languid arrangement also by Goto. 

Not sure if this would have been considered to be an aidoru song, although that cover of the dreamy-eyed Yasuda and the cute drawings is perhaps quite telling. We never got to know since this is apparently the only single by the Saitama Prefecture-born Yasuda that was released in July 1983. Aside from the fact that I saw on her "Idol.ne.jp" page about making her debut while still a freshman at Joshibi University of Art and Design, I couldn't find out anything else about the lady. Perhaps it was only meant to be a one-shot.