Michiko Kawai (Aurora Teruko) -- Meoto Michi（夫婦みち）

 

For the longest time, I'd always wondered about this lady who called herself Aurora Teruko（オーロラ輝子）since often when she appeared on television, there was a name in brackets next to it, Michiko Kawai（河合美智子）. Now I've known that singers in the past have taken on stage names but they've never advertised their real names next to them in the graphics on screen. So, what was up with Aurora Teruko/Michiko Kawai?

Well, it turns out the actress Michiko Kawai, whose name is a stage name in itself for Kanagawa Prefecture-born Kazue Suzuki（鈴木一栄）, took on a role in the 1996-1997 NHK morning serial drama "Futarikko"（ふたりっ子...The Twins） as enka singer Aurora Teruko, known as the Diva of Tsutenkaku in Osaka. Apparently, she was so impressive as the character and for the song that she sang that Aurora broke down the 4th wall in a way and released "Meoto Michi" (The Path of a Married Couple) in-character as one-half of a debut single in November 1996 with the other song being "Magokoro no Hashi"（まごころの橋...True Heart Bridge）.

Written by Hikaru Tsushiro（津城ひかる）and composed by Tetsuya Gen（弦哲也）, everything is rather grand about "Meoto Michi", and even the introduction by the host in the above video asks the audience to get their hankies out. There is a certain tongue-in-cheek element since Aurora seems to want that spinning Tsutenkaku hat on her head as she's singing away about a wife who may be losing her grip on her wayward husband, a bit of a lyrical twist since usually with a title of "Meoto Michi", the usual impression is that it's about the proud journey of a rock-solid couple. I will probably have to ask Noelle Tham's opinion on this one since she's our resident enka expert on the blog, but I think that even the arrangement seems a bit more enka than usual for such a song. In any case, Kawai as Aurora really plays it up a notch. According to J-Wiki, the actress based her character on enka singer Reiko Kano（叶麗子）.

I don't know how "Magokoro no Hashi/Meoto Michi" did on Oricon but it must have been fairly successful because Kawai did get her invitation onto the Kohaku Utagassen in 1997 to perform "Meoto Michi" and there was another single under her alter ego that was released earlier that year in July. Kawai has a long filmography but since the beginning of her career in the early 1980s, she was also putting out singles as a pop singer. I will have to cover at least one of those songs soon.