Terumi Azuma -- Shiroi Kassouro（白い滑走路）

 

Happy Monday, and perhaps it really is a happy Monday because for the first time in 3 months, my province of Ontario has registered daily infection rates lower than 1000. Yep, we are now at about 916 and hopefully this will be the beginning of a permanent downturn.

About a year ago, I mentioned about jazz singer/actress Kei Marimura（真梨邑ケイ）, someone that I first heard about through the "Good Times Diva" series of CDs highlighting Japanese female pop singers in the last half of the 20th century. Later on, she took a major tangent in her career by becoming a hardcore porn actress.

Over the years, I've heard of female celebrities going both ways when it comes to the worlds of porn and mainstream singing/acting. For this article's benefit, the figure here is Terumi Azuma（東てる美）. She was born as Motomi Kageyama（影山素美）from Tokyo, and she had first begun her career in the early 1970s in softcore S&M before making a gradual transition into more of an aidoru role later in the decade, according to "Weekly Asahi Geinō" via the J-Wiki article on Azuma. Then she got roles in television dramas and other movies from the 1980s onwards.

Azuma also had her stint in the recording booth with two singles and two albums beginning in 1976. Her August 1978 second album, "Kanshoku"（感触...Sensation）, features a cover of her apparently on fire; I hope that she had enough insurance coverage. One track from the album is "Shiroi Kassouro" (White Runway) which was written by Machiko Ryu（竜真知子）and composed by Akito Yomo（四方章人）. A fairly bouncy number about heading off from Tokyo to Hokkaido, I couldn't find the lyrics online but I gather from the title that it goes over the well-worn kayo trope of a relationship's end punctuated by one of the imminently ending couple taking off from Haneda Airport. 

The song strikes me as having some old-fashioned kayo elements almost on an enka level but that intro with the strings in crescendo must have been inspired by The Love Unlimited Orchestra's "Love's Theme". I've already given that song the ROY treatment.