Hiromi Kanda -- Hitomi Shiri（人見知り）

 

Yesterday, there was a windstorm that hit the Greater Toronto Area and it did leave a number of neighbourhoods without power, and I think that there are some areas which are still waiting for restoration. Fortunately, that didn't happen to us but there were a few tense hours. Today has made for a sunny December Sunday. It might be fairly cold outside but happily there are no warnings...knock on wood.

An appropriately sunny Sunday song is in order then. I give you singer-lyricist Hiromi Kanda's（神田広美）debut single from January 1977, "Hitomi Shiri" (Shyness). She was all of 20 when this was released and for her first few singles, she actually didn't provide any lyrics. For "Hitomi Shiri", for example, Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）was the wordsmith while the man who would later become her husband, Yusuke Hoguchi（穂口雄右）, provided the melody.

It's a wistful song that brings about a few thoughts such as how Kanda sounds a bit like Junko Yagami（八神純子）in her own early days and the fact that "Hitomi Shiri" gave me hints that not only does it sound like the quintessential summer kayo but it also sounds like something that vocal group Hi-Fi Set（ハイ・ファイ・セット）could also have sung. From Hoguchi's music and arrangement, I'm not sure if I would place it as City Pop or AOR, but I think that it can fit the New Music mold especially with that certain 70s soul-sounding guitar or keyboard plucking away.

There was much more information about "Hitomi Shiri" at "idol.ne.jp" than on her J-Wiki profile, including the statistics that the song sold 50,000 copies and ranked as high as No. 43 on Oricon. Again with that tradition of cheery music underlaid with at least a bittersweet story, according to the reviewer on that site, the story is about a woman saying goodbye to a man for the last time the morning after. The reviewer even posits that "Hitomi Shiri" has that stylish vibe of a city-based Hiromi Ohta（太田裕美）song. Both him/her and me also noticed that Kanda's vocals were quite different here when compared to her 5th single "Don Juan"（ドンファン）which she released more than 18 months later and it turned out to be the last article that I'd written about her more than three years prior.