Saori Saito -- Yokogao（横顔）

 

One observation of Japanese song titles that I've made is that there are quite a lot of songs named "Yokogao" (Profile) as in the side shot of the face. Checking the JASRAC database, there are a little over 80 songs registered under that title including Taeko Ohnuki's（大貫妙子）jazzy standard tune (although it's entirely possible that some of those are cover versions). I'm not sure why that is the case...perhaps there is something to be said in Japanese culture and history about the side of a face. However, the photo above is not a perfect yokogao shot of the Great Buddha in Kamakura, but it's the best that I could do for now.

When I set up the parameters to create this article, I was surprised to find that Saori Saito's（斉藤さおり）name was already listed in Labels, but then I found out that KKP contributor Oliver Ebisuno92 had mentioned her in his article "Time is up, Mr Juggler: The Music of Shuto Kousoku Trial Movies". I gather that all those racing movies were a good match with Saito since according to her J-Wiki profile, she has been dallying in the rock genre since early in her career.

From her 8th album in 1991, "Love' Less" (no idea why the apostrophe is in there), there is indeed "Yokogao", written and composed by bassist and singer Norio Sakai（坂井紀雄）. With that percolating percussion and rhythm in there, I got some Santana vibes. I also enjoy Saito's vocals although I think her "Yokogao" shifts more toward the pop/rock dividing line, but then again, that electric guitar starts pumping away near the end.

Saito hails from Nagoya in Aichi Prefecture and during her mid-teens in 1984, she competed in a contest sponsored by a girls' fashion magazine getting as far as the semi-finals while going up against other girls such as popular aidoru Noriko Matsumoto（松本典子）. In the singing section of the contest, she performed Meiko Nakahara's（中原めいこ）"Kimi Tachi Kiwi Papaya Mango da ne" （君たちキウイ・パパヤ・マンゴだね）and battled against the singer with the boomer voice Misato Watanabe（渡辺美里）!

A couple of years later, she did a series of live concerts teamed up with a duo known as Heartbreakers（ハートブレイカーズ）who would later split off to become BaBe. After several albums and singles, Saito decided to go from her real name to a stage name Akira Asakura（麻倉晶）as of 1993 to spark a new launch in her career. Twelve years after that, she tweaked the name so that her given name was written out in hiragana（麻倉あきら）rather than kanji.

Ah, just an internal observation, but with this entry, we've hit the largest number of articles in a year at 973.