Mariko Fuji -- The Light In The Memory

 

Looks like I'm being a little cute with my titles today since my previous article was "Twilight in the Memories" by Mayo Nagata（永田真代）. Now we have "The Light in the Memory" by actress/singer-songwriter Mariko Fuji（藤真利子）.

And may I say from listening to this track from Fuji's March 1981 2nd album "Romantic Game"（浪漫幻夢）, the Japanese really must have loved Michael Franks' "Antonio's Song". It's gotten onto AOR compilations sold in the country, Anri（杏里）even sang a duet of the song with Franks in the mid-1990s, and now we have "The Light in the Memory" which has quite the influence from "Antonio's Song", although it does take a different tangent.

One commenter for the above video, Mr. Fotakias, thought it was "...a blend of a Yuji Ohno composition along with "Antonio's Song"...", and yep, I can easily imagine that this could be part of any "Lupin III" soundtrack from that time. However, checking with the JASRAC database, neither Ohno nor Franks had anything to do with "The Light in the Memory". This was indeed written and composed by Fuji herself, and certainly listening to this one, I think that she's got quite the angelic music side to her when compared to the fact that she played the largest number of villainous roles on those NTV Tuesday night suspense dramas that I mentioned in her first article on KKP.