Naoko Isamu -- Centre Line ga Owaru Toki（センターラインが終わるとき）

 

Happy Monday! A week following the Blizzard of 2022 here in the Toronto area, we may be facing an additional 5 cm of snow this afternoon. The kids might be swooning at this but commuters are probably groaning once more.

Back in 2016, Marcos V. introduced us to 80s aidoru Naoko Isamu（勇直子）through her cover of Paul Lekakis' notorious "Boom Boom Boom (Let’s Go Back To Your Room)" in 1987. At first, when I saw that three-character name, I'd assumed that it was an unreadable mononym for me until I realized that the first character was the family name and that the last two made up her given name of Naoko.

While her cover of "Boom Boom Boom" was released as her 4th single, she started her singing career with "Centre Line ga Owaru Toki" (When the Centre Line Ends) in July 1986. Beginning with a rather buzzy guitar scream, "Centre Line ga Owaru Toki" then quickly settles down into a regular if slightly dramatic aidoru melody. I couldn't find the lyrics for the song but considering the arrangement and the centre line in the title, I'm assuming it involves a girl stuck in the middle of a bad pack of teen hoodlums hitting the pavement on their motorcycles. Although I couldn't find the information at Isamu's J-Wiki article, another website called "Kayo Kyoku ga Suki!"（歌謡曲が好き!...I Love Kayo Kyoku!）has listed the fact that the debut single got as high as No. 32 on Oricon, selling around 25,000 records.

Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）provided the lyrics. What's interesting is that multi-instrumentalist and composer Kazuhiko Matsuo（松尾一彦）laid down the melody while drummer Jiro Ohma（大間ジロー）produced Isamu's single. Both men still belonged to the famed band Off-Course（オフコース）at the time, so try to imagine Kazumasa Oda's（小田和正）group having to do with a twinkly 80s aidoru single.

Isamu was born in Urawa, Saitama Prefecture but due to the demands of her father's job, she quickly had an early spate of moving all over the country including Yokohama and Hiroshima, before finally settling in the city of Zushi, Kanagawa Prefecture. At around the age of 17 in 1985, she was scouted by an entertainment production company, K-House (whose president is folk singer Iruka) at Harajuku Station after her ballet lessons.

Also getting into acting and appearing in commercials, both aidoru guru/lyricist Akimoto and the president of Oricon itself lauded Isamu for having the talent to go far in the industry. However, the lass only released a total of 6 singles and 2 albums before retiring from show business in the 1990s. Some years later, she married the lead vocalist of rock band Jun Sky Walkers, Kazuya Miyata（宮田和弥）, and began a family. However in 2002, she made a return to the geinokai and is currently working as an actress and commercial pitchperson.