Yukiko Asanuma -- See You Again

 

THE SHINJUKU EYE WILL SEE YOU AGAIN! IT WILL ALWAYS SEE YOU AGAIN!👀

Sorry, couldn't resist adding a little mock terror here. Anyways, I did that since I have a B-side here that belongs to Yukiko Asanuma（浅沼友紀子）. Her J-Wiki profile has her named currently as Yukiko Ebina（蝦名由紀子）and this Tokyo native is a former actress who started treading the boards when Yukiko was a child. However, she did have a very brief dalliance in the recording studio with just one single and one album recorded in 1983 when she was a teenager, and that was when she took on the geimei of Asanuma.

That one album was titled "Lucky Lady"（ラッキーレディ）, and the one single was "Akogare wa Octave High no Sora e"（憧れはオクターブハイの空へ...My Dream is to Head for the Octave-High Sky） which was released in April 1983 and used as the theme for a Fuji-TV drama. However, what I wanted to take a look at was that B-side "See You Again" which I have enjoyed for that dramatic City Pop guitar intro (also reminds me of Akina Nakamori's songs at the time). Now, considering the brevity of the music side of her career, I'm not sure whether she had been marketed as an aidoru but listening to Asanuma's voice and the rest of the sweet and innocent melody by composer Mutsuhiro Nishiwaki（西脇睦宏）, who is also an arranger of songs for music boxes, I don't think that I would be too amiss if I categorized her as such in Labels. Yoko Aki（阿木燿子）, the lyricist for Momoe Yamaguchi's（山口百恵）big hits, provided the words here for "See You Again", and Kazuo Otani（大谷和夫）arranged everything.

After her time in movies and television, Asanuma called it a day by retiring from show business in the late 1980s.