Tamako Sakura -- Tokyo Musume（東京娘）

 

When I first listened to this song, "Tokyo Musume" (Tokyo Girl) which was recorded by Tamako Sakura（桜たまこ）as her 2nd single in December 1976, I thought that the general rhythm was rather familiar although I also believe that it was surprisingly late in the day for this sort of genre to be continuing on.

That staggered shuffle of a rhythm and what became a briefly popular genre is dodonpa（ドドンパ）, a Latin rhythm which was given a kayo kyoku arrangement. It had its heyday in the early 1960s with the premier song being "Tokyo Dodonpa Musume"（東京ドドンパ娘）by Mari Watanabe（渡辺マリ）. Indeed, according to Sakura's J-Wiki article, "Tokyo Musume" is based upon "Tokyo Dodonpa Musume", although the songwriters were different with Masao Ishizaka（石坂まさを）being the lyricist (and Sakura's mentor) and Masato Sugimoto（杉本真人）as the composer. It may have been years since the dodonpa craze in Japan, but "Tokyo Musume" got to be Sakura's biggest hit as it sold around 200,000 records. 

Sakura's voice is also quite distinct since when she recorded "Tokyo Musume", she was all of 15 years of age and yet she sounded like a seasoned kayo singer behind the mike with some of that underlying growl. Her real name is Michiru Bepu（別府みちる）from Kagoshima Prefecture and she had a brief career with only four singles up to the end of 1977 and one album also titled "Tokyo Musume" which was released in May of that year. She would retire from the geinokai in 1979.