Tomoko (Rinco) Mayumi -- Sentimental Natsu Shojo（センチメンタル・夏少女）

 

With summer approaching, I have to start digging more for those seasonally appropriate tunes. Since urban contemporary was the thing yesterday, let's go with some aidoru to start things off today.

(3:47)

However actually, Tomoko (Rinco) Mayumi（真弓倫子）hasn't been listed in her J-Wiki file as an aidoru but as an actress and a TV personality from Kagoshima Prefecture. The reason that I've inserted that "Rinco" in her name is that early in her career, she had been going with a different reading of her first name as a stage alias, but the article doesn't specify when it was decided that she would go back to Tomoko, so I'm covering all of the bases.

Getting away from the naming thing, Mayumi was a graduate of that Tokyo equivalent of Hollywood High, Horikoshi High School in Nakano Ward. She was scouted in Harajuku (not sure if they ever had a drugstore which served milkshakes there) and made her debut as an actress on television in January 1987. Half a year later in June, she released the first of five singles, "Kataomoi Graffiti"（片想いグラフィティー...One-Sided Love Graffiti）. But it's the B-side that's the focus here, "Sentimental Natsu Shojo" (Sentimental Summer Girl). Written by Ikki Matsumoto（松本一起）, composed by Koji Makaino（馬飼野康二）and arranged by Kazuo Otani（大谷和夫）, I think that Mayumi does a pretty solid job with her high-pitched vocals matching the twinkling synths going at a good tempo. It does sound like a contemporary (for the time) 80s tune although I can pick up on the 60s girl pop vibe as well. The single was the only one to crack the Oricon Top 20 at No. 19.

Mayumi released one album in 1989, "Sincerely Yours", and one BEST compilation in 2011. With that final single coming out at the end of the 1980s, she then focused on acting throughout the next twenty years.