Akiko Nakamura -- Taiyo ni Koi wo Shite（太陽に恋をして）

 

From jp.mercari.com

The very first article that I did on singer-actress Akiko Nakamura（中村晃子）was for her 1981 single "Sasayaki no Kubikazari" （ささやきの首飾り...Whispering Necklace） all the way back in January 2013, almost a year following the premiere of this blog. It also happens to be the very first Nakamura song that I ever heard through an old tape of various kayo singers and I fell for it due to the very dramatic Mood Kayo imbued into his melody. The only problem is that after a brief appearance of the song on YouTube, it disappeared from view, perhaps permanently, much to my disappointment. 

As of this writing, no sign of it has yet to reappear on YouTube or elsewhere, even through any excerpts on iTunes. So until I decided to write up this new article on Nakamura, I'd kept the original article on "Sasayaki no Kubikazari" back in Inactive status for years but I've opted to bring it back out into the light as it were, still without any video. I figure that at least you can read about how I first found out about her; after all, that has been the mission statement of "Kayo Kyoku Plus".

As I said above, "Sasayaki no Kubikazari" is a single from the 1980s so why not go back to her early days from the mid-1960s. Her 6th single "Taiyo ni Koi wo Shite" (Fall In Love With The Sun) is a pretty bouncy kayo with a heavy rhythm section and sharp Mexican horns. She was only in her early 20s at the time so her voice sounds much lighter compared to the whiskey-and-cigarettes vocals that she would later bring to "Sasayaki no Kubikazari". Written by Hiroshi Yokoi（横井弘）and composed by Hirooki Ogawa（小川寛興）, I'd probably think that it was used for one of Nakamura's films (her acting career began years before her singing) but I couldn't confirm this.

For that original article, I didn't give any real biography on Nakamura but she was born in Narashino City, Chiba Prefecture in 1945. During her high school years in the early 60s, she was a finalist in the Miss Air France contest which led to her being scouted by Shochiku Ofuna Film Studios and then making her film debut. One surprising piece of trivia that came from J-Wiki was that she had voiced the title character in Filmation's "Sabrina The Teenage Witch" when it came to Japan as a dubbed import cartoon in the 1970s. That could indeed be Nakamura singing the theme song below.