Hiromi Iwasaki -- Rengesou no Koi（れんげ草の恋）/Kanashimi no Hotori（悲しみのほとり）

 

I've just noticed that with my recent inclusion of the category of Fashion Music within Labels (finally!), there was one singer that I had yet to put in. She wasn't even in my list of Fashion Music that I concocted all the way back in 2018, and yet Hiromi Iwasaki（岩崎宏美）was one of the first singers that I had heard when I got onto this fateful journey into kayo kyoku back in 1981. Her cover of Jackey Yoshikawa and His Blue Comets' "Sumire Iro no Namida"（すみれ色の涙） (the very first song that I'd ever heard from Hiromi) can be considered to be a form of that Japanese baroque pop.

Perhaps she was on a run of such music because right after the release of "Sumire Iro no Namida", there was her 26th single from October 1981, "Rengesou no Koi" (Milkvetch Love). You can look at the Wikipedia entry for the flower, and yep, the translation doesn't sound particularly romantic but the lyrics by Machiko Ryu（竜真知子）talk of the poignant fragility of loving someone from afar...fragile like a milkvetch. The melody and arrangement by Kimio Mizutani（水谷公生）and Mitsuo Hagita（萩田光雄）respectively seem right out of an especially melancholy melodrama involving a large wooden villa out in the countryside; the cello really helps.

The B-side to "Rengesou no Koi" is "Kanashimi no Hotori" (The Shores of Grief) and though the melancholy is still there, the beat is a bit more uptempo with the strings getting a little choppy in the intro. Hagita was once again the arranger but the lyricist and composer this time were Makoto Kitajo and Koichi Sakata（喜多条忠・坂田晃一）respectively. For whatever reason, a lady no longer has a beloved one next to her which has left her in deep despair, perhaps enough to throw herself in the nearby lake. 

The single managed to reach No. 19 on Oricon. Apparently, "Rengesou no Koi" was the third and final single in Iwasaki's "Kusabana"（草花...Flowering Plants） series of songs following "Koimachigusa"（恋待草...Love Grass） and "Sumire Iro no Namida" throughout 1981.