Tomomi Nishimura -- Mizutama no Gorilla（水玉のゴリラ）

 

Well, call me gobsmacked! Here we are...over a decade into this wonderful world known as "Kayo Kyoku Plus", and I have found out that the only mention of 80s aidoru Tomomi Nishimura（西村知美）up to tonight was via Marcos V.'s list of Eurobeat kayo...all the way back in December 2013! Considering that I've known Nishimura not only for her aidoru tunes but also for her frequent presence on television over the years as a tarento, I feel like that I have to Gibbs slap myself upside the head for this shocking neglect.

Fortunately, I can add Nishimura's 2nd entry to "Kayo Kyoku Plus" in October 2022 with a pretty slick aidoru number called "Mizutama no Gorilla" (Polka-Dot Gorilla). At first blush, I had assumed that a song with that title would be a B-side on one of her singles, but actually, it's a track on her July 1989 album "Mezzo Piano". It's a cheerful song about a zoo gorilla, a bunch of young folks and a polka-dot handkerchief which would make for a nice anime or really silly but heartful comedy on Japanese TV. Give thanks to lyricist and Onyanko Club/AKB48 maestro Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）.

As I said the melody and arrangement are pretty cool. It's almost like an aidoru tune overlaid on top of some City Pop beats, and that is due to Etsuko Yamakawa（山川恵津子）, someone that I've known for providing darn kakkoii music to aidoru and singers of the City Pop persuasion such as Junko Yagami（八神純子）. When I read who it was behind the melody, I went "Ah, naruhodo".

Between 1986 and 1994, Nishimura released 22 singles and 8 albums. For some reason, I had thought that Nishimura was part of the aforementioned Onyanko Club（おニャン子クラブ）, but such was not the case. I do know that the lass had married a famous chef Takumi Nishio（西尾拓美）in the late 1990s. He had been an actor and a singer but once he left the entertainment business behind, he went fully into cooking and has opened up a number of his own restaurants.