ZARD -- Forever You

 

This morning, I saw an NHK weekly news summary series on TV Japan, and one of the features was rather interesting to an ol' pop culture wonk like myself. Apparently, along with the Showa Retro（昭和レトロ）boom, there's been an accompanying Heisei Retro（平成レトロ）boom to represent nostalgic interest in the various fads and fashion that got devoured by Japanese youth during the Heisei era, notably from the inaugural year of 1989 into the mid-1990s at least. So, some of the young folks right now have possibly been inheriting the bits and bites of Heisei culture from their parents including loose socks, platform boots, and midriff-bearing shirts.

And who can forget the ancient Tamagotchi?! I was already there in Tokyo when the digital game/nursery went absolutely bonkers with the Japanese public. As can be seen in the above video, there were hours-long lineups to get that tiny little trinket. I remember walking by Tokyu Hands in Shibuya and witnessing this snake of humanity curling around the corner so that they could get their hands on a Tamagotchi.

My word. It says something when nostalgia and active pursuit for an era which I had entered in my mid-twenties are rising like a wave once more. That spoon stirring my glass of Metamucil is tinkling ever more loudly. 😵

Speaking of NHK, a couple of days ago, I watched a new series called "Heroine Tanjou! Asadora no Dramatic no Onna-tachi"（ヒロイン誕生!朝ドラな女たち...Birth of a Heroine! Morning Drama Women）. If I got the premise right, it's supposed to focus on the lives of certain real people of the past via acting performances. The "asadora" part threw me for a loop initially until I read the J-Wiki article and discovered that the producers behind "Heroine Tanjou!" had gone for a "What If?" approach for their subject and assumed that if a morning serial drama (which is a virtual 15-minute institution on the national network between 8 am and 8:15) could be done for that person, this is what it could look like. But most of the 30-minute program is devoted to the actress asking friends and acquaintances of the subject about her and how she would prepare for the 5-minute vignette that appears at the end.

Usually, such a program wouldn't be my cup of tea, but Episode No. 1 was focused on singer-songwriter Izumi Sakai（坂井泉水）, aka ZARD, whose untimely death had occurred just over 15 years ago in 2007. Hana Kawamura（河村花）portrayed the late Sakai, who had been born Sachiko Kamachi（蒲池幸子）in Kanagawa Prefecture. Well, considering that ZARD had kept her media appearances to a bare minimum throughout her singing career, I was curious.

My impression of Sakai was that compared to some of the over-the-top celebrities that constantly showed up on programs such as "Music Station", the singer was very much down-to-earth and somewhat shy. The footage of her that was aired on "Heroine Tanjou!" along with Kawamura's portrayal rather confirmed that. 

Not surprisingly, because it was ZARD as the subject of the program, the producers focused on a particular song of hers which was the title track of her March 1995 album, "Forever You". KKP friend and co-administrator Larry Chan has already devoted an article to the song in which he stated "Forever You" had been meant as a paean to Sakai's former phase of her celebrity career when, under her real name of Sachiko Kamachi, she paid her dues as a pinup model and race queen. 

In the dramatized scene at the end of "Heroine Tanjou!", there was a newspaper article which pronounced loud and clear about Sakai's "sordid" past for which producer Daito Nagato（長戸大幸）assured the singer that he would try to suppress any more rumours about her. But Sakai countered by stating that there was no need to do that since she was neither afraid nor ashamed of that part of her life because it was due to her work then and the struggles to get through with it that brought her to the successful stage in life that she was now enjoying as a recording artist. Supposedly from that meeting came "Forever You" through her lyrics and Tetsuro Oda's（織田哲郎）melody. It's not a happy rah-rah song by any means, but a musical moment of quiet pride which seems to match Sakai's own personality.

The album "Forever You" itself would hit No. 1 for two straight weeks and end up as the 4th-ranked album of the year. It also broke the 2-million mark in sales.