Ruiko Kurahashi -- Zenmaijikake no Machi（ぜんまいじかけの都会）

 

Got another potential Noah's Ark situation in the weather department with loads of rain on the way. Ugh! Y'know...spring can actually involve sun, too!

As you know, I've often relied Wikipedia and J-Wiki for information regarding singers and songs, and yep I do realize that when it comes to academic writing, neither source has been greatly admired as the ultimate reference due to their amorphous nature. So if there are footnotes are available in the Wiki articles, I try to refer to those original sources. 

Ruiko Kurahashi（倉橋ルイ子）has been one of those underrated (by my estimation anyways) singers whose information has slowly grown from the small trickle that it once had been to something a little more plentiful. Indeed, I just discovered some rather new data when I checked her J-Wiki entry with the original source being a February 1985 issue of "Shuukan Terebi Bangumi"（週刊テレビ番組...Weekly Television Programs）. I knew that her name was actually a stage name with her real name being Shizuko Fujimoto（藤本.志津子）of Hokkaido (although that information has now been deleted for some reason). What I hadn't known was how she became Ruiko Kurahashi.

Well, according to the magazine, she had been scouted by a record company and undertook about 18 months of singing lessons before making her debut with "Glass no Yesterday"（ガラスのYesterday）in 1981. It turns out that the lyricist for that first single, Fumiko Okada（岡田富美子）, had also helped the young lass in her training and was the one to come up with Ms. Fujimoto's stage name. Okada's favourite author at the time was Yumiko Kurahashi（倉橋由美子）whose novels' characters were often androgynous, and apparently that was the image that the singer projected (although I personally felt that she was still quite feminine). As well, Okada plucked out the French boy's name of Louis and added the Japanese female name suffix of "-ko" to form Ruiko Kurahashi. Maybe I can extrapolate that Okada may have also been a fan of the manga "The Rose of Versailles" as well as an admirer of the Takarazuka Troupe.

In any case, Okada wrote a number of songs for Kurahashi including this B-side, "Zenmaijikake no Machi" (Clockwork Town), to her 5th single, "Tsumi na Ame"（罪な雨）from December 1983. Unlike the languid melancholy of that A-side which was a quintessential characteristic of a lot of Kurahashi's discography, "Zenmaijikake no Machi" shows off the singer's occasional dives into something quite upbeat and breezy. Tetsuji Hayashi（林哲司）, who's often been associated with the City Pop groove, provides some straight pop here with Katsu Hoshi（星勝）providing the country-ish bounce.

Because I've only gotten a mix of BEST albums and a few of her increasingly rare original albums, it's probable that a lot of her singles' B-sides never saw the light of day outside of those 45s. So I'm very grateful whenever I encounter them online. My thanks to uploader Nameless Songs.