Hitomi Hayase -- Kita No Misaki（北の岬）

 

I don't know about some of the enka-listening veterans out there, but I often find it difficult to discover female enka singers outside of the most famous people such as Hibari Misora（美空ひばり）and Sayuri Ishikawa（石川さゆり）in the 1970s and 1980s. Not sure why but perhaps at the time, girls or women who wanted to get into a singing career tended to aim for aidoru, folk or pop singer.

So, it's always pleasant when I do find such a singer. Case in point: Hitomi Hayase who was born Hitomi Chiba（千葉仁美）in 1961 in Iwate Prefecture.  According to a local newspaper feature (1983) in her home prefecture via J-Wiki, the singer has been a great fan of kayo kyoku through TV and radio programs since she she was little, and lucky for her, she was blessed with a great voice without any particular need for vocal training. 

Winning as Grand Champion on the audition show "Star wa Kimi da!"（スターは君だ!...The Star is You!）, Chiba took on the stage name Hitomi Hayase（早世ひとみ）and made her debut with "Kita no Misaki" (The Northern Cape) in November 1980. A melancholy enka with a folksy bent, the song had been created by lyricist Makoto Kitajo（喜多条忠）and composer Takashi Miki（三木たかし）and deals with a woman wondering what went wrong when her wonderful relationship with a man suddenly ended while they were walking along one of those spectacular capes. There is something rather Ishikawa-esque about her delivery.

As far as I know, I don't ever recall seeing her appearing on any TV program, certainly not on NHK, and it looks like Hayase never quite hit A-level stardom. However, she had been steadily working until the early 1990s. Since then, she's released a couple of singles and an album in the 21st century. With a slight change in her stage name kanji（早瀬ひとみ）but with the same pronunciation in 2003, Hayase has been focusing mainly on live performances.