Junko Tokumaru -- Ai no Shinwa（哀の心話）

 

In December last year, I introduced the aidoru Junko Tokumaru（徳丸純子）who had a relatively brief go behind the mike before changing her career into acting and then modeling instead. As I mentioned then, her March 1983 debut single "Sei First Love"（聖・ファーストラブ）struck me as the quintessential early 80s aidoru tune.

Well, this time around, allow me to introduce her fifth and final single from November 1984, "Ai no Shinwa" (Sad Talk from the Heart). Before I was reminded that this was indeed Tokumaru, I had imagined that the lady on the cover was far older than the 18 years of age that she was. Since her career as an aidoru was so brief, I've kept that particular Label for her, but I think that "Ai no Shinwa" rather takes things into the sophisticated pop area although I don't think that it qualifies as a City Pop tune. 

Written by Kumiko Aoki（青木久美子）and composed by Tsunehiro Izumi（和泉常寛）, despite the fact that "Ai no Shinwa" didn't even chart on Oricon, I still believe that it is a pretty smooth tune nicely delivered by Tokumaru. The interesting thing is that the intro and outro come straight out of Francoise Hardy's "Comment te dire adieu" from 1968. It was covered by Jun Togawa（戸川純）under the title of "Sayonara wo Oshiete"（さよならをおしえて）a year later.