Eri Kawai -- Sha Rion（シャ・リオン）

 

One of the many things I miss about living in Japan is that finding really stylish cafés and patisseries was never difficult. Even the franchises such as Vie de France had some truly buttery and delicious fare. It partially explains why I ended up gaining weight during my years there. Karaage bento and fast food restaurants make up another 60% of the reason. Another thing that I found stylish is some of the information and educational TV programming on NHK and the commercial television networks. The production staff could really generate some panache for the presentation of topics domestic and abroad.

There was one example of such a show in the mid-to-late 1990s. Fuji-TV had a program called "Wordsworth no Bouken"（ワーズワースの冒険...The Adventures of Wordsworth） on Sunday evenings from 10:30 to 11:00, so I'm assuming just before the iconic "Music Fair".  "Wordsworth no Bouken" was all about presenting various grown-up hobbies such as the love of tea, izakaya and Ginza bars in a half-dramatization and half-documentary style of whimsy. It was all very appealing with plenty of attractive guest celebrities helping out in the presentation.

The whimsy extends to the theme song. Sounding very ethereal, exotic and European, this was titled "Sha Rion" which was created by composer and arranger Michiru Oshima（大島ミチル）, who would later come up with "Chariot's Theme", the triumphant orchestral piece used in the hit anime "Little Witch Academia"（リトルウィッチアカデミア）and of course, the rest of the soundtrack. When I first saw the title, I was wondering which nation (Iceland, perhaps?) had inspired Oshima for the title, melody and lyrics. Well, as it turns out, the title "Sha Rion" was merely a neologism...something made up so that no particular country could be identified. The lyrics themselves, also by Oshima, were also made-up words sounding like a new language that apparently, according to the J-Wiki article on "Wordsworth no Bouken", bubbled up in the composer's mind after she had read some of Wordsworth's poetry upside-down and/or backwards.

Recording "Sha Rion" as her first single for June 1993 was singer-songwriter Eri Kawai（河井英里）from Tokyo. She released two more singles and five albums going into the 2000s, but sadly, she succumbed to liver cancer in 2008 at the age of 43.