Yaya/Teresa Teng -- Yogiri no House Mannequin（夜霧のハウスマヌカン）

 

When I was doing my usual maintenance of various articles on the blog, I re-encountered one that I'd penned all the way back in June 2012. It was the one for Miki Hirayama's（平山みき）"Manatsu no Dekigoto" (真夏の出来事）and though this was a 1971 kayo kyoku, the first time I heard the song was through its technopop cover by MODOKEES in 1982 on an episode of "Sounds of Japan" on radio here. The group was fronted by vocalist Yaeko Kojima（小島八重子）and she would later change her professional name to Yaya（やや）going a few years down the decade.

I was curious about how Yaya did in her career and putting the name into the various search engines, the rabbit hole in cyberspace led me to her first single under that shorter name, "Yogiri no House Mannequin", which was released in January 1986. Compared to the breezy technopop cover of "Manatsu no Dekigoto", "Yogiri no House Mannequin" hit me with quite a wallop in terms of the arrangement. It sounded like a mix of Keiko Fuji（藤圭子）Mood Kayo and something that the then-popular Checkers（チェッカーズ）would release. Basically, it is a bruiser of a 1950s song that could be played in some roadside honky-tonk outside the city or deep within one. Give thanks to composer to Yoichi Sakube*（柵部陽一）.

Before I go into the lyrics by Seikou Ito（いとうせいこう）and Suwon Lee（李秀元）, I have to say that the title is also a striking one for me, particularly the last two words of house mannequin. Well, it's another example of wasei eigo or Japlish which refers to a sales clerk in a boutique. I've just read that the fascinating term is now officially a dead word since nowadays we simply use mise no ten'in-san（店の店員さん）. The entire title translates into "Sales Clerk in the Night Fog". 

As for those lyrics, I think that they as emotionally delivered by Yaya relate the story of the titular sales clerk on the cusp of her thirties, possibly wondering about her life and times in Tokyo taking care of customers while the rest of the city is having its great times. Maybe she will decide to make a transformation from nebbishy salesgirl to tight-skirted vamp in Omotesando.

With a similarly boss arrangement, the late Teresa Teng（テレサテン）also released her version of "Yogiri no House Mannequin" in her third Chinese-language album produced in Japan, "Jiǔ zuì de tàngē"（酒醉的探戈...Boozy Tango）, which I could only derive via Google Translate (if anyone can correct what I've written, please do so). The album was released on Christmas Day 1986. The above video has Teng singing the original Japanese version but I don't know where that popped up in her discography.

*The composer's family name is perhaps a rare one since I couldn't find anything about it anywhere online. Therefore, I had to take a wild guess based on the individual readings of the two kanji involved, but again, if anyone can confirm or deny how I've written the name down, please let me know.