Kumiko Goto -- Wakaba no Illusion（若葉のイリュージョン）

 

I wrote about Kumiko Goto's（後藤久美子）March 1987 "teardrop" a few months ago. It was the first of just two singles that she would record alongside a 1988 album before opting out of the singing part of her entertainment career. Noting her singing ability at the time (not even a teenager), I completely overlooked the fact on her J-Wiki profile that she had been treated as an aidoru.

The B-side to "teardrop" was "Wakaba no Illusion" (Illusion of the Young Leaves). It all sounds rather enigmatically poetic but the lyrics by Etsuko Kisugi（来生えつこ）simply relate the tale of a young student pining away for a boy without being able to approach him. As with "teardrop", the music for "Wakaba no Illusion" was supplied by Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）and then arranged by Motoki Funayama（船山基紀）. I'd say that there is a certain lushness to the arrangement that I felt was pretty common among a lot of aidoru tunes in the latter half of the 1980s.

The song was used for Fuji-TV's summer campaign in 1987 and as an insert song for Gokumi's own drama on the network, "Doukyuusei wa Juu-San Sai"（同級生は13歳...My Classmate is 13 Years Old）.