Tomoyo Harada/Taeko Ohnuki -- Chikatetsu no Zazie ~ Zazie dans le Métro（地下鉄のザジ）

 

When I first heard of this song recorded by 80s aidoru/actress Tomoyo Harada（原田知世）as the first track for her first mini-album, the No. 2-ranking "Birthday Album"（バースデイ・アルバム）from November 1983 and realized that Taeko Ohnuki（大貫妙子）was behind both words and music, my first thought that even for Ohnuki, that was one mighty ambitious title: "Chikatetsu no Zazie ~ Zazie dans le Métro".

As it turned out, the title translates into "Zazie on the Subway" and it was actually the title of a 1960 Louis Malle film based on the original 1959 Raymond Queneau novel. It all involves Zazie, a potty-mouthed pre-teen girl who gets dropped off in Paris suffering a transit strike and gets into a major farce of an adventure with various interesting characters throughout the movie. Looking at the poster at Wikipedia, I thought that if the movie had been remade in the 1990s, Natalie Portman would have been the ideal actress as Zazie.

But getting back to Harada's "Chikatetsu no Zazie", the Ohnuki creation was arranged by Nobuyuki Shimizu（清水信之）with a slightly blippity-bloppity technopop sheen. It's bright-eyed and bushy-tailed although I can't imagine Harada playing naughty Zazie. Remembering what Ohnuki's melodies sounded like at the time, "Chikatetsu no Zazie" fits right in.

Ohnuki and Shimizu got together again a few years later when the former was recording her 10th studio album "Comin' Soon" for its March 1986 release. The two included Ohnuki's own cover of "Chikatetsu no Zazie" which wasn't all that different from Harada's original. "Comin' Soon" managed to reach No. 26 on the charts as an LP, while its CD version went even higher to No. 21.

Many years later, Harada released her first self-cover album in July 2017 titled "Ongaku to Watashi"（音楽と私...Music and Me） which was arranged by Goro Ito（伊藤ゴロー）. In it is a more grown-up take on "Chikatetsu no Zazie" as if Zazie herself has shed her rough edges to become a more refined, less spiky and more accommodating young lady of The City of Lights. The album peaked at No. 11 on Oricon.