Michiko Shimizu -- Fuyu no Hotel（冬のホテル）

 

Happy Monday! Well, it looks like Kayo Grace Kyoku may have gotten a jump on all of us and started her Holidays early with a stop at a wintry ryokan somewhere up north. My envy is all-consuming since I believe she's gone for the dinner option.

Forgive me, I'm going to go a longer flight of fancy than usual for this article. But as the saying goes, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery which is probably why the celebrity impressionist has managed to continue to entertain the masses on TV and on stage for so many years. The earliest impressionist I know is Rich Little who I used to see very often back in the 1970s and 1980s on shows such as "The Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson. He was pretty much the man of a thousand voices.

Of course, since Rich there have been many other celebrities who do impressions of other celebs. One of my favourites has been Bill Hader from "Saturday Night Live" and the much-acclaimed "Barry". His Arnold Schwarzenegger and Alan Alda are the best.

Doing impressions or monomane（ものまね）is also very alive and well in Japan. In fact, there are seasonal TV specials in which all of the major impressionists get together to compete against each other. At one point, I used to see them fairly often but the constant glad-handing among everyone finally got tiresome so I gave up on the shows. Perhaps that's why at least one of them always had the tart-tongued chanson singer Noriko Awaya（淡谷のり子）as one of the judges to put folks in their place. 

Another monomane artist is Michiko Shimizu（清水ミチコ）who is also a radio personality, actress and singer. I first saw her on the late 80s-early 90s Fuji-TV late Saturday night comedy-variety show "Yume de Aetara"（夢で逢えたら）which is perhaps about as close as Japanese television got to their version of America's "Saturday Night Live".

On one of Scott's "Holly Jolly X'masu" podcasts, I was able to listen to Shimizu's first official single which turned out to be titled "Fuyu no Hotel" (Winter Hotel) from December 1988. Written and composed by Shimizu herself, it was basically the impressionist doing a tongue-in-cheek Yumi Matsutoya（松任谷由実）in voice and music style back at that time, and she was pretty darn good. 

As I said at the top, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Well, Scott relayed the anecdote that the real Yumi Matsutoya didn't take it that way when she heard "Fuyu no Hotel". Paraphrasing Yuming（ユーミン）, she said that while comedienne Kuniko Yamada's（山田邦子）impersonation felt like an affectionate take, she accused Shimizu's version of her as being filled with vindictive venom. Ouch!😱 However, time and a lot of water apparently did go under the bridge, and Yuming is now fine with Shimizu and has even had the impressionist on her own radio show.