Seiko Matsuda -- Hana Hito Iro ~ Nogiku no Sasayaki（花一色～野菊のささやき）

 

All hail the Eternal Aidoru! Today just happens to be Seiko Matsuda's（松田聖子）birthday and a number of Seiko-related accounts on Twitter have made that very crystal clear to me. Well, how can I resist? She's one of the reasons that I got into all this Japanese music in the first place. 

Initially, I'd been thinking about posting "Hoho ni Shiokaze"（頬に潮風）, one of her B-sides from 1981, but I not only wrote about that one in 2021 but I'd actually also written about it in 2017! Such is the state of my sieve-like mind nowadays and frankly it's not the only song that's gotten the double-look treatment. It's simply gonna be an occupational hazard on this blog.

But all is not lost. I did find another B-side that I'd never heard before, this time for her July 1981 6th single "Shiroi Parasol"（白いパラソル）. Now of course, when we look at Seiko-chan's very large discography, the singer has had her share of ballads and slower-tempo songs. However this particular B-side, "Hana Hito Iro ~ Nogiku no Sasayaki" (Flowers of One Colour ~ The Whispers of Wild Chrysanthemums), has been noted on the J-Wiki article for "Shiroi Parasol" (the original source being a 2014 book by editor and critic Yuusuke Nakagawa) as perhaps the first slow song that Seiko had ever recorded compared to all of the breezy and summery songs that she had been releasing in the early part of her career. 

"Hana Hito Iro" was written by Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）and composed by Kazuo Zaitsu（財津和夫）, the same duo behind the typically happy "Shiroi Parasol" but this time, the arrangement was handled by Ichizo Seo（瀬尾一三）. And also this time, this B-side does sound much more wistful and melancholy as the theme song for the August 1981 movie "Nogiku no Haka"（野菊の墓...Grave of Wild Chrysanthemums） which featured Matsuda's first starring role in a film about a tragic love story in the Meiji era. Apparently, it was the second remake of an original 1955 film.

Getting back to "Hana Hito Iro", although "Shiroi Parasol" was included on one of Seiko-chan's seminal albums "Kaze Tachinu"（風立ちぬ）in that same year, the B-side wasn't included there, probably because it didn't quite fit compared to any of the other tracks. However, it didn't have to wait too long to get onto an album as it was included on the singer's first BEST compilation "Seiko - Fragrance"（聖子・fragrance）which came out in November. It reached No. 3 on Oricon. 

In any case, I wish Seiko all the best on her birthday!