Masako Oka -- Yume Zaiku（夢細工）/Masako Oka & Noriko Ishiwatari -- Mako to Nonko no Gokigen Ikaga 1-2-3（マコとノンコのごきげんいかが1・2・3）

 

Happy Monday! It's just the start of another regular work week here in the Greater Toronto Area although we will be getting our first major holiday weekend for the summer season in a few weeks with Victoria Day. It is the beginning of the Golden Week holidays in Japan, though, and as a result, it feels that way in my household, partially because Jme has gone onto holiday programming with the regular shows going on GW hiatus.

Well, whichever side of the International Date Line you are on, let's proceed with this week's crop of kayo kyoku/J-Pop delights with a fairly unusual single. Masako Oka（岡雅子）doesn't have a particularly long J-Wiki file but she is a seiyuu, singer and radio personality although there is no discography listed there for her music. However, there is at least one of her singles up on YouTube titled "Yume Zaiku" (Dream Work) which was released in August 1981. Written by Man Kuroki（くろき漫）, composed by Koji Shiba（柴公二）and arranged by Tadashige Matsui（松井忠重）, it's a very polished piece of down-home City Pop with a touch of bossa nova, reminiscent of Keiko Maruyama's（丸山圭子）classic "Douzo Kono Mama" (どうぞこのまま）from several years back, and the cover of the single revealing an intentionally foggy photo of the singer giving that thousand-yard gaze seals the deal. 

Now, the unusual part happens with a flip of the 45". The B-side is "Mako to Nonko no Gokigen Ikaga 1-2-3" (Mako and Nonko's How Are You 1-2-3) is a wholly different animal as Oka and Noriko Ishiwatari（石渡のり子）, another radio personality, make their tongue-in-cheek debut as rappers, some months following Blondie's "Rapture". Listening to it, I can't really take this song too seriously compared to the straightforward "Yume Zaiku". But it was indeed Haruomi Hosono（細野晴臣）of Yellow Magic Orchestra at the time behind its composition with Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）and the comedy group Snakeman Show behind the weird lyrics. In fact, I'd say that the melody and at least some of the words sound rather familiar to me as I suspect that Snakeman Show may have done a cover of their own work.

Maybe one clue as to how Oka and Ishiwatari got together was the observation that both of them had their time as hosts on different nights for the April 1976-September 1977 TBS radio late-night show "Five Sweet Cats"（5スイート・キャッツ）.