Yurie Kokubu -- Nagareru Mama ni ~ Rakka Ryuusui （流れるままに~落花流水）

 

Took a while to track this down. It was nine years ago that I posted "Refrain"（リフレイン）by Yurie Kokubu（国分友里恵）which was the B-side to the song of note for this article.

And this A-side was "Nagareru Mama ni ~ Rakka Ryuusui" (As It Flows ~ Mutual Love), Kokubu's 2nd single from April 1986. A ballad that was used as the theme song for the movie "Kizu darake no Kunshou"（傷だらけの勲章...Scarred Medal）, this is a Tetsuji Hayashi（林哲司）composition and it sure sounds like it: the soft flugelhorn and the wailing guitar solo; maybe the new thing is the additional flute. I can imagine Hayashi's other major client, Omega Tribe（オメガトライブ）doing their own version of the song. Singer-songwriter Kumiko Aoki（青木久美子）provided the lyrics. Incidentally, the footage above is probably not from "Kizu darake no Kunshou" since the movie didn't star the whirling dervish that is vivacious actress Yuko Tanaka（田中裕子）as seen in the video, but I'm not complaining.

An 80s Hayashi ballad is always welcome here. Both "Nagareru Mama ni" and "Refrain" ended up on Kokubu's reissued "Steps +2" album from 2014 (the original had been released in 1987). And guess what? I see that I already put in my two cents on "Nagareru Mama ni" in that one, but hey, I can exercise my prerogative to take another look at it. And of course, I can simply mutter to myself about how my long-term memory is starting to deteriorate again.