Tango Europe -- Tokyo Cinderella（桃郷シンデレラ）

 

In late October, I posted an article featuring a track from Masamichi Sugi's（杉真理）Xmas-ish compilation "Winter Gift Pops" from 1997. The song was Miwako Saito's（さいとうみわこ）cover of Kaoru Sudo's（須藤薫）"Anata dake I Love You"（あなただけ I LOVE YOU）. Now, I had never heard of Saito before but learned back in the late 1970s going into the 1980s, she had been involved with a couple of bands, Neko Musume（猫娘）and then Tango Europe（タンゴ・ヨーロッパ）, the latter of which consisted of five women including Saito, the main vocalist who also went by the nickname of Nyanko（ニャンコ...Kitten）.

Well, I was able to track down Tango Europe's 4th and final single from June 1984, "Tokyo Cinderella". As you can see from the kanji, the usual characters for Tokyo「東京」 aren't utilized here but replaced by「桃郷」which literally means Peach Village. From the lyrics, I gather that a peach village was quite the utopia.

Written by the vocalist under her nom de plume of Nanako Saito（さいとう菜々子）and composed by fellow bandmate, guitarist Junko Koresawa（是沢淳子）, "Tokyo Cinderella" begins rather dreamily before it goes into a jangly and upbeat tune of an odyssey through Japan's largest metropolis. The protagonist leaves her small hometown for Tokyo to search for a man that she fell hard for through a chance encounter and although she realizes that he's already spoken for, she stays in the city despite reservations from her loved ones to see if she can still find a Prince Charming. Sounds like the perfect story for any rom-com J-Drama. 

I hadn't noticed it before, but I now think that after listening to both "Tokyo Cinderella" and her later cover of "Anata dake I Love You" in 1997, Saito has a similar vocal tone and style to future aidoru superstar Shizuka Kudo（工藤静香）. At this point, I've only heard the one song by Tango Europe but there is that 50s/60s girl pop vibe that made Saito quite a good match to cover a song by Kaoru Sudo, a singer who also enjoyed singing the music of yesteryear.

Along with Saito and Koresawa, Tango Europe also included bassist Kaoru Sakaguchi（坂口かおる）, drummer Mikiko Ishida（石田美紀子）and saxophonist/keyboardist Yukari "Yukarie" Tsukakoshi（塚越優香）. During their 1980-1984 run, they tried to exhibit their music as a genre called Mi-ha- Funky（ミーハー・ファンキー...Starstruck Funky）. So far, I see their music as being prototypical of what I would hear from Princess Princess and Jitterin' Jinn later in the decade.