Chiaki Kuriyama/Ringo Shiina -- Oishii Kisetsu（おいしい季節）

 

When it comes to thespian/singer Chiaki Kuriyama（栗山千明）in the West, she will always be known as the teenage ball of furious insanity, Go Go Yubari. Her role was relatively brief but she did make an impression.

I know since then she's appeared in a number of movies and television dramas in Japan over the last twenty years although I've barely seen any of them. There was an episode of one mystery series that I saw where she played a skeptical police detective; it apparently was a mix of "The X-Files" and "Rain Man". Aside from that, Kuriyama has also done her fair share of goofy commercials and variety show appearances to repeatedly display that, no, she's not really a psychotic killer.

Kuriyama has also had her time behind the recording mike. She was even included in a Kayo Kyoku Plus article all the way back in 2017 but her "Seishun no Matataki"（青春の瞬き）was taken down by the powers-that-be on YouTube although her songwriter, Ringo Shiina（椎名林檎）, provided her take on the song which is still intact.

So for all intents and purposes, this is Kuriyama's first time again on the blog, this time with "Oishii Kisetsu" (The Creamy Season) which was released in March 2011 as her 4th single. Looking at the video (sorry but it's not available anymore) and listening to the song about falling in love, I think a lot of folks will quickly see and hear the Shiina influences and indeed Shiina did create the song. In fact, I'd say that "Oishii Kisetsu" is a nice reminder of the songwriter's early works. Mind you, Kuriyama in the video doesn't appear nearly as scary as Shiina did back in those days. The single peaked at No. 37 on Oricon.

According to J-Wiki, Shiina has covered "Oishii Kisetsu" a few times over the years such as via her No. 3-ranking December 2017 second album of covers, "Gyakuyunyū: Koukuukyoku"（逆輸入 〜航空局〜...Reimport vol. 2: Civil Aviation Bureau）. Her version seems to be a bit more along the side of progressive rock and her more contemporary classical approach to music. This take was also included on the November 2019 "Newton no Ringo ~Hajimete no Best Ban~" （ニュートンの林檎 ～初めてのベスト盤～...Newton's Apple ～First Best Edition～）which hit No. 1 on the weekly charts and ended up as the 22nd-ranked album of 2019.

Ringo Shiina/Chiaki Kuriyama -- Seishun no Matataki （青春の瞬き）

OK, in all honesty, watching Ringo Shiina's（椎名林檎）performance at Tokyo City Hall (I know that's not the official name of the place but it's easier for me) on the 2016 Kohaku Utagassen a second time didn't have quite the impact that it did when I had first caught it about 10 days ago. I was never a huge fan of that "Let's all pretend to be mannequins!" craze and I'm starting to get a tad tired of Shiina's vocals often cracking up near the end of a song. Still, her performance of "Seishun no Matataki" (Flicker of Youth) with her old band Tokyo Jihen（東京事変...Tokyo Incidents） ended up as my one highlight from the 2016 show.

"Seishun no Matataki" was a song created by Shiina and arranged by Keiichi Tomita（冨田恵一...aka Tomita Lab） for her album of self-covers "Gyakuyunyū: Kōwankyoku"（逆輸入 〜港湾局〜...Reimport: Ports and Harbours Bureau） from May 2014. I have yet to hear the original version but so far I've enjoyed her concert versions. When I found out that Tomita arranged the song, I nodded appreciatively since from some of the other songs that I've heard, mostly from his great album "Shipbuilding", he has had that wonderful ability to add that cool and classy urban contemporary feeling to his works. I'm not sure whether Shiina meant it to be so, but the song almost seems to be a love song or a lullaby in tribute to Tokyo itself. Moreover, the tune has included the genres that the singer-songwriter has dabbled in all through her career: rock and jazz with some technopop thrown in. I wouldn't mind if Shiina performed this again at the 2020 Olympic Opening or Closing Ceremonies...and with that projection mapping.

(I'm sorry but the video has been taken down.)

Now I did say that "Gyakuyunyū: Kōwankyoku" was Shiina's album of self-covers so there was an original version and that version was sung by actress/singer Chiaki Kuriyama（栗山千明）as the coupling song for her 5th single, "Tsukiyo no Shozo"（月夜の肖像...Portrait of the Moonlit Night/Identité de la Lune） from November 2011. The arrangement there sounded a bit more straight-on pop but I have to say that the former Go Go Yubari didn't sound too bad at all. Kuriyama's version also received the French title of "Le Moment". The single peaked at No. 62. As for Shiina's album, "Gyakuyunyū: Kōwankyoku" went as high as No. 3 on Oricon.