Hideko Hara -- Mufuu Toshi（無風都市）

 

Erghh...trying to get accustomed to the positioning of a new laptop. Yep, I've moved things from the desktop, where I was for about a couple of years, to a new setup with my latest acquisition. I guess I'm a little ultra-sensitive when it comes to things like how my fingers hit the keyboard.

Anyways, I'm running a little later than usual but I am going ahead with the usual Friday Urban Contemporary list of songs. Up first is the B-side to Hideko Hara's（原日出子）"Aoi Rhapsody"（青いラプソディー）from 1982 which I wrote about almost exactly a year previously. This is "Mufuu Toshi" (Windless City), a slightly less breezy (as the title would indicate) and more melancholy summer's-end song by the same folks behind "Aoi Rhapsody": lyricist Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）, composer Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）and arranger Kazuo Otani（大谷和夫）with Off-Course's（オフコース）Yasuhiro Suzuki（鈴木康博）helping out with the chorus. The overall arrangement of both sides makes it feel even more like the two sides were meant to be part of a whole.

Still gonna need that old desktop since all of my bookmarked videos for posting are there and not here.

Hideko Hara -- Aoi Rhapsody（青いラプソディー）

 

Hard to believe, but it's been almost eight years since I posted a song by actress Hideko Hara（原日出子）titled "Yakusoku"（約束）from 1981. As I mentioned in that article, I'd thought that we would be getting a City Pop tune from the first few bars, but it actually turned into a regular pop tune...not that I have anything against it for that reason.

"Yakusoku" was Hara's 2nd single of her brief music career. The follow-up and her final single was "Aoi Rhapsody" (Blue Rhapsody), and this time, the needle pulled further away from regular pop into City Pop. As was the case with that 2nd single, Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）was the lyricist and Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）was the composer but the arranger this time was Kazuo Otani（大谷和夫）. The result was something breezier and more summery.

As well, the chorus is given more oomph thanks to Yasuhiro Suzuki's（鈴木康博）participation in the backup vocals. It's almost eerie how Suzuki's tones just about bring his entire band of Off-Course（オフコース）into the proceedings. The vocal blasts by the man are a bit jarring, though.

Hideko Hara -- Yakusoku （約束）

I think some of the viewers looking at this will have had their second round of turkey, stuffing and gravy in as many nights so Xmas dinner exhaustion will be setting in right around now. We did the same here but all of the turkey has been ingested so we'll be back to normal eating from tomorrow.

The above is an old photo from 1981 during that Japanese Language School graduation trip with the guys and those Tezukayama Girls' High School students whose families hosted us for a few days in July. Amazing those hairstyles back then. Still, bell bottom pants were already a thing of the past so quite happy there.

When I think of Hideko Hara（原日出子）, I think of bathroom grout. Nope...that's an overly harsh assessment, but the actress/tarento has been a fairly familiar face on television through many commercials and variety show appearances. She always has had that cheerful and confident countenance as a housewife and mother. But she's also had her share of thespian performances including her stint as the main character on an NHK morning serial drama all the way back in 1981.

She even had a brief time behind the recording mike. Hara released just 3 singles between 1980 and 1982, and "Yakusoku" (Promise) is her sophomore song. Released in November 1981, it was created by the dream pair of lyricist Takashi Matsumoto and composer Kyohei Tsutsumi（松本隆・筒美京平）, and although the first couple of bars sounded as if it were going to be a City Pop tune, "Yakusoku" is just a happy-go-lucky pop song with Hara giving a decent if not spectacular round at the mike. I like the melody since it is rather reminiscent of those innocent songs from a decade prior.

I don't know how it did on the rankings but I think it would be a major coup for the die-hard Hara fans if any of them manage to find a copy of this single.