Kumiko Goto -- Wakaba no Illusion（若葉のイリュージョン）

 

I wrote about Kumiko Goto's（後藤久美子）March 1987 "teardrop" a few months ago. It was the first of just two singles that she would record alongside a 1988 album before opting out of the singing part of her entertainment career. Noting her singing ability at the time (not even a teenager), I completely overlooked the fact on her J-Wiki profile that she had been treated as an aidoru.

The B-side to "teardrop" was "Wakaba no Illusion" (Illusion of the Young Leaves). It all sounds rather enigmatically poetic but the lyrics by Etsuko Kisugi（来生えつこ）simply relate the tale of a young student pining away for a boy without being able to approach him. As with "teardrop", the music for "Wakaba no Illusion" was supplied by Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）and then arranged by Motoki Funayama（船山基紀）. I'd say that there is a certain lushness to the arrangement that I felt was pretty common among a lot of aidoru tunes in the latter half of the 1980s.

The song was used for Fuji-TV's summer campaign in 1987 and as an insert song for Gokumi's own drama on the network, "Doukyuusei wa Juu-San Sai"（同級生は13歳...My Classmate is 13 Years Old）.

Kumiko Goto -- teardrop

 

Well, that's a name that I haven't heard in a long time, and that's a nickname, Gokumi（ゴクミ）, that I have also not heard in ages. 

Kumiko Goto（後藤久美子）is a Tokyo-born celebrity who has acted and sung and first appeared in commercials including the above for Kit Kat. She was merely a moppet back then starring with another popular young lady on the verge of stardom, Rie Miyazawa（宮沢りえ）. However, unlike Miyazawa, I only heard about Goto's star rising just through the 1980s and then following that, it was the fact that she married French racing driver Jean Alesi.

Gokumi was someone that I knew primarily through her commercials and photos in magazines so I was surprised that she also cut a few records. I was even more surprised that she recorded her first single a week shy of her 13th birthday! In March 1987, her debut single was "teardrop", a pretty dramatic-sounding song that had the songwriting powerhouses of lyricist Etsuko Kisugi（来生えつこ）and composer Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）behind it. Thinking initially that she'd been a fair bit older when she made this record, I thought that Goto didn't have the greatest voice in music but then realizing that she was barely a teenager, my feeling is that she didn't do too badly at all. The single rose to No. 3 on Oricon.

However, according to her J-Wiki profile, Goto didn't show much interest or affinity for singing so she focused more on her acting. She would release just one more single the following year and then an original album.