Gemini & Dodo/Ritsuko Abe & Naoya Makoto -- Sapporo City Light（札幌City Light）

 

This Mood Kayo trio could very well come under the title of the most obscure group from that genre because as much as I tried, I couldn't find anything about Gemini & Dodo（ジェミニ&ドド）, not even the names of the twin sisters and the man involved. All I could speculate was that the three of them could be natives of Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost main island.

It's a pity though since their perhaps one-and-only 1986 single "Sapporo City Light" is a pretty solid contemporary Mood Kayo. According to piero 1040, the YouTube uploader of the video, the song was a smash hit in Sapporo itself and given some more promotion, perhaps it could have even gone nationwide. With lyrics by Keisuke Kisaragi（きさらぎ圭介）, "Sapporo City Light" is all about love in the big city and bright lights of Hokkaido's capital city, and probably centered in the nighttime district of Susukino. For those Junretsu（純烈）fans, the melody might sound quite familiar since it was composed by Kohei Miyuki（幸耕平）who's handled a number of the current group's songs.

A cover version was recorded under the title of "Sapporo City Light '87" the following year. This time, it was a conventional duet with singer Ritsuko Abe（安倍里葎子）and actor Naoya Makoto（誠直也）.

Yukio Hashi & Ritsuko Abe -- Kon'ya wa Hanasanai（今夜は離さない）

 

Yup, I finally saw the moment of Season 3 of "Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai"（かぐや様は告らせたい）last week, and though I heard that there was some controversy regarding the scene, I thought that most viewers reacted with varying levels of satisfaction. And as it turned out, there was a reason for that blue heart balloon to hide things. However, as strange as it may be, I'm not going to be using this particular scene as the analogy here for this song although I will be using the franchise.

So, let's imagine a slightly older Kaguya and Miyuki in 1980s Tokyo out in some swanky nightclub in Ginza or Akasaka. They are actually still engaged in their battle of wits and romance with the former turning on some ice while the latter is blowing the torch during a literal dance on the floor. That would describe what is happening lyrically in the July 1983 "Kon'ya wa Hanasanai" (I Won't Let You Go Tonight), a Mood Kayo duet between Yukio Hashi（橋幸夫）and kayo singer Ritsuko Abe（安倍里葎子）.

From my feeling of its arrangement by Tatsuya Nango（南郷達也）, I'm gathering that Mood Kayo during the high-flying 1980s was fun, footloose and fancy-free with a touch of Latin. Kensuke Fujinami*（藤波研介）was the lyricist while the melody was composed by Kohei Miyuki（幸耕平）, the same fellow who would come up with similarly happy tunes for the group Junretsu（純烈）many years later.

According to J-Wiki, Ritsuko Abe hails from Sapporo, Hokkaido and though she has been singing professionally since 1970, it was with "Kon'ya wa Hanasanai" that she finally got some of those accolades for a hit tune. Although she had thought that she could now go it alone and actually left the recording company behind the song, Abe apparently found the need to do the duets once more, so she worked with other singers such as Hiroki Matsukata（松方弘樹）. In fact, at one point, she was even called the Queen of Duets.

For Abe, "Kon'ya wa Hanasanai" was her 24th single while for Hashi, the song would be his 149th single. Over 300,000 records were sold and it earned a Japan Cable Award.

*I couldn't find definitive proof that the lyricist's first name is indeed Kensuke despite giving an educated guess. Even Jisho.org doesn't have the name in its files.