Hiromi Iwasaki -- Shi-Teki-Kuu-Kan（私・的・空・間）, Part 2

 

Well, in another case of "Ach, my memory's going!", I completely forgot that I'd promised to have Part 2 of Hiromi Iwasaki's（岩崎宏美）"Shi-Teki-Kuu-Kan" (Personal Space) up by a few nights ago on Monday following Part 1 the previous Monday. I would have done it last night but Tom Cruise and Hayley Atwell kept me busy at their movie. Allow to make amends by taking care of things now.

Part 2 will logically go into Side B of the original LP although I'm basing this article on the 2007 issue of "Shi-Teki-Kuu-Kan" with its extra tracks. To start off, here is "Kotozuke" (ことづけ...Sending Word) which is a gently rolling pop ballad of a remembrance over a past romance. Although there doesn't seem to be any direct mention of sending messages to the old flame, Hiromi is singing that all's well with her and she hopes that the same is true of her former paramour. Mieko Arima（有馬三恵子）was the lyricist with Koji Tamaki（玉置浩二）composing and Mitsuo Hagita（萩田光雄）arranging.

Just seeing the title "Morning Breeze" had me assuming City Pop and/or J-AOR or a Febreeze spray scent. It's once again Tamaki and Hagita on composition and arrangement duties but the interesting thing is that the City Pop feeling tends to undulate throughout the song; at one point, it feels like a straight pop tune but then the chorus kinda kicks things into City Pop mode, and then the coda suddenly shifts into a different key, perhaps showing a bit of uncertainty in the romance department. This time, it's Yasushi Akimoto（秋元康）providing the lyrics of a couple enjoying the early hours rising from bed and then having breakfast. 

"Ikigai"（生きがい...Raison D'etre） has that undercurrent rhythm which reminds me of "Joanna" by Kool & The Gang, but otherwise, it's a wholly different animal. The rotation of songwriters continues here with lyricist Arima back with arranger Hagita but this time it's prolific Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）handling the melody. There's something of the Douglas Sirk melodrama imbued in "Ikigai" but if I've understood Arima's lyrics correctly, it may deal with a man and a woman...perhaps colleagues in the same company...who are sharing some secret personal time after hours but cannot afford to reveal their tryst.

The final track on the original Side B is "Higure no Martini"（日暮れのマティーニ...Martinis at Sunset） has Arima and Tsutsumi working together again but the arranger is Keiichi Oku（奥慶一）. Sounding like an elegant ballad from the 1970s powered by a piano, the heroine here is sharing that titular martini with a new friend and she suddenly has this deja vu. Maybe love has come around once again? 

As I mentioned in Part 1, there are five bonus tracks on the 2007 issue of "Shi-Teki-Kuu-Kan". I covered one of them already there. Another one that I will talk about here is "Waiting" which was the B-side to "Suteki na Kimochi"（素敵な気持ち）, Iwasaki's 30th single that I covered some years ago (and you can find the link to that article in the third paragraph from the top of Part 1. It's another grand contemporary pop ballad that the singer could do in her sleep with Machiko Ryu（竜真知子）behind the lyrics and Shinji Kawahara（川原伸司）as the composer under his pseudonym of Natsumi Hirai（平井夏美）.

The other bonus track is "Yoake no Tenshi-tachi"（夜明けの天使たち...Sunrise Angels） and it's another B-side, this time for Iwasaki's 31st single "Shinjuu no Period"（真珠のピリオド...Pearl Period） that was actually described as the first track of "Shi-Teki-Kuu-Kan" in Part 1. Only two minutes and forty-nine seconds long, it ends rather abruptly but it's still pretty sweet and snazzy with some of that disco/City Pop and I'll always love those horns. Tsutsumi was behind the melody with Takashi Matsumoto（松本隆）handling the lyrics. For both bonus tracks here, Hagita took care of the arrangement.

Well, again, sorry for the delayed article and hope you enjoy both parts.

Mari Mizutani -- Haru Yasumi（春休み）

Happiness for me vis-à-vis my music-listening hobby is coming across an enjoyable kayo for the first time, and it doesn't matter what the genre. Pop, enka, Mood Kayo, City Pop or aidoru...they're all good.

Definitely within the huge area of 1980s female aidoru, there were so many going through the show business mill that I figure that I can keep on going with "Kayo Kyoku Plus" for another several years but still keep discovering teenybopper idols from that decade for the first time. I did find another one for the first time in the personage of Mari Mizutani（水谷麻里）, who had her run as an aidoru between 1986 and 1988.

Hailing from Aichi Prefecture, according to her J-Wiki file, the teenager entered the 1986 Miss Hair Cologne Image Girl Contest and won it all out of the 54,129 participants who had taken part, apparently by charming the socks off the judges who had gotten a kick from her imitation of a crow, although a few of them stated that it sounded more like a chicken. I can only imagine how the other 54,128 girls must have thought at being beaten by someone who could speak avian (although I'm sure that there were other factors involved).

In any case, Mizutani debuted in March 1986 with "Nijuu-Ichi Seiki made Aishite"（21世紀まで愛して...Love Me Until The 21st Century） which did decently by peaking at No. 16. However, in the first year of her singing career, she was criticized for having a voice that was pretty devoid of any personality, but into 1987 and her 4th single, it looks like things stabilized for her there. And listening to her 8th and final single from March 1988, "Haru Yasumi" (Spring Vacation), she doesn't sound bad at all. Very nicely aidoru.

Also helping out is that "Haru Yasumi" has got some jazzy snazziness thanks to composer Shinji Kawahara（川原伸司）under his pen name of Natsumi Hirai（平井夏美）. I was instantly reminded of some of the swing put into the songs of Kazuhiro Nishimatsu（西松一博）and Harumi Ohzora（大空はるみ）in that same decade and even one certain song by the unit microstar in 2011. Kenzo Saeki（サエキけんぞう）provided the lyrics of a girl looking forward to a "My Little Pony"-like time of a spring break. Incidentally, I was listening to the rendition of "Haru Yasumi" in the video immediately above while typing this down and hearing a lot of yells of encouragement as if the fans had wanted to put some more juice into Mizutani's performance. Sure enough, when I took a look at the video, the lass wasn't exactly kicking up a storm in terms of choreography.

Her devotion to show business started waning after 8 singles and 4 albums, and near the end of her time, it was reported that she was in a relationship with manga artist Hisashi Eguchi（江口寿史）. Not long after the release of "Haru Yasumi" which only got as high as No. 80, she stopped her singing activities and just continued with her radio DJ duties and commercials before marrying Eguchi in 1990 and retiring from the geinokai altogether.

Seiko Matsuda -- Ruriiro no Chikyuu （瑠璃色の地球）

I borrowed Seiko Matsuda's（松田聖子）13th album, "Supreme" from a university friend back in the mid-1980s, and I think it was still the time when Seiko-chan was away from the spotlight. And of course at that time, it wasn't nearly as easy to find out about the latest news about Japanese aidoru as it is now so I was wondering whether the Queen Aidoru of the early 80s was going to make her retirement permanent.

The one song that I remembered from that album was the final track, "Ruriiro no Chikyuu" (The Bright Blue Earth). Takashi Matsumoto's（松本隆）lyrics were all about love of humanity and about what a wonderful blue ball we all live on (let's try to remember this now in the era of Brexit, ISIS and potential President Trump). Still, I couldn't quite help thinking that this ballad with all of the heartrending strings and delicate piano could have been the swan song for Seiko-chan.

Shinji Kawahara（川原伸司）was the composer behind the music here although he used his pen name of Natsumi Hirai（平井夏美）for "Ruriiro no Chikyuu". With the grand scale of the melody, I think this would have been one of the final tunes at a Seiko concert with the proverbial darkened stage and one lonely spotlight on Seiko. In keeping with the feeling that this could have been made into the goodbye song for the lass, "Ruriiro no Chikyuu" would have been to Seiko-chan as "Sayonara no Mukou Gawa"（さよならの向う側）was to the premier aidoru of the previous decade, Momoe Yamaguchi（山口百恵）. An epic pop ballad for the young woman who was no longer an aidoru and was on the cusp of motherhood. The audience would have been going through the collective box of tissues like a hot knife through butter.

Incidentally, the above video has Seiko and daughter Sayaka Kanda（神田沙也加）doing a duet version of "Ruriiro no Chikyuu". According to J-Wiki, the ballad had been recorded during Seiko's pregnancy. Sayaka has mentioned that whenever she listens to this particular song, she gets this rather odd feeling. In any case, it is still the song that struck me as being the coda to Seiko's pure aidoru period.

Yosui Inoue -- Shonen Jidai （少年時代）

Yosui Inoue's（井上陽水） biggest hit in his 44-year-long career, "Shonen Jidai" (Childhood Days) is also his most heartwarming song. Every time I hear it, the song just brings images of summer days and young boys chasing butterflies in the countryside. If that sounds sappy....well, it is. One can squeeze a couple of litres of the old sentimentalism from the song with Inoue's tender vocals and the strings. And if there's one thing the Japanese love, it's the old days, no matter which generation.

Inoue's drinking buddy, the late manga artist Fujio A. Fujiko（藤子不二雄A）, had asked him to create a song at around the same time that Fujiko's 1978 creation of the same name was to be made into a motion picture. He even hummed a part of the melody that he wanted incorporated to help Inoue out, although according to J-Wiki, it was far from an easy task for the singer-songwriter. Strangely enough, the song had been intended to be sung by Yoko Oginome（荻野目洋子） as a B-side to her 1990 single, "Gallery", but with "Shonen Jidai" the movie coming out in the same year and the powers-that-be recognizing the quality of the song, Inoue sang it himself as the theme song for that movie.

At the time of its release in September 1990 though, Inoue's 28th single didn't exactly light up the charts as it stalled around No. 20. However, the following year when "Shonen Jidai" was then used for a Sony Handycam commercial, the song got a big boost, peaking at No. 4. It didn't hurt either when it was also used as the ending theme for a domino-effect segment on a TBS entertainment show called "Gimme a Break". By the end of 1991, it managed to become the 25th-ranked song of the year and continued to hang on to the end of 1992, becoming the 46th-ranked song. It was very much a slow-and-steady progression as "Shonen Jidai" finally hit the million barrier in 1997.

Shinji Kawahara（川原伸司）, under one of his pen names as Natsumi Hirai, helped out in the composition, and during recording, fellow singer-songwriter Takao Kisugi（来生たかお） was on the piano....as he is in the video just above. And in the years since, "Shonen Jidai" has been covered by everyone from Hiromi Iwasaki（岩崎宏美）to Sing Like Talking's Chikuzen Sato（佐藤竹善） to Hikaru Utada（宇多田ヒカル）.

The above is Utada's cover.

And this is the trailer for the movie, "Shonen Jidai".