Yukari Yamamoto -- Komugi Iro no Omoide（小麦色の想い出）

 

Coincidentally enough, a rather certain parallel is popping up here on Tuesday. I just completed an article for a B-side to an aidoru's A-side about an hour ago, and now I'm providing the reverse through this A-side to a B-side for an aidoru whose article I took care of back last year.

Yukari Yamamoto（山本由香利）, in contrast to Seiko Matsuda（松田聖子）, didn't have a very long aidoru career. It lasted between 1975 and 1978 with 6 singles and 1 album under her belt, and then she went into a much longer and more successful time as a thespian.

Last May, I wrote about that B-side, "Mou Sukoshi Jikan wo Kudasai"（もう少し時間を下さい）, and now here in February, I will now complete the circle with her A-side "Komugi Iro no Omoide" (Golden Brown Memories) which was released in September 1975. To be honest, listening to both songs on the opposite sides of the vinyl, I initially thought I'd made a mistake somewhere since the two of them sounded alike. "Komugi Iro no Omoide" has that same wistful arrangement with strings and that harpsichord-sounding instrument which seems to have accompanied every innocent kayo looking for that wistfulness during the 1970s. Not surprisingly, as with "Mou Sukoshi Jikan wo Kudasai", the A-side was created by lyricist Haruo Hayashi（林春生）and composer Masaaki Hirao（平尾昌晃）with Ryo Kawakami（川上了）handling the arrangement.

I think the only thing that brought me out of my momentary existential crisis vis-à-vis the two songs was that "Komugi Iro no Omoide" is the one with the trumpet in the intro. Very nice sentimental tunes if similar. 

Yukari Yamamoto -- Mou Sukoshi Jikan wo Kudasai（もう少し時間を下さい）

There's that taste of summer out there. It's sunny and warm but we Canadians all still have to do that social distancing that we've been performing for the past couple of months. Incidentally, my congratulations to Japan for having its restrictions lifted; I really hope that any second wave of COVID-19 there is minimal.

It was an hour's walk all around including 5 minutes within the establishment itself, but for the first time in over 2 months, I actually set foot in a bricks-and-mortar shop that didn't sell food or medicine. My target was an office supplies store not too far from my home where I needed to pick up a printer toner cartridge and some printer paper. Didn't particularly go all starry-eyed when I was inside while remarking "So, this is what a store looks like! It's bigger on the inside than on the outside. It's a TARDIS!". I simply picked up, purchased and went home.

Let's start this final full week of May on "Kayo Kyoku Plus" with a 1970s aidoru who didn't stay on that career track for very long. I present Yukari Yamamoto（山本由香利）from the city of Kobe and Oita Prefecture who made her debut in September 1975 after tutelage from the late songwriter Masaaki Hirao（平尾昌晃）with "Komugi Iro no Omoide"（小麦色の思い出...Golden Brown Memories）.

Actually, though, the song for this article is the B-side for that single, "Mou Sukoshi Jikan wo Kudasai" (A Little More of Your Time). It's a 1970s tune so wistful that it should have adorned the soundtrack for a shojo anime during that decade. Written by Haruo Hayashi（林春生）and composed by Hirao himself, the silky strings and those certain keyboards smack the nerves just right for that relaxing nostalgia flavour.

Between 1975 and 1978, Yamamoto released 6 singles and one album, and at the time, she had been groomed to be that teenybopper singer, but it looks like sometime down the line, she decided that she was better suited for acting. Since then she has appeared in numerous movies and TV shows.