Years ago I picked up a couple of J-pop collections for various Japanese commercials and TV Show Theme songs (called, curiously enough, TV-CF Songbooks) primarily because it featured songs by Kome Kome Club, a group that I was just getting into at the time, as well as a few others. As I’d mentioned in an earlier post, this was the same collection that turned me onto artists like Ruriko Kuboh and MISATO, with popular tunes that I hadn’t heard before.
But there was this one Country-Western-style song that I loved ‘cause it sounded just plain FUN! Fast-paced and sung in this oriental sing-song style, it was one of those that immediately brings a smile to your face! Though I couldn’t read the japanese kanji at the time, I was to later find out it was a song called “Akai Hana” performed by none other that the precious Miyazawa Rie herself!
My very first exposure to Ms. Miyazawa came from a strange place- Long, long ago when I was still working at a one-hour photolab, someone came in with what I thought was a curious subject: he’d taken photos of a photo book (this was before color copying was easily accessible, I guess), and these pictures were pages a very pretty girl in the nude, sitting in a field of flowers. “This guy must really like this girl to be taking pictures OF the book!” is all I thought at the time.
A few years later a friend had told me about some shashinshuu he’d asked his parents to get him from Japan, and I was surprised to see that it was none other than that book the guy had copied! I found out her name was Miyazawa Rie, and her nude book SANTA FE (shot by master photographer Kishin Shinoyama) was a notorious hit in Japan because it came in the midst of her clean idol image!
Moving forward a few more years, and I’m now heavily into j-pop and all things Japanese, and it was around this time I picked up those two TV CM compilations. Funny, listening to the “Akai Hana” song, not once did it occur to me that this was the same girl in that photobook. In fact, because of the way the song was sung, my mental image of the singer was more like a seventies type of singer like Asada Miyoko or Agnes Chan!
I got my hands on a copy of the 1993 (or so) Kouhaku, and it was here that I saw Rie Miyazawa for the very first time performing, doing a David Bowie rip-off song called “Game” (based on the Bowie/Lennon/Alomar song “Fame”) sitting scrubbing her back in a tub of soapy suds(!). Though I associated this semi-nude girl singing with the girl in the aforementioned shashinshuu, I still didn’t make the connection to the Country song I’d loved on the CM Compilation.
It was only after one day when I had this nostalgic urge to dig out those old CM compilations did my Miyazawa discovery come to light!
So, I’m sitting there, listening to those tunes on the CD, and when Akai Hana came on, I thought, “Wow, I forgot about this song! This song is SO much FUN! Say, who sings this?” Looking through the booklet, I was properly astounded to find that the singer was none other than Rie Miyazawa herself!!!! WOW!
From then, she was firmly established in my mind, and after a heartwarming appearance on SMAPxSMAP, my love for her only grew! My friend got ahold of two classic albums of hers (Chepop and MU, the former featuring the aforementioned song GAME) and made me copies which I played over and over again that summer! While all the songs were catchy and fun (“I say Hi” is an exceptional fave!), there will never be a song of hers to equal “Akai Hana” for me. That song just gets better and better over the years!
