いしだ あゆみ
I first fell in love with beautiful actress Ishida Ayumi when I watched her in the 1998 jdorama "Kita No Kuni Kara” . Then, by chance, watching an old Kouhaku from around 1994 or so, I saw Ayumi performing a song called “Blue Light Yokohama”, and was taken aback by her stage presence as well as the catchy tune she was singing! At the time I assumed she was an actress who decided to release an album (as many actors and actresses do!) as a one-shot venture, rather than the other way around! Little did I know just how famous Ayumi and Blue Light Yokohama was!
Actress turned Singer, Singer turned Actress, or simply a well rounded celebrity capable of both? In any case, it was watching the country drama with that hummable Masashi Sada song where I totally flipped for Ayumi. Her character Reiko was supposed to be the “townie” wife of “country” husband played by Kunie Tanaka, and she would always be seen in the prettiest dresses and always looked so damn classy. Too bad she was the deserter of the kids! Bad Ayu!
I remember thinking that this japanese actress reminded me a lot of Audrey Hepburn somehow, and when I described Ayumi as the Nihon equivalent of Holly Golightly to a friend, she immediately could see what I was talking about!
In fact, whenever she saw Ayumi Ishida on a show or clip in later years, she would always say, “Hey, that Audrey Hepburn actress you like was on the other night!”
Gorgeous Ayu!
That “Audrey Hepburn” actress was more than “liked” by me, and for a while there, it became sort of an obsession to get any footage of Ayumi I could find! I mean, I would rent movies with Ayumi Ishida in them, even though they didn’t have subtitles! What I would do is isolate all the scenes with Ayumi in them, and dub them onto my own VHS copy. That way, I could re-watch all her scenes and revel in her beauty over and over again, and heck with the storyline! I ended up filling tapes and tapes of these Ayumi-biased edited movies, invaluable to me, and completely worthless to anyone else!
Still, it must be said that throughout this entire time, I still didn’t really know that Ayumi had been any more famous than what I knew of her then, with occasional movies and an appearance or two on music shows. Not that I really thought about it, but I kind of had this vague idea she came out onto the scene around 1980 or so. The oldest movie I rented was from I think 1981, and even then I thought it was a pretty old film. The original series of Kita No Kuni Kara (another series I rented without subs) also came out around this time, so I really thought this was her "breakout" period. Silly Me!
My first inkling that there was more history to Ayumi than I thought was when someone listed all the performances of singers on the NHK Kouhaku. She’s been on the show way more times than I thought, and was surprised to see she had appeared in as many as 10(!) Kouhakus over the years, and had to ask myself, “How LONG has Ayumi Ishida been around?!”
Although I now knew she'd been around since at least the mid seventies, the definitive answer came when some Japanese Special (can’t remember if it was the Kouhaku or the Recordo Taisho, though) put together classic performance montages throughout the show featuring artists like Hibari Misora and Amachi Mari, and there amidst the barrage of songs, I saw a clip of Ayumi Ishida performing “Blue Light Yokohama” in...1969! SUGOI!
MAN, I’d always thought Ayumi was as pretty as a gal could get, and was totally unprepared for how gorgeous a 20 year old version of her could be…She was just flat out incredible! My friend called me up, and exclaimed, “Did you see that Audrey Hepburn lady you like on the show? She just looked amazing!”, To which I gushingly replied, “HELL YEAH!” I went on to gush about how she looked like Jessica Claus from that Rankin/Bass special “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” come to life! And from me, that’s a compliment!
Jessica and Ayumi?
With the advent of YOUTUBE, I’m now able to watch all of Ayumi’s classic performances at my fingertips, and I have to say, with each new television appearance or music clip I see, she is still reminding me that she's one of the most attractive women ever! IMHO, She belongs right up there with Audrey Hepburn and Jaclyn Smith...she just exudes total class! Poring over the mass of Ayumi clips, I can feel that old obsession coming back again!
Hmmm, time to break out those old edited tapes!