eri chiemi

[David Hopkins]

Actually, I think Eri Chiemi, as one of the early (and later,too) fifties 
Sannin Musume, made a lot of popular movies (Nikkatsu?) with the other two 
"girls," Yukimura Izumi, and of course, the brilliant Misora Hibari, who is 
arguably the greatest star of postwar Japanese popular music. A quick search 
turned up 538 matches for Eri Chiemi, the first 20 of which seemed to have 
no connection at all.

She's pretty much out of my area of expertise in pop music, but as befits 
the era, there is a very wide sampling of world styles by many different 
singers. Indeed, there are plenty of precedents for this, too. After all, 
the whole concept of pop music is an import, really. Awaya Noriko's 
appropriation of (commercial not country) blues is interesting (did you know 
that at first it was katakanized as buruzu and later changed to burusu?) and 
another important and movie-related example is Dick Mine's 
Hawaiian-influenced pop. How about Ri Ko Ran (Yamaguchi Yoshiko) or Watanabe 
Hamako or Hattori Tomiko (just to name a few) who sang vaguely, or even 
actually, Chinese-themed songs?

A singer as major as Eri Chiemi should have plenty of stuff available on CD. 


There was another group of three girls clled the Sanshoku Musume popular a 
little later, with Ito Yukari, Nakao Mie, and the third was....? I'm stuck. 
Is it possible that Eri Chiemi was in both??? The first two are terrific 
singers and their Japanese versions of American pop songs like "(I Wanna Be) 
Johnny's Girl" are really great! Highly collectible, too, in good 
condition.

Now let me get back to filing all these records....

David Hopkins


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From: 	Birgit Kellner
Sent: 	Sunday, May 14, 2000 4:57 AM
To: 	KineJapan
Subject: 	slightly off-topic: eri chiemi

This has in fact got nothing to do with Japanese cinema, but since
issues of entertainment culture continue to pop up on KineJapan, here's
a music-related question. I'd be glad to also get information on what
internet forums might be more appropriate for such questions.

I am looking for biographical and discographical information about the
singer Eri Chiemi, a singer not only of Jazz and other standards (enka),
but also of what I would describe as, in musical terms, jazzified
versions of tunes from other cultures, sung, in a manner of speaking, in
a "pastiche" style: The lyrics to these tunes are partly in Japanese,
partly in Portuguese, English or for instance Turkish; sometimes, they
merely translate non-Japanese original lyrics; at other times, they also
explain them within the tune itself (to an assumed Japanese audience),
comment upon them, and so on. One of my favourite tunes of hers is a
quite dazzling Turkish-style (in musical terms) tune whose lyrics tell,
partly in Japanese, partly in Turkish (or so it sounds), a Turkish
legend, interspersed with spoken Japanese narration explaining the
context of the legend to the listener, while directly addressing the
audience in a manner that I would actually expect from public lectures
on travels to exotic destinations ("minasan, torukugo gozonji
deshou"...).

In a nutshell, these tunes could serve as an interesting case-study in
terms of how non-Japanese musical styles and lyrics are self-consciously
presented as such to an assumed Japanese audience *within* the same
medium (music), and the singer herself would be interesting to look at
in terms of the variety of tunes that she released - just wondering
whether there are more singers or groups of the same kind, by other
singers, and whether contemporary entertainment studies have taken note
of them.

Birgit Kellner