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Famous Japanese: Pink Lady

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Pink Lady History (in Japanese)

By the way, which one's Pink?

(or, The Day I Interviewed Pink Lady)

by Tim Young

February 26, 1999, 1:05 p.m. -- I'm on the train into central Tokyo, looking over the list of questions. Will these questions be interesting enough? Do I have enough to fill an hour? Are they going to be nice to me? I wonder, a bit nervously. I've never interviewed anyone famous before, let alone having to do so in a foreign language. While they were only moderately successful in the States, and I knew little about them at the time they were popular, in Japan, Pink Lady was a major pop music phenomenon in the late 1970s.

Several weeks ago I had a short article on Pink Lady published in Tokyo Classified, one of the magazines I write for. The editor of Eye-Ai, another magazine I'm involved with, suggested to me that short articles I wrote forTC could be the stepping stones to larger articles on the same topics for Eye-Ai. So I said, maybe not completely seriously, "Well, maybe I could interview Pink Lady."

"Sure," she replied. "We can just call them up and arrange it."

Arranging it took a bit longer than anticipated, but here I finally am, on my way in to meet them. I will have to meet them separately, because they weren't able to match up their schedules. Considering the locations I'm to meet them at are near each other, and about 90 minutes away from my home, I'm relieved that at least I was able to meet them on the same day.

My first stop will be Nemoto Mitsuyo (Mii-chan)'s manager's office in Akasaka at 3:00; I will then meet Masuda Keiko (Kei-chan) at the lounge on the 17th floor of the Teikoku Hotel in Hibiya. This should be interesting....

2:15 -- I've reached Akasaka early, which is good, because I misunderstand which stairway I should take out of the subway station, and thus have a terrible time figuring out where I am on the map. Eventually I figure it out and find the building, but I'm still a bit early. I stop at a coffee shop and have some grapefruit juice.

Then it suddenly occurs to me to rewrite my questions in Japanese, so I won't have to try to translate them on the spot. It's a good idea, because I need the dictionary for some of them, but I don't have enough time to do them all.

2:53--I arrive a bit early for the interview. It's a swanky office (or maybe apartment?) building, one of those where you have to call the room and have them flip a switch to unlock the door so you can get in. Having done that, I take the elevator up to the office, and ring the bell.

The door is opened by Nemoto's manager, a short, fiftyish woman with big glasses, and a hairdo that makes her head appear particularly round. I bow and say hello. Then I pull out my business card, she produces hers, and we go through the standard ritual exchange.

"Isn't there also someone from Riverfield with you?" she asks, referring to the company that owns Eye-Ai.

"No, there isn't," I reply, realizing that she probably wasn't expecting a non-Japanese to show up.

"Then the person doing the interview is..."

"...me."

"OK. Come on in."

She directs me into a large, beautiful Western-style living room, then leaves to tell Mii-chan that I've arrived. I settle in on the sofa, putting my bag and coat there, and then pull out my tape recorder and microphone, and set them up on the glass coffee table in front of me.

Soon, appearing from the adjoining dining room, comes the manager, followed by Mii-chan. Her hair is long and light brown, and she's a bit shorter than I am. She's dressed for relaxation, wearing no makeup, which is why they told Eye-Ai they would give me a professionally-taken photo rather than having me take photos.

The three of us sit down, and they ask me some questions about Eye-Ai, like what kind of articles have appeared in it previously. Mii-chan asks about the circulation; I don't know, but fortunately her manager has a fax from them that includes that information. "Rather low, isn't it?" Mii-chan comments. Great, I think, are they going to decide not to bother with Eye-Ai because it's too small a fish? Fortunately not; after a few minutes, Mii-chan has her bearings and she's ready to answer some questions.

3:20 -- I'm glad I brought a tape recorder. It's good form for an interviewer anyway, but it's especially good when your subject is speaking Japanese and you can only understand about half of what she's saying. I can get the general drift, but the particulars will have to wait until I can sit down with the tape and a dictionary.

A woman wearing a face mask -- apparently she either has a cold or the dreaded Japanese cedar pollen allergy--enters and serves us coffee in cups on saucers. It doesn't occur to me that, sitting there on the same glass table with my mike, setting down the cups is going to make an incredible noise on my recording. If it had, I probably wouldn't have touched the coffee.

We're talking about the way Pink Lady's career was totally controlled by their production company, about how she dealt with being famous and recognized in public ("You just have to get used to it!" she smiles), about their American TV series. I notice that she often refers to Mii-chan and Kei-chan as "characters," so I ask her, "Do you think of Mii-chan and Nemoto Mitsuyo as separate people?" She thinks for a second. "That's a good question!" she finally exclaims, laughing. I feel glad to have been on the ball enough to catch that. It turns out to be one of the more interesting questions I ask her.

3:35 -- Hmm. I've used up my questions, but I've still got time left. I decide I have enough material, so I thank her for the interview. She and her manager laugh. "Is that all?" she asks.

"Do you have anything you want to say?" I ask hopefully. She responds with something about how she'd like to help Japanese musicians to succeed overseas. Then, just for something to say, I point to the large figurine of cartoon character Cutey Honey that stands conspicuously on top of the TV in the corner, and ask, "Do you like Cutey Honey?"

I'm glad I asked. "Actually, I'm also in a band called Animetal Lady," she explains. "We do heavy metal versions of cartoon theme songs. One of them is the Cutey Honey theme, and at one of our concerts, a fan gave me that." When I ask if they've released any CDs, she asks her manager to fetch one, and also a promotional tape, the latter of which they give me. Great, I get some free music in the deal! The manager also hands me two photos of Mii-chan; I'm supposed to choose one to use in Eye-Ai. I don't particularly like either one of them. I choose the one with the better facial expression, even though the photo seems a bit overexposed.

I mention I'm going to see Kei-chan, her partner in Pink Lady, later this afternoon. "Oh, really?" she asks. I ask her if she seldom sees Kei-chan now. "Oh, no, we still meet sometimes for dinner," she tells me. Well, that makes sense. They were friends several years before they were Pink Lady.

Nemoto asks me some questions about myself: How long I've been in Japan ("Ten years!?"), what I found interesting about Japan, where I'm originally from. To my surprise, she's heard of Iowa. Then she starts speaking English! Not incredibly fluent, but better than I had expected. Wish I'd known that when we started the interview!

Pretty soon it's been an hour; I shake her hand and sincerely tell her it's been a pleasure meeting her.

4:30 -- The Imperial Hotel, the site of my interview with Masuda Keiko (Kei-chan), is easily found from Hibiya subway station. The kind of place catering to foreign businessmen on company expense accounts, it has a large, classy front lobby and lots of English-speaking staff.

One thing that it, oddly, doesn't seem to have, at least not on the lower two floors, is a restroom. I've be tramping around here for 15 minutes and still haven't found one. I suspect it's hiding inside the coffee shop on the first floor, but I don't want to go in there and order an overpriced drink just so I can use the facilities. Instead I find one in the lobby of the office building next door.

4:45 -- Still in the office building lobby, slouching in a too-low upholstered chair, I go over my questions, scribbling in the question about separating the stage identity from the real one; I'll ask Kei-chan that, too.

We're not scheduled for another 45 minutes, but maybe I'd better get going anyway. I'm better off being early.

5:30 -- I've been in the Rainbow Lounge, on the top floor of the hotel, for about half an hour. When I arrived and gave my name (Eye-Ai made reservations), I was led to a booth far back in the corner. Good; I was worried about noise from other customers picking up on the tape. I've pulled my tape recorder and notebook out of my bag, and I've been watching the orange ball of the sun set between two skyscrapers.

I look over my shoulder and see the hostess leading two women towards my booth. The room is dimly lit and it takes me a second to decide which is the manager and which is Kei-chan. The manager is a short, older woman with glasses, her hair in a bun. Masuda has long black hair that flows beautifully to her shoulders. She's dressed in black slacks and a white shirt with a black vest. And, never mind that she's 41, she's possibly the most beautiful woman I've ever seen. This should be fun.

I greet them. "Do you speak Japanese?" Kei-chan asks, in English. Somehow this throws me. I respond in Japanese that I do, and hand her my business card. She introduces her manager in English, and gently motions that I should give the manager a business card as well. As I do, I greet her in English. Kei-chan giggles. Whoops, the manager doesn't speak a word of English. I stomp on the linguistic clutch and try to shift back into Japanese.

We sit down at the table; I'm between the two of them. The manager requests a chair rather than use the booth seat. "Would you like to order something?" I ask, as I was told to do, since Eye-Ai is picking up the tab. "Yes, of course," Masuda responds. I wonder if I've asked a stupid question.

We order our drinks, and then I briefly explain about what kind of magazine Eye-Ai is. Kei-chan's manager was supposedly the strict one, but I'm asked much less about it than I was by Mii-chan. I mention that I've just come from interviewing Nemoto. "I know," she responds, sort of cooly, although I don't think she meant it to sound that way. I pick up my tape recorder and put the huge microphone on the table. Masuda gasps, "It's too big! It must be very old. They make much smaller microphones now."

"Actually, I just bought this not last year," I reply, feeling a little embarrassed. "I probably should get a smaller one, though." Then I turn on the tape recorder and start the interview.

I begin by asking what she's been doing recently. She says she's been appearing in TV dramas and a movie. Her manager hands me a promo flyer about the movie. We proceed on with a couple of other questions.

Then it occurs to me: I didn't check the on-off switch on the microphone. It would be just my luck that the switch got pushed to "off" being jostled around in my bag. "Just a second," I tell her. "I want to check something."

I look at the microphone switch. It says "Off".

"Oh, no! The microphone was off!" I say, feeling like I've probably just screwed up the whole interview. I could only understand about half of what she said in her all-Japanese answer; there's no way I'm going to be able to reconstruct it convincingly for the article.

Masuda, her eyes big and beautiful, says only, "Wow!"

I check the tape. Sure enough, blank. I apologize profusely. "I should get a different microphone!" I say, trying to put a humorous spin on this near-disaster (glad I didn't discover this after she left!). I tell her to forget about the first two questions and just re-answer the last one, but she's incredibly nice about it and does her best to repeat her answers to all three. She has my undying gratitude now.

We continue on with my other questions. Her manager, who supposedly was insistent on attending the interview, disappears for about twenty minutes.

The sun has gone down, and the room is now so dark that I have to squint to see her gorgeous face. So I squint. I ask her what kind of music she likes. Like Nemoto, she mentions Diana Ross. "Recently I like jazz," she says, and I immediately visualize her as fitting in perfectly in a smoky jazz club, listening to the kind of jazz that was big in the 60s, with lots of mellow sax solos and vibraphone. I can almost imagine her with a cigarette, but I hope she doesn't smoke. "One kind of music I could never appreciate is rock," she goes on. Well, she'd probably dislike the majority of my record collection then. Oh well.

6:30 -- The bewitching hour has arrived, and Kei-chan's coach is going to turn into a pumpkin soon if she doesn't hurry. I recall Eye-Ai's secretary telling me that Masuda had another engagement to get to and had to finish the interview promptly. Sure enough, her manager has been repeatedly glancing at her watch the past couple of minutes. Masuda, however, is still answering my last question in a relaxed tone, oblivious to the clock.

Snap! My tape, which I didn't bother to rewind after discovering that the mike wasn't on, runs out. "Did you have any more questions?" Kei-chan asks. "Well, it's time to go," I point out. "Oh, it is?" she says, looking sort of surprised that the hour went by so quickly. If time flies when you're having fun, then maybe that means she enjoyed talking to me.

We all stand up. "It's been a pleasure talking to you," I tell her, understating the situation inestimably. We shake hands. "Yes, I hope we'll meet again someday." "Oh, so do I," I respond. More understatment.

Her manager starts for the door. Before I lose Masuda's attention, I point out to her the URL for my web site on my business card. She seems interested in it, though I'm not sure she has Internet access. A hurried goodbye and she's gone.

I pay the bill, making sure to keep the receipt so I can be reimbursed, and head for the elevator. I notice her manager waiting outside the lounge; maybe Kei-chan's in the restroom. I wonder where she's going from here, and why this site was chosen for our interview in the first place.

I take the elevator down to the lobby and head home. I wonder if I ever will meet either member of Pink Lady again. I hope so.

Pink Lady Interview