[JAPAN] Asami Kobayashi Tribute - Fashion Model & Singer

This video introduces you to Ms. Asami Kobayashi, one of Japan's most popular fashion models and singers in the 1960s-1990s. Asami was born in Koriyama City, Fukushima prefecture. Her father was an engineer who designs traffic lights for the Japanese National Railways, etc.; he ran a company. Asami's mother was a beautician who runs her own beauty salon. Asami has a sister who is seven years older than her. Her father was a tall (6'2"), handsome man who had a lot of hobbies, one of which was riding large motorcycles that he collected since college time. Her parents were busy with work, and her older sister who was very pretty got married at age 20, so Asami grew up as a single child. She spent most of her time reading books, playing piano, and going to the movies with her friends. In July 1966, Asami went to see The Beatles, a popular British band, perform in Tokyo; she was with her friends and completely mesmerized. Since then, she wanted to become a singer herself. In her third year of junior high school, she was scouted as a fashion model for a girls' magazine when she went to see a film in Tokyo. She modeled a few times, and in 1970, she was offered a job to be in a TV CM for Lion Toothpaste. In 1972, when Asami became 18, she made her singing debut with her "Hatsukoi no Melody ("The First Love Melody")" from Toshiba Records. Her contemporaries are Megumi Asaoka and Junya Igarashi. "Hatsukoi no Melody" was ranked 18th on the Oricon chart, but it was the opposite of the innocent, innocent smile that many idols were expected to have at the time. The appearance of Kobayashi singing languidly was reflected in a strange way, and it left a dark impression. By 1976, she released about one single a year, but her sales did not grow, and her company's policy was that she was unsuitable as an idol singer. Asami became popular in the late 1970s after she was used in commercials for Shiseido and Parco, a retail company. Especially in the 1977 Parco CM "Indecent and Decadent", her thin body and sophisticated, mature looks were accepted. In 1984, as a singer for the first time in eight years, Asami released a cover of Gazebo's "I Like Chopin", the "Rain wa Chopin no Sora", which became a big hit. However, at that time, the Japan Broadcasting Co. (NHK) saw the phrase "relaxation is a drug" in the lyrics as a problem and banned the song from being broadcast. On the other hand, Asami did well in Nippon Broadcasting System. With a tall, slender body with long legs, Asami made quite an impression on TV. In 1991, after 17 years of dating Akitomo Tanabe, the president of her agency, Tanabe Agency, Asami married and retired from her entertainment career. For 25 years, she focused on her children and family, and she hasn't been in the public eye at all. In July 2016, she reappeared on the cover of the Sept issue of the fashion magazine and restarted her career. Best of luck to Asami! Many thanks for watching...; please give a massive thumbs up! My videos are sort of related to each other, so enjoy others as well. Peace out... to all the beautiful souls out there in the world. Cheers!