the star sings on the stage. Tickertape showers down on the songstress and shouts
arise from the floor, "Reiko-chan!!"
A singer of enka japanese ballads, Reiko Kano, 39, is the idol of the crowds that
frequent weekend shows in the small basement hall in Tsutenkaku Tower,
in Osaka's Shin-Sekai downtown district.
Dressed in kimono, Kano keeps singing with an illuminated miniature of Tsutenkaku
twinkling on her head. After her first song finishes, some of the audience approach
the stage and present her with flowers, food and even 10,000-yen notes.
Kano became popular nationwide only recently, after a TV drama-with a character
modeled on her-aired until March.
Reiko KanoTOP"Nobody laughs at the (miniature)Tsutenkaku on may head any more. People's reactions have completely changed, though I am still doing the same things I have done for years," she said.
She became a singer by accindet when she was 20 years old and working at an Osaka department store. Kano, whose only dream was to get married, lost her lover and shut herself up in her home.
Finally a friend came and took her to a bon dance festival, where an agency president called for a volunteer to sing a duet with a male singer. Her friend raised a hand but it was Kano, wearing conspicuous white clothing, who was chosen.
Attracted by Kano's unique voice, the executive
recruited her, and she soon quit her job at the
golf goods section in the department store.
She left her family in Nara Prefecture to live alone
in Osaka, to pursue her new career.
Cinderella story. She had to sing in bars every night to gain
recognition and a step up in the business,
seemingly in vain. All she saw there were
drunk men who demanded she sarve them alcohl,
completely different from the comparative
gentlemen she had seen at the department store.
Her income was so small that she could not pay
the rent on her apartment.
She felt that becoming a singer, which she had
expected to mend her broken heart, had instead
thrust her into a living hell "Thinking that the situation had only got worse, I was about to go crazy. I scratched the president on his face, saying “Send me back to the department store!”" Kano recalled.
By the time she got her first chance to sing in a song show on a Shin-Sekai stage at the age of 25, Kano was totally worn out by her hardships and decided it would be her last appearance as a singer. The downtown hall was filled with drunken laborers.
"Then, I felt sympathy with them for the first time. Having fallen to the very bottom, I thought they looked the same as I did," she said.
After she sang, one of the laborers handed her a 1,000-yen bill, which seemed to be the last money in his pocket, and said, "You should not give up."
That experience changed her mind. Two years later, in 1990, she released a song for her nationwide debut.
Having become the downtown idol, however, she feels she in struggling to bear the weight of the hopes and dreams of her fans. She said she cannot escape the fate of her unusual career to realize her dream of becoming an ordinary homemaker.
"That would be a betrayal for my fans. So, I have nowhere else to go," she said.
Toumei Bldg, 7F, 4-2-10, Kita-Kyuhouji-machi, Chuou-ku, Osaka
e-mail:emu@eos.ocn.ne.jp
Official Web Site:http://www.reiko-kanou.com