Utabiko is the third album of Ichiko Aoba (青葉市子) published in 2012. Like most of her albums, the title Utabiko (うたびこ) is also a word coined by her, perhaps a mixture of Uta, or a song, and -biko (Hiko) which implies echo.
- IMPERIAL SMOKE TOWN
- かなしいゆめをみたら（If You Have a Sad Dream）
- 私の盗人（Thief of Me）
- 裸足の庭（Barefoot Garden ）
- あなたのかざり（Your Ornament）
- 3びきのくま（Three Bears）
- 奇跡はいつでも（A Miracle Is Always）
- ひかりのふるさと（Home of Light）
All of the songs are written by Ichiko Aoba, except (6) by Taeko Ohtaki (大貫妙子) and Ryuichi Sakamoto (坂本龍一). Ichiko often states the respect for Taeko Ohtaki.
When you listen to the album, you may find a deep impact of the tsunami attacking a large part of Japan, and the accident of the Fukushima atomic power station following it on March 2011; the impact adds a serious and strained tone to the songs in the third album, as most evident in (1) "Imperial Smoke Town."
Certainly she was or have been moved from the accident, stronger than the common people in Japan who were of course also shocked by it. The YouTube channel shown below is of Ichiko Aoba herself, and even now (July 2018) it contains only two videos uploaded in a few days after the disaster. IchikoAoba - YouTube
Although in the third album she refrained from expressing too outright, she sometimes played more direct and protesting songs soon after the accident of the atomic power station. I introduce one of them in another article.
Aoba Ichiko / The Song of "Within the District" - ふつうの人はCDなんてもう買わなくなった
With listening the music again, now I retrospectively find that the accident made Ichiko turn from a somewhat autistic attitude to a more open and universal one. A tragic happening often makes a person deeper; it may be a fundamental paradox of us humans.
