Exploring Adult Playfulness: The Evolution of “That’s What Idols Are!” in Kyoko Koizumi’s Music

Kyoko Koizumi’s Music” (Tatsumi Shuppan) has been published, which explains how Kyoko Koizumi’s talent gradually blossomed and awakened after starting out as an idol, based on her “music. The author is music critic and broadcaster Chappie Kato. The book traces Koizumi’s “changes” through 38 singles and 21 albums from her debut song “Watashi no 16-sai” in March 1982 to the end of the 1990s. We interviewed Chappie again. What is the idol Kyoko Koizumi?

Why did she cut her hair short?

She debuted when I was in my first year of high school. Her classmates included Akina Nakamori, Masaru Hayami, Hidemi Ishikawa, and Chiemi Hori, the so-called “1982 group of flowers. When she debuted, I had the impression that she was simply one of them. However, a year after her debut, for some reason, she cut off her hair, which had been cut like Seiko’s until then. It didn’t go with her bright outfit, which I thought was interesting.

What was the reason or meaning behind the sudden haircut?

When Koizumi-san first debuted, she tried her best to do what she was told to do, but she gradually became uncomfortable with the discrepancy between her idol self and her life-size self. I couldn’t relate at all to the image of a girl that the songs portrayed, and I felt like, ‘Oh no, girls don’t usually think like this. It was the same with my hair. So I ended up with a short cut, which I adored at the time. Koizumi-san often says, ‘I don’t remember the first year after my debut. She often says, ‘It wasn’t me. It was like, ‘I can’t do this anymore! I was just too tired to continue.

In a sense, the hair cut was Koizumi’s suggestion, “Why don’t you produce it in a more natural way? I think that was Koizumi’s suggestion. However, her agency was flexible in its response, saying, “What has been cut can no longer be helped. We decided to make the most of the haircut.