I.D Essay Book - When I was a Child Star (Part 3)

Sorry it took so long, moved back from Japan and have been settling in etc. Here's the next part!


My First Job was to Sing

Two weeks later I sang in a Asahi Television studio.

The job was a song for a commercial and was unexpectedly a solo part. There were two versions, a 30 second one and a 15 second one. First, I had to learn the tune right there in that room with the composer playing the melody on the piano. Then I had to sing into the microphone. During the lessons at Komadori we sang the ‘Doe-ray-me Song’ altogether but other than that we had not had any specific sessions for singing. And it had only been two weeks since that first lesson which had been comparable to a hurricane passing through. I’m being completely honest when I say I was just a completely normal child singing.

This was the system we should probably name ‘the Komadori method’. With no relation to how long one had been enrolled at the school we were sent off to many different places, this was a truly physical style - getting in the practice as one is mastering the work itself. Actually, it would be closer to say that the reason for this was that the number of members in the troupe was so small, even if everyone was working there still weren’t enough people. There were times were one would be rushing to and from many different places in a single day.

Anyway, we were lucky not to have to yearn for ‘work’ but from the beginning were able to just naturally enter the ‘industry’ in the enjoyable, enthusiastic way of a club activity. The seasoned professionals, those kids who were much sought after, no matter who it was they somehow never lost that air of being ‘normal’. That quality was one of the good things about being a ‘Komadori child’ but I think that it must have been tough for the adults around because thanks to that same personality trait we would be as mischievous as usual without even a thought to the fact we were in a studio.

From this time, I became a working elementary student, concentrating mainly on songs for commercials, narrations, and the dubbing of Western movies. I never had any perception that I was ‘working’ but gradually I found my own way of tackling ‘acting’ and as my own perceptions towards it were born and I became a sort of pro.

The first experiments with using actual children to perform in the field of dubbing Western movies were just starting back then. Up until that point it was the norm in dubbing for adults to also perform children’s roles.

From way back I’ve liked this sort of work best. Even now, more than singing, more than anime, more than narrations, more than being on stage, this is the genre that I have done the most with and am most used to, so in the dubbing room I am strangely at ease.

The process of dubbing is to stand with the script in one hand while looking at both the script and the film on a screen, listening to the original audio in one ear, acting in front of a microphone. There’s a lot of ‘while doing such and such’ attached to this and until you get used to it it’s very difficult.

It was difficult for me too but until we got used to it, us Komadori kids would have our teacher next to us through all of the above I’ve described, and the method we used was that whenever it was time to say our lines the teacher would press our backs. On top of this because we couldn’t reach the microphones we had to stand on fruit boxes or telephone books. From the perspective of the adults around us, we must have looked like one of those mechanical dolls which speaks when you press a button on its back. It must have looked pretty funny. I don’t remember exactly when my back stopped being pressed and I became able to do it by myself. When I realised , my teacher had already disappeared from my side.

Computer technology at the time hadn’t progressed to the point it is at now, so when one made a mistake on one line most of the time it was necessary to re-record from the beginning of the scene before. In other words, if you made a mistake you were causing a lot of trouble to your fellow performers. This meant that there was an atmosphere of nervousness, we knew we were playing for keeps. I really liked seeing the craftsmanship and the skills of the adult actors which were being used right there before my very eyes.

Comparing that era to the present, technology really has made leaps and bounds. Even if one makes a mistake you can now re-do just that one section with ease. Although this is truly convenient and I’m glad of it, it feels as if because of that ease the sense of guilt about making a mistake has disappeared somewhat. I got a kick out of that nervousness of working in that live broadcast-like system.

The lessons at Komadori which took place every Saturday were as noisy as being at a zoo. But the time I spent with my friends who were all from different places and of different ages was stimulating, a little different from every day life, and I really enjoyed it. However, because of this reason, although it was the place where I learnt a substantial amount about acting, to the last it felt like I was going there to have fun. From elementary school, after classes and on days off, I was often spending time mixing with professionals and I think this had a big effect on me.

When one asks why I was doing a lot of voice work, it was that the policy of Komadori at that time was “We will not let you miss school’, and this was an iron law. Inevitably it meant that I couldn’t do television dramas and plays etc. where one would be off school for long periods of time. It was thanks to this rule that I was able to work and study at the same time from the third grade of elementary school till the fourth year of university.

On top of that, at the time I didn’t really have an interest in television work. Why didn’t I want to appear on TV? I really hated the “I saw you on TV!” and “Get that famous person’s autograph for me!” I once appeared on a variety show with Sanma-san [a famous Japanese comedian] and the reaction was incredible. I was singled out at school as ‘the girl who appeared with Sanma’. For me this was truly stressful and I thought ‘I’m never going to appear on TV ever again!’ That a girl who joined a theatre group out of her own wishes didn’t want to stand out from the crowd…what a selfish statement.