Taeko Onuki’s 1980 album leaves the imagined city’s outline uncertain.
A map of urban music that includes only verifiable streets may omit the places people actually wish to reach. Taeko Onuki’s 1980 ROMANTIQUE moves, in its titles, from CARNAVAL to Shinkiro no Machi, a city of mirage. The span between public festivity and visual uncertainty is worth noticing. A mirage is not necessarily a cartographer’s mistake. It can remind us that a city also exists as an object of imagination. A record need not supply a real address before it can concern itself with distance or belonging.
The official production information identifies arranging contributions by Ryuichi Sakamoto, Kazuhiko Kato, and Nobuyuki Shimizu, with responsibilities attached to particular songs. That collaborative structure prevents romance from remaining merely a mood floating above the cover. Imagination needs organization: people have to shape work into something that can be performed, recorded, and sequenced. The indeterminacy permitted by a title and the precision required by a credit can operate together. Knowing who helped make a dream does not revoke its permission to remain a dream.
ROMANTIQUE also presents a useful boundary question for a City Pop atlas. Must a city always appear modern, brightly lit, and available for consumption? Mirage suggests a gap between seeing and arriving; carnival suggests a gathering. Placing their names at opposite ends of a record permits a reading concerned with distance and assembly. It need not establish the songwriter’s private intentions. It can simply draw attention to the possibility that urban imagination includes destinations that cannot be guaranteed and congregations that exist only temporarily, as well as permanent illuminated architecture.
The album can therefore be treated as an open drawing rather than a sonic identity document for one European city. A borrowed title, distinct arranging responsibilities, and an ordered group of songs make a particular work; the listener’s geographical associations remain free to change. A map filled in too completely leaves nowhere for imagination to stand. Onuki’s record offers a position between a definite release year and an indefinite urban shape. We need abandon neither history nor romance, and romance need not pass an address-verification check.