Hitomi Tohyama places futurist vocabulary beside the language of intimacy.
Robots are ordinarily good at being assigned tasks. Sexy is a less straightforward specification for an instruction manual. Hitomi Tohyama’s fourth album, SEXY ROBOT, released in 1983, brings those words into collision. They make an arresting popular title and suggest a question more durable than a retro machine illustration: how do people describe themselves when technological vocabulary enters the language of intimacy? There is no need to declare the whole album a science-fiction concept work. The title’s small incompatibility is already worth considering on its own.
TRY TO SAY and SLOW LOVE, names present in the official track list, introduce two conditions that are not particularly mechanical: hesitation and slowness. This is a reading of names rather than a supplementary story supplied to the lyrics. A person may want to speak without managing to do so; a relationship may decline to optimize its speed. Those possibilities rub against the precision suggested by a robot. The record’s vocabulary permits futurity and human untidiness to coexist without first requiring that the latter be sent away for repairs.
CATHY also belongs to the album. Columbia documents Night Tempo’s rearrangement of it for a 2024 Tohyama project. The difference between the original record and a later version matters. A new treatment can offer another perspective without retrospectively turning the entire 1983 album into the same thing. Changes in technology affect how recordings are encountered, reused, and named. For a record whose title invokes a robot, that subsequent life is especially apt, although the title did not have to predict it for the connection to be useful.
On a City Pop map, SEXY ROBOT deserves to retain the slight comedy and unease of its name instead of being polished into generic night scenery. A machine can readily become period decoration; a person is more than an imagined consumer of the future. Trying to speak, permitting a slower pace, and recognizing different versions all belong to specific relationships. The album places a hard-edged noun beside softer, uncertain words. The future need not become smoother in order to become something more interesting to discuss.