When I think of heroes we should elevate, my mind turns to someone like Mari Natsuki. Singer, actress, and dancer, she’s best known in the West as the voice of Yubaba and Zeniba in Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away, but in Japan, Mari is a mercurial cultural figure who exists to rock the boat in fashion, cinema, theater, and music. And when someone asks me for proof, I present this: 1989’s Fujin Club (婦人倶楽部). Visceral, provocative, and undeniably compelling, this album embodies the spirit of someone who deserves more champions elsewhere.
At first, Mari seemed the least likely person to become who she did. Born in Tokyo in 1952, her earliest connection to music came through her father, a salaryman, who constantly had music playing in the background. It was that early mix of blues, rock, and jazz that she fell in love with, and influences like Janis Joplin gave her a different way to connect to sound. Incredibly shy, Mari struggled to voice her dream of becoming a music teacher. Only after graduating high school in Ikebukuro did she pursue singing—apparently to her parents’ dismay.
Going by her birth name, Junko Nakajima, she signed with King Records in 1971 after a short stint as an actress, releasing two singles, “小さな恋” and “月光のエロス,” both of which flopped. Far from the full-throated singer she would later become, Junko was marketed as a sweet idol with a twee voice that suited the label’s vision of her.
The failure of her debut brought her to an ultimatum: one more try, and that was it. In the summer of 1972, she reinvented herself as Mari Natsuki—her new name literally meaning “summer” and “to decide.” Giving herself that summer to change her fate, she set out with a new direction.
As Mari Natsuki, in 1973 she released “絹の靴下” (Silk Stockings), a sexy, funky song that put her at the forefront of the kayōkyoku and enka scene. Far from the demure image she once projected, her bold new stage persona left Japanese audiences unsure of how to react. Within a year, three records were rushed out to capitalize on her success, and Mari appeared on nearly every TV screen. Then, as quickly as she rose, she fell—overworked and struggling to recover from hypochromic anemia.
In those leaner mid-’70s years, Mari powered through against the odds, performing for small audiences in Japan’s sleezier, down-scale cabaret scene, keeping her music dream alive. Rather than sell out or dilute her vivacious image, her music grew more steadfast—edgier, more provocative, unafraid to draw from French chanson, gritty rock, soul, and disco. Yet by the end of the decade, her career seemed to have petered out, full-length albums giving way to singles of diminishing impact.
What changed in the next decade was her reintroduction to acting. One fateful night, while performing at a nude revue show to make ends meet, Mari met a theatergoer who invited her to perform on stage. The thrill of acting forced her to nurture neglected talents—dancing and stagecraft. By the early ’80s, she emerged as a lead actress in countless TV and film roles, taking advantage of a dramatic range uniquely her own.
Her role in music shifted but remained significant. Her first post-wilderness album, 1982’s Mirror Ball, shed her girlish, impish aesthetic for a darker, more seductive sound—music fit for a grown woman who had lived. Three years later, 憧れのろくでなし (The Bastard I Admire) cemented this evolution. Though her audience had shrunk, it grew more fervent. Wilder and freer than before, Mari’s music had matured exponentially.
Her final ’80s album before leaving for America—frustrated with Japanese audiences who didn’t understand her work—would reveal the transformative artist we now recognize.
When I listen to 1986’s Fujin Club (婦人倶楽部), I hear the lineage of other outspoken women who share Mari’s spirit. The high drama of Edith Piaf and Grace Jones, the rock-tinged sensuality of Tina Turner, the leftfield delivery of countless uncredited Italo-disco songstresses, and the echoes of Nona Hendryx’s work with Material. At its core, Mari herself, aging like fine wine, finally arrives as un objet d’affection.
Before her ’90s comeback in Japan with Pizzicato Five’s Yasuharu Konishi, there was this album—already influential, its fingerprints clear in Konishi’s later work. On songs like “お天気マリさん” (Mari Weather) and “東京グルマン・ナイト” (Tokyo Gourmet Night), her nearly operatic range elevates experimental pop into something refined, something only she could have delivered. Fujin Club spoke to a darker, more modern take on chanson, transplanted through Japanese songcraft.
Working with producer Hisahiko Iida, you can hear the kaleidoscopic touches he brought to Mari Iijima now channeled into another Mari’s vision. Songs like “媚薬Body” and “歩いて10分煮込んで5分逆さに振っても15分” recall the sophisticated jazz-soul cool of King Creole and the Coconuts, their playful details tied together by Mari’s theatrical knack for embodying characters.
Elsewhere, mutant mambo numbers like “愛人マンボ” (Mistress Mambo) are as irreverent as they are danceable. The tropical-tinged “いきなり愛の溜まり場” (Suddenly, A Gathering Place of Love), a boogie-woogie duet with fellow multi-hyphenate Shigeru Izumiya, shows Mari equally forceful in other moods. The blues, too, she transforms, with the vocal tour de force “忘れじのブルース” (Unforgettable Blues). But it’s the final two tracks that truly set this album apart.
The title track “婦人倶楽部” refracts Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera through the modernizing confines of Heisei-era Japan, channeling women’s stifled voices in a rigid society into music that’s both old-world and forward-looking. In three minutes, Mari’s vocals contort and reform, embodying those who had no space of their own.
“マリア・マリ” (Maria Mari) closes the album with what feels like a zouk aria unlike anything else I’ve heard. A cover of Eduardo di Capua’s canzone masterpiece, it is bombastic, scholastic, and commanding. Mari half-sings, half-speak-sings, opening with floating melismas before shifting into philosophizing refrains, ending in an operatic rejoinder. On this multitudinous finale, Mari captures exactly who she needed to be as an artist. Fortunately for us, instead of a curtain call, this record signaled her rebirth—one we’re only now beginning to catch up with.