This is Kobayashi Sachiko (小林幸子). Along with Hikawa Kiyoshi, she is one of the genre's top stars and has had a long and successful music career. Meeting her was somewhat like meeting one's new step mother. When I entered the dressing room, clouds of skin-tone powder were wafting towards her face, so she couldn't physically look at me. She apologized for her current appearance and said that all the people surrounding her dressing room chair had the daunting task of "making an old lady look beautiful again."

Her theatrical performance of her new single "The Fighting Flower of Edo" bordered on Kabuki as she struck dramatic poses on stage, snarling as she chopped through the air with makeshift karate moves. If you replaced her kimono with a dark dress and formed her hair into two opposing cones, she could have easily been Disney's Malecifent or Rita Repulsa from Power Rangers. I was told by my co-workers that Kobayashi-san has a photographic memory and that she knows the names of everyone who works with her, down to the lowliest tech person. We all followed her out to her limo as she left, because she was the biggest star from our company at the TV show filming. As the car was pulling away she rolled down the window and leaned out. She asked one of the many Japanese bouncers around the car dispelling fans, "What do the say in English?" "Goodbye" someone said. "Oh, right. Goodbye!!!" she said waving at me. And with that she was gone.