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The story
Ogawa Noriko, who has worked as both an actor and a singer, became the subject of buzz on 5ch’s Geinou/Sports Breaking News+ board. Comments poured in about her career — playing Yuka, the second daughter of Detective Yasuura, in “Hagure Keiji Junjouha,” her debut as a singer at 14, and the fact that she kept working even while attending Waseda University — along with the revelation that she married TV director Akio Yoshida. The thread ranged widely, from nostalgic comments about her child-actress days in “Ai no Arashi,” to trivia about a PC Engine game based on her, to a tangent about how Waseda and Keio graduates love bringing up their alma mater.
Do you remember Ogawa Noriko? The actor who played Yuka, second daughter of Detective Yasuura (played by Makoto Fujita), in “Hagure Keiji Junjouha.” Or the singer with the quiet stage presence. Both were essential faces that defined her in the late 1980s.
But Ogawa’s career can’t be summed up as simply “a wholesome idol who started as a child actor.” She began working at 6, landed a breakout role at 13, and became the singer she’d dreamed of being at 14. While juggling a long-running drama series and her music career, she went on to attend Waseda University, and later branched out into stage acting and voice work.
Ogawa joined a theater troupe at age 6 and began her career as a child actor. Her turning point came with the 1986 Tokai TV drama “Ai no Arashi” (“Storm of Love”), in which she played the childhood version of the heroine, Hikaru, and drew widespread attention for the role.
Source: trilltrill.jp / Original article here
What people said
That was a fun read
By the way, they're currently up to Season 5 — I'd love it if they kept going all the way to Season 18 lol
For me, the PC Engine connection is so strong that Ogawa Noriko's face and that game are basically fused together in my head.
Shigemi. Tanimoto Shigemi.
No・Ri・Ko
Weirdly, national university grads don't do that as much.
And these days, students at private universities who actually got in through real entrance exams are the minority — it's mostly dumb kids now.
Back in her day it was a genuinely elite school to get into, though.
Aren't there plenty of Kyoto University people who brag about it too?
Isn't she just saying her college life was fun?
Yeah, now that you mention it, I see it.
For me she also overlaps a little with Yuko Oshima.
75 years old…
So there's more than a 20-year age gap between them…
Rather than the "main type" everyone always brings up, like Rie Miyazawa or Gokumi (nickname for Kumiko Goto), she was more the cute girl you'd actually run into at school — kind of like a slightly older Mayumi Hasegawa.
The School of Social Sciences was treated as a second-division (evening) program back then
— not exactly elite either.
Even as a second-division Social Sciences program, by the later years
Waseda's Shakagaku was on par with or above Meiji's School of Political Science and Economics.
She was going by Tanimoto Shigemi at the time:
Misako Tanaka, also in "Ai no Arashi," was cute too
Ogawa Noriko (as Tanimoto Shigemi) played the child version of Misako Tanaka's character.
Brings back memories.
She was great at playing that slightly cheeky young-lady-of-means role.
I want to watch "Ai no Arashi" again.
And "Natsu no Arashi" too.
Hiroyuki Watanabe, who's since passed away, was in both of them.
She's ridiculously cute!
Background and Talking Points
Ogawa Noriko is a former child actor known for her roles in the 1980s dramas “Ai no Arashi” and “Hagure Keiji Junjouha,” working at the time under the stage name Tanimoto Shigemi. The thread took an entertaining detour into whether Waseda and Keio graduates tend to bring up their alma mater a lot, but it’s worth noting that Waseda’s School of Social Sciences at the time (roughly the old evening-division equivalent) operated under very different admissions standards than it does today, so simple comparisons deserve some caution. Some commenters were also surprised by the age gap with her reported husband, director Akio Yoshida, though the actual details of their relationship were never confirmed within the thread itself. Most of the responses were nostalgic reflections on the old dramas and her child-actor days — but one thing easy to miss beneath the thread’s warm, nostalgic tone is that the gravure/photo-book culture surrounding child actors back then is exactly the kind of thing that would likely draw scrutiny today.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Geinou/Sports Breaking News+) thread “A 14-Year-Old’s Voice Still Lingers: Ogawa Noriko’s Waseda Years, and the Marriage That Followed.”
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