Entry #1: Koharu Kusumi

Working backwards from the July 15th Wikipedia births list the first person I am exploring is quite easy for me: Koharu Kusumi from the schoolgirl style J-pop group Morning Musume (Morning Princess) and now in the group Dream Morning Musume a group formed from ex-Morning Musume members now that they are women not girls.

Morning Musume is one of the group that epitomises what most people default to in their thoughts of Japanese music: lots of school girls jumping about singing quite high pitched and singing about love, happy times and boys.

I had not come across Dream Morning Musume before but seeing how popular the original band and it's individuals are/were in Japan it makes good marketing sense. A few of the girls have aged well with their voices, some sound the same, some even sound as if they now have futures in enka or anime voice artist worlds.

Here is the comedy song "Joshi Kashimashi Monogatari" in which the girls, introduced by the game-show-host-sounding man, sing about themselves and slander the other girls whilst defending themselves from the others repostes. Subtitled video

Other than being 10 years younger than me, it seems Koharu-san likes volleyball and blogging, so we have those two in common if nothing else. Currently in Japan other than signing she is an anime voice actress and advertises food and health products in various commercials.

Here she is playing the nee-san or older sister to a cute little japanese sprog. The product being a fluffy white crustless bread.

Explanation: the reason and the start.

It was my birthday this week gone. Nothing extraordinary about that, it has been my birthday on July the 15th for 29 years now.

Since a child I knew that this was St Swithin's day mainly due to the day being marked on most UK calendars. Being a curious child born to a family with Jewish and Christian heritage I was aware of the myth behind his cursing the day he died on with much rain should it rain on the 15th of July. What i was only recently aware of however, was the fact that I shared my birthday with David Miliband and also the late Ian Curtis. This was pointed out to my by two friends who shall remain nameless but thanked as it led me to the July the 15th Wikipedia page.

Here I found a list of all "notable" people who were either born or who died on July 15th as well as world events throughout history on that same day. Perusing briefly the rather extensive list I realised I did not recognise the majority of the names nor the events in question. I therefore decided the next day to explore this list over the course of the coming year.

This was partly so that I can find out more about the world in general. Also I hope to see if there are any threads connecting people throughout history born on the same day. This is due to me having been curious and interested in astrology and the like for many years. Either way the world has been fell of remarkable and not so remarkable people for many years and seen a lot throughout it's long lifespan and improving ones general knowledge is never a bad thing!

So come join me on my navel gazing journey one person / event at a time!

Daniel VandenBurg; Cancerian, Scientist and hobby writer