Miyu and Aiko’s Sakuranbo: Making Room for Someone Beside You

Cherries can be counted individually, but a pair joined together also comes readily to mind. Ai Otsuka’s Sakuranbo places a relationship within that small shape. Rather than explaining love as a grand destiny, it brings the feeling of being beside someone into view.

Miyu Kanou and Aiko Sumida sang the song together in episode six of MBN’s Korea–Japan King of Singers, broadcast on May 7, 2024. An original in which one singer describes a relationship between two people becomes a stage with two singers physically present. The pairing in the title meets the number of performers.

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AIKO SUMIDA × KANO MIYU — Sakuranbo | Korea–Japan King of Singers, Episode 6

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A Title That Speaks of Love on a Small Scale

Otsuka wrote and composed the original, released on December 17, 2003. The everyday word sakuranbo, meaning cherry, suggests that proving love need not require monumental language. Before journeys to extraordinary places or promises to change the world comes the wish to sit beside someone. Two cherries remain individually countable while being remembered as a joined shape. The image can be read as a relationship in which each person’s separate presence remains.

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[Clean subtitled version] AIKO SUMIDA & KANO MIYU — Sakuranbo | Korea–Japan King of Singers

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Attention Divided Between Two People

In a solo performance, we follow one voice while imagining the person addressed. In a duet, another person is already there before the audience. Miyu and Aiko sharing the song means our attention need not remain with one singer. Imagining the relationship in the title overlaps with watching the two performers on screen. Watching two performers gives the relationship in the song a visible place. Words of love sung by one person enter a span of time shared by two.

Returning to the Solo Original

After the duet, Otsuka’s original may bring the same title a little closer in a different way. Where two people had been visible, one voice remains again. A small distance opens between the single voice and the two-person relationship the song imagines. This is less a verdict on which version is better than the pleasure of meeting the same song through different vocal configurations. Miyu and Aiko’s Sakuranbo is worth remembering as a familiar love song given one more actual place beside it.