The Kick Inside - Japan First Issue Cassette

First issue Japanese cassette release for The Kick Inside, which uses the same cover photo as the first issue Japanese LP. Just like with many of the early 7" and LP releases, Japanese cassettes also had some really fantastic eye catching graphics.

The cassette case is a typical clear one, with MADE IN JAPAN molded into the front of the case. It might be a little difficult to see, but it's in the lower right-hand corner area.

The outer insert has some nice full colour photos of Kate by photographer Gered Mankowitz, with a combination of Japanese/English text throughout. The inner portion of the insert is fairly plain and boring in comparison. I believe those are music magazines being advertised on the left-hand side.

The cassette shell is a sort of beige in colour, but for these scans I decided to focus in on the label portion, mainly because they're sticker labels and not printed directly onto the cassette shell like you typically see with other releases. Because of this the Japanese letters are a bit on the smaller side, and I thought this would help to enlarge them a bit more.

For the second side I left a bit of the cassette edge in so that you can see JAPAN is molded directly into the shell - this stamp applies to both sides.

The other nice thing about this one is that it came with a Japanese/English text lyric sheet. It's a really long strip of folded paper, which I had to scan and chop into sections - otherwise you wouldn't be able to read any of it. That was always one of the nice things about Japanese releases - even though lyric sheets weren't always supplied in different formats in other countries, you could always count on getting them with any Japanese release.

Finding Japanese cassettes can be kind of on the scarce side these days. Not impossible - just more scarce. They're also not cheap.