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T2 26 JANUARY2005 INTERVIEW9

JEREMYSUTTON-HIBBERT

i; From IdOlto + artist: Namle, I!muro.Belqw, left: Amuro Comeback ~rt'qrms Inthe MT\I.Vldeo Music Awards queen (astyeal' . of J-pop Japanese pop stars rise highand fade

quickly.But NamieAmuro'sreturn . I brokethe mould. Leo Lewis reports I

JAPANESE POP music is mercilessly now it seems impossible to associate efficient. It makes nobodies into sing- her with that "bubbly world". ers,it makes singers into idoru (idols), She says: "I came back to do a live and it makes millions of fans spend concert. Nobody had' done that be- billions of yen. Then, after a few years fore and I know my managers were of hysteria, it makes the idoru into worried. I stopped caring what people nobodies again. It does not make thought. I just wanted to sing again." exceptions. Amuro asserts that what has hap- But the world ofJ-Pop never bar- pened is a jump from idol to artist: "I gained for Namie Amuro, an obsti- write songs now, I plan concerts. nate beauty who has revealed that When I was younger, there was a the music machine has a loophole. In huge gap between what I wanted to the mid-1990s she was a classic idol: do and what I could do as an idol." bigger in Japan than any Western The murder of her mother, Emiko star and creator of a teenage look Taira, near her home on the sleepy that still dictates Tokyo fashions. island of Okinawa was a major news She was supposed to have fizzled evpnt With hen. h-"..1 :- 1 .. .. I yen years aiia;- at the wheel, Emiko was ago, stunning Japan by doing so knocked down by a car while strol- when pregnant at the age of 21.When ling with her husband near their her mother was brutally killed by home. Kenji then reversed over her Amuro's uncle, it seemed unlikely three times, leapt out of the vehicle that the starlet would surface again. an~ swung at her repeatedly with an Instead, she has undertaken the axe. Emiko's husband, Tatsunobu, I biggest Asian tour by a Japanese sing- tried to defend his wife against his i er and her latest album reached No 2 brother and was himself injured se- $ in the charts. She. is even optimistic verely in the frenzy. Kenji then leapt about a European tour. But Amuro's - into his car, drQve a few miles down Just one year before the killing, 'There was no time to woman's moment to bow out of what- turnaround breaks Japanese social the road and killed himself by drink- Emiko had published a bestselling ever she's been doing. patterns that go beyond music. She is ing a bottle of insecticide. book of her own,describingrepeated think. I had no choice More humiliatingly, while still a single working mother. She has Amuro collapsed on hearing the beatings by Amuro's natural father in decisions. I was not under the control of her J-Pop.bosses, endured a messy divorce with her news, and now finds it nearly impos- and the punishing series of jobs she Amuro and Sam, by now with a baby celebrity husband and a family tra- sible to refer to the matter or even vis- had held down to put her children doing What I wanted' son, were induced to appear in a gov- gedy. She has repeatedly defied her it her home town. through school before remarrying. ernment TV campaign urging young music company bosses. Disturbingly The main TV networks speculated This violent upheaval in Amuro's sories were copied by hundreds of Japanese to settle down and have chil- to the industry, her return to fame that Kenji's murderous rage arose life gave her a chance to think, and thousands of girls, who began calling dren. She laughs when it is pointed has been done without the media from advice that Emiko and Tatsuno~ that let her undermine the J-Pop re- themselves the "Amuraa". out that the Japanese birthrate has blitzing that J-Pop supremos have bu had given him to end a three-year gime. "I knew what I wanted to do. "It was a shock to see teenage fallen since her campaign. always assumed essential. relationship. The more lurid tabloids When I was snowed under with the Amuraas. The phenomenon was out Her divorce from Sam four years In her first interview with a non- hinted at a torrid affair between work of an idol, I didn't have time to . of my control. I don't think I did any- later has left Amuro again testing the Japanese paper, Amuro says: "Even Emiko and Kenji, big cash loans be- think. I never had the chance to con- thing special to make myself charis- limits of the Japanese system, this my closest friend said I was finished, tween the two, arguments over sider what or how I wanted to be." matic for these girls. I think I was a time as a single parent. Particularly but I think I may be a little different Aniuro's fortune and even mafia links At the age of 12Amuro was sing- mirror for what they wanted to look outrageous, she says, was the criti- from the others. My popularity to Emiko's old job as a bar hostess. ing to shoppers for her local super- . like and how they wanted to feel." cism by Japanese papers that equa- plunged three years ago and I didn't market's .promotional drive. A TV She is realistic about what was ted her comeback with the abandon- try to court publicity. It was a real station later paid her to dress in a going on behind the scenes and, even ment of her child. "During my grief, I challenge forcing myself to be consis- furry rabbit suit on a children's show. in the boardroom of Avex's Tokyo realised there was nothing I could do tent in not playing up to my fans." She was spotted by Masayuki Maki- offices, she describes the company as for my mother, but I did have a child. There is an atmosphere of melan- no, a music promoter who would a "machine". "People around me I began to think more like a mother choly about Amuro. When she had become her great mentor. He put called me an idol, so that's what I myself, and to become positive in my her first tattoo, it spawned a giant fad Amuro . in a teen group called was," Amuro says, describing a two- work again," she says. "I wish I could across Japan. Her latest piece of body Supermonkeys. While with this band year frenzy during which she ap- balance life as an artist and a mother, art is a sombre memorial to her moth- she was noticed by Tetsuya Komuro peared on a different TV show almost but sometimes when I am doing live er on her upper left arm. It all jars - who made Avex Japan's most every night "I enjoyed the opportuni- concerts, I have to ask people to help with the idoru tradition. Japanese star- powerful idol factory and was su- ties, but there was no time to think. I me in my other role." lets have always made their names by preme in the 1990s. He penned one had no choice in the decision to make Despite her return to fame, Amuro being irrepressibly genki - meaning hit for her in 1995,Body FeelsExit, myself available. I was not always lives quietly. She does not have a boy- energetic and vivacious. They are and Amuro at 17was suddenly bigger doing things I wanted to do." friend, rarely goes out in the evenings designed to be dumb, pretty and low- than Madonna in Japan. Her con- At the peak of her fame with more and seldom meets her fans. risk guests on TV shows. In the 1990s, certs sold out within ten minutes of than 20 million album sales, she sang Amuro signalled her comeback by Amuro played the role to perfection; tickets going on Bale. the theme tune to the Pokemon winning a huge singing show live on What followed defined the entire movies and starred in a corny high- TV. In front of one of Japan's biggest idol concept Her tanned skin, com- school film about cheating in exams. TV audiences, she wept when she 'Ihated singing. Every mon on Okinawa;suddenly became a It was her reaching that idol apex realised how much the public wanted word reminded me of must-have look for teenage girls that made her marriage to Sam, a her back. "You never know whether across Japan and self-tanning lotion dancer from the boyband TRF, all the the fans will be waiting for you. All in my mother and the sales exploded. Every detail of her more shocking to the Japanese. all, I'm happy, but we're groping in grief almost broke me' clothes, her make-up, and her acces- Marriage is still widely viewed as a the dark."