Ayu-Vogue Network

About Ayu

Truth be told, Ayumi Hamasaki might not look like much at first gloss. At just over five feet tall, she’s excep­tion­ally petite. She hails from mod­est roots in Fukuoka where she was raised by a sin­gle mother and grand­mother. She did her time mod­el­ing to raise money for her fam­ily and took gigs in b-movies when she dropped out of high school. Even so, by 2008 she was cel­e­brat­ing her tenth anniver­sary as a pop icon for the ages.

Since her debut sin­gle poker face hit stores in 1998, Ayumi Hamasaki has lead one of J-pop’s most pro­lific careers. With the help of mega-producer Max Mat­suura, she has sold mil­lions of her self-penned albums and sin­gles, mak­ing her the highest-selling female and solo artist in Japan’s his­tory. She has bro­ken almost every sales record there is to break, and by 2004 she had taken home the industry’s high­est honor a record three times.

A noto­ri­ous worka­holic, Ayumi Hamasaki — now widely known as “Ayu” — has spent the last decade metic­u­lously groom­ing her brand. She has lent her name to dozens of high-profile endorse­ments like Pana­sonic and KOSE cos­met­ics, and her evo­lu­tion from teen trend­set­ter to grown-up fash­ion god­dess can be seen in the hun­dreds of fash­ion pic­to­ri­als she’s shot over the years. All of this is done while she con­tin­u­ously records crit­i­cally and pop­u­larly acclaimed albums. When not in the stu­dio, Ayu spends her time per­son­ally bring­ing her music to her fans in unpar­al­leled pro­duc­tions that tour through­out Asia.

How­ever, for all its grandeur, Ayu’s musi­cal career will for­ever be char­ac­ter­ized as giv­ing a voice to a gen­er­a­tion. All of her self-penned lyrics are deeply per­sonal, famously artic­u­lat­ing her lonely ado­les­cence and later explor­ing her ever-expanding world view. Even recently in 2007, when she expe­ri­enced both great fame — a record-breaking sec­ond sin­gle col­lec­tion — and per­sonal tragedy — per­ma­nent deaf­ness in her left ear and the death of a dear friend — she poured her heart and soul into her song­writ­ing, cre­at­ing a lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence for fans that was inti­mate, heart­felt, and wholly unique.

Her fame may have earned her the casual title “Japan­ese Madonna,” but Ayu is an artist all her own. TIME Mag­a­zine was on to some­thing in 2002: espe­cially now in 2008, it’s safe to say that Ayumi Hamasaki ‘s the true “Empress of Pop.”

“I don’t set goals. Like, that’s what I want to be doing how­ever many years from now. I do what I love to do at the moment. If I wake up tomor­row and decide I want to dance, that’s what I’d do. Or design clothes. I think I’d throw myself into what­ever I’m doing now. It’s not about aban­don­ing what I was doing before, or giv­ing up. It’s about know­ing that if I die tomor­row, I lived the way I wanted to.”
              — Ayumi Hamasaki, qtd. in TIME Mag­a­zine “Empress of Pop”