Ayu-Vogue Network

Ayu FAQ

Have ques­tions per­tain­ing to the site? Try the Site FAQs.

Does Ayu write her own music? How come I never see her name in the credits?

Ayu always writes her lyrics, but she doesn’t always write the music. When she does com­pose, she uses the name CREA, thus why you don’t see “music by Ayumi Hamasaki” writ­ten anywhere.

Is it true that Ayu’s deaf?

As of Decem­ber 2007, Ayu is per­ma­nently deaf in her left ear. She famously first lost hear­ing dur­ing her 2001 Dome Tour, and she revealed on her fan club’s blog in Jan­u­ary 2008 that a doctor’s visit con­firmed the dam­age to be irre­versible. The story instantly became inter­na­tional news, being picked up by every­one from AP to BBC.

Her right ear still func­tions and she has promised fans to give them her all until she is phys­i­cally unable to pro­duce music.

What’s up with “Great­ful Days” and “Mir­ror­cle World”?

Some peo­ple believe that “Great­ful Days” is meant to be a play on words (she’s grate­ful for this great day! Get it?) while oth­ers think it’s a sim­ple spelling mis­take that stuck. I’ll admit that I’m more par­tial to the spelling mis­take solu­tion, though the recent “Mir­ror­cle World” has me won­der­ing if it really was intentional.

The song “Mir­ror­cle World” is an extended ver­sion of “Mir­ror”, the intro track off of her GUILTY album. The new title gives a nod to the orig­i­nal “Mir­ror” while acknowl­edg­ing the grander scale on which the song is now explored.

Did Ayu have plas­tic surgery?

I used to have a more… polit­i­cally cor­rect answer here, but since own­ing this site I have become increas­ingly both­ered by this ques­tion for two reasons:

1. This ques­tion is almost always asked in the form of an accu­sa­tion, thus assum­ing that any form of cos­metic surgery is hor­ri­ble and detri­men­tal to a person’s abil­ity to func­tion as a human being.
2. Those that are quick to fire this accu­sa­tion do so while show­ing a woe­ful lack of under­stand­ing of makeup, Pho­to­shop, and/or the female body in gen­eral. Makeup can make the eyes look sig­nif­i­cantly larger, a push-up bra can do won­ders (espe­cially if her arm is posi­tioned just right to add some extra lift), and in this busi­ness to sell per­fec­tion, Pho­to­shop will take care of the rest.

I know this may come as a shock to some of you, but plas­tic surgery doesn’t actu­ally make you look like plas­tic. The rea­son she looks like a doll on some­thing like the cover glitter/fated isn’t because she must have had a lot of surgery, it’s because she was wear­ing heavy makeup while under very spe­cific light­ing, and the image was severely treated in Photoshop.

Although it’s no secret sub­tle fea­tures like Ayu’s smile have improved through her rise to fame, the fact of the mat­ter is that if a star of her cal­iber were to opt for surgery, she’d get, you know, good surgery; it’d look sub­tle and nat­ural. It’s not like she’s Frankenstein.

No offi­cial state­ment has been issued regard­ing plas­tic surgery, though the fact that some peo­ple believe she needs one is just absurd.

“Ayumi Hamasaki” or “Hamasaki Ayumi”?

Tra­di­tion­ally, it is proper in Japan­ese cul­ture to intro­duce some­one with his or her fam­ily name first (Hamasaki Ayumi). Use of one’s sur­name is reserved for close friends and fam­ily, though a lot of pop artists dis­card this tra­di­tion and credit them­selves in the west­ern style–some even appoint them­selves nick­names. Ayu obvi­ously has adopted a nick­name, though she has been cred­ited on her albums in both forms: when her name is writ­ten in Japan­ese script, it is writ­ten “Hamasaki Ayumi” while her well-branded roman­ized name is always writ­ten “ayumi hamasaki”.

Okay, I was look­ing through the Memo­r­ial address book­let and noticed the por­trait of Ayu lay­ing on a mir­ror with “0630” writ­ten in lip­stick beside her. Is that significant?

More than likely yes, though there has been no offi­cial state­ment con­firm­ing the sig­nif­i­cance. Some­thing of an urban leg­end has sur­faced thanks to that image (which can be seen here); some peo­ple believe that is the date of her estranged father’s death. The lyrics of the title track cer­tainly sound like they could have been writ­ten for such an occasion.

Say­onara — You have gone to the place where we can never meet again
I can’t accept the cold­ness of the eter­nal part­ing
I wish I could have heard from you
That I had cer­tainly been loved by you
Only once, even if it had been a lie
          (trans­la­tion from Divine Ayu)

Fur­ther spec­u­la­tions were fueled by her tear­ful per­for­mance of the song dur­ing her 2004–2005 Arena Tour, which was also the first tour that did not include a per­for­mance of “A Song for XX”, a song she has said was writ­ten for her father and per­formed at every con­cert in hopes that he would one day see it. Although there is noth­ing offi­cial to prove or dis­prove this story, it is the most pop­u­lar the­ory sur­round­ing the image.

Who is the “dear­est per­son” to whom GUILTY is dedicated?

Sev­eral months after the album’s release, Ayu revealed to her fan club that one of her clos­est friends passed away shortly before the album’s release. She still has not iden­ti­fied the per­son out­side of refer­ring to her as her sis­ter (Ayu has no siblings).

How can I con­tact Ayu?

The only way to write fan mail to Ayu is through her offi­cial fan club Team Ayu. The catch? You have to have a Japan­ese mail­ing address to join. Maybe some­day Avex will fig­ure out a way to con­nect inter­na­tional fans, but for now we can only hope she sees our praises on sites and mes­sage boards.