Chihiro was born in Miyazaki-pref. October 30, 1980. Miyazaki-pref is
located in Kyushu island where in the western part of Japan, 2 hours from
Tokyo by airplane.
Chihiro grew up, in music loving family. Her mother likes American pop
groups like The Carpenters and Carol King very much.
Chihiro listened these songs when she was a child.
With such a rich musical environment during her young years, she naturally
was drawn from her childhood to an interest in music. When she was in
junior high school to high school, she became interested in song writing.
During high school, Chihiro became a fan of
Jewel
who, encouraged Chiriro
to become a singer and song writer.
Chihiro started writing and performing songs at that time.
In later high school, she had an audition for a professional music production.
In 1999, after the high school graduation in 1999 Chihiro moved to Tokyo,
and began work as a professional singer and song writer.
During 1999, she wrote approximately 60 tunes in a six-month period.
In February 2000,she made her debut with her first song "Shine".
The second song "Gekkou" ("the moonlight" in English), was selected in TV
drama theme song, began to attract notice, and immediately, was in the hit
chart.
Then in November 2000, her third song "Cage" was released, and in
February 2001, the fourth song "Memai" (Dizziness in English) cam out.
Finally on March 7,2001 her long awaited first CD album "Insomnia" was
released. Immediately this CD album hit a record sales, with 1,300,000 CDs
were sold in two months.
Prior to its release, no one expected sales to exceed 1,000,000 copies,
because Chihiro's existing fans did not exceed that number. Late analysis of
this sales record, showed that the majority of fans who had purchased
"Insomnia" were not Chihiro's existing fans. The majority who purchased the
new CD were people who were captivated by Chihiro Onitsuka's beautiful
song and voice from radio and TV airplay. Once she released her first CD,
they promptly snapped it up.
These new fans span a wide generation of ages, ranging from ten-year-olds
to those in their sixties and even seventies. The one thing they have in
common is a love for this dynamic young songstress.
Her first appearance in world wide occurred after the release of "Insomnia".
One of her song was promoted as the commercial song for
Applied Materials
which is the largest supplier of products and services to the global
semiconductor industry based in the Silicon Valley area in the US.
This commercial film and her song are playing
CNN and
CNBC
worldwide.
Since this commercial film is on the air through CNN and CNBC, her publicist
is constantly receiving inqueries like: "who is the singer ?" or "what is the
song played ?" from around the world.
Her music background is based on American pops genre, especially
influenced by sounds of the seventies. When she composes music, Chihiro
pays particular attention to her lyrics. For Chihiro, lyric comes first then
melody. She also likes to play guitar because of her favorite singer
and song writer Jewel plays guitar.
Chihiro Onitsuka's official site (Japanese only)
Universal Music Japan (Japanese only)
Toshiba EMI (Japanese only)
Chihiro Onitsuka's Personal Data
- Race - Asian (Japanese)
- Eye color - Brown
- Blood type - O
- Favorite: - Coca Cola.
- Languages: Japanese (speaks English)
