NAME: Arai (last name), Akino (given name)
BIRTHDATE: August 21
BLOOD TYPE: Type O
FAMILY: Mother and one brother.
FAVOURITE MUSICIANS: Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Björk
FAVOURITE ARTISTS: Picasso, Bruegel, Osamu Tezuka
FAVOURITE MOVIES: Nostalgia, Jurassic Park, Wonderful Planet KINZAZA
FAVOURITE COLOURS: Nature Colours
While still a university student majoring in visual art, more specifically, oil painting, Arai entered and won awards for her song, "Kiniro no Me" at the Yamaha Popular Music Contest, also known as "POPCON." Interestingly enough, music and the profession of singer-songwriter was not Arai's original goal. Arai's love for music began early in her life: her first exposure to music was through her father, who apparently had an enormous record collection. It was he, who first awoke that artistic spirit within her, as the two not only listened to music together, but also wrote a few songs together as well.
However, Arai's time with her father did not last long. Her father left the family when Arai was eight years of age and never returned. In reaction to her father's abandonment, Arai turned to music to express herself, writing music on a near constant basis. The song, "Furu Purachina" seems to reflect many things about the way Arai views her father. She seems to cherish the time that she did have with him, rather than dwell on his abandonment and the time that she lost with him.
After her parent's divorce, Arai and her younger brother moved to Fukuoka with their mother. While in this new prefecture, Arai continued her interest in music. For the most part, however, she confined her musical talents to only family and friends and the occasional performance at her mother's cafe, "Canadian Coffee Hikari."
And yet, her voice still managed to reach out among the crowd and gain her a certain amount of notoriety. During this early stage in her life, a friend relayed to her that it was his dream to one day work for a record company and that if he ever accomplished his goal, he would submit her demo tape.
After Arai graduated from the university, she received a call from Victor Music Entertainment (currently, "Victor Entertainment") asking if she would like to sign a record contract with them in order to sing the theme song to an animated movie. The friend who had come to listen to her sing in her mother's coffee shop had been true to his word. Unsure of how to proceed, Arai was hesitant at first; accepting the offer would mean returning to Tokyo, where she had been born, but fortunately, her mother gave her a gentle push, telling her daughter that music was the one interest, which she had continued to cultivate since childhood. With her mother's encouragement, Arai set out to begin her career as a singer-songwriter. She would soon find, however, that the pressures from her management agency were more than she bargained for.
Arai's first work as a professional singer was not as "Arai Akino," but rather under the pseudonym, "Mikan Chang." One of her the earliest works, in which she participated as "Mikan Chang" was when she provided back up vocals for the 1985 album, "The Rhythm Boxer" by artists, Shimizu Nobuyuki together with Murakami Shunichi. Apparently, her management agency did not want Arai to use her name until she had officially debuted with her first album. Interestingly enough, Arai also used the pseudonym on her first album for back up vocals. Speaking of which, many fans have noticed the drastic difference in style from Arai's first album to many of her other works. Even though they are from the same era, Arai's work on Siva ~ Tatazumu Hito" on the image album, "Akuma-kun Mahou*BITTER" (1986) and the songs from off her first album, "Natsukashii Mirai" (1986) are drastically different in style. Most likely this difference is due to the fact that Arai did not have much freedom in her first album, which put quite a bit of restraint on her creative input for her debut album. Anyone familiar with 80's Japanese pop culture would know how fast the industry would churn out female pop artists and in this respect, Arai was no different; Victor was trying to mold not only her image, but her music to suit their needs. And while Arai did write most of the songs off her first album herself, most of them were re-written by so-called "professional" lyricists.
Perhaps due to the pressure and constant restraint that she felt from her agency, nearly a year after her album debuted, Arai soon lost all her creative inspiration. Additionally, Arai had been forced to give many promotional concerts, with which she did not feel comfortable and many cite these unfortunate events as the reason why Arai had never given many concerts until more recent years.
Whatever the reason, Arai left her management agency around 1988 and became a solo/freelance musician. However, it is around this time that Arai also completely stopped singing, as she had lost all inspiration. Instead, Arai focused her talents on television and commercial jingles. One example, is the Kodomo no Uta series, for which Arai sang a number of classic and well-known children's songs. In 1989, Arai formed a friendship (which continues on to this day) with Tane Tomoko and began to provide back up vocals in many of her albums, as well as concerts. One other artist that deserves some mentioning is Shiratori Yuri, who has put out several albums, all of which Arai has had a hand in. In most all the albums Arai has at least written, composed and arranged several tracks, though she leaves all the vocals to Shiratori to perform, though this particular collaboration did no occur until 1994.
As time progressed, she became involved with many animation, manga and game soundtracks as well. The most famous and perhaps most important of these soundtracks that she worked on, however, was "Boku no Chikyuu wo Mamotte." Up until this time, Arai had been unable to find any inspiration to write her own music, but after meeting the author of the manga series and after reading the novels, Arai found that she was once again able to express her thoughts and feelings through music. Arai recorded the song, "Moonlight Anthem ~Enju 1991~."
After gaining much notoriety as primarily an animation artist, Arai officially re-entered the workforce as a solo artist with the release of her compilation album "Sora no Mori." That album was soon followed by "Sora no Niwa" - her first original solo album in over a decade. Also worth noting is that in 1998, Akino Arai formed a brief duet with Yayoi Yula to form the group, Goddess in the Morning. Arai had gone to one of Yayoi's performances and was so taken with the power and beauty of her voice, that she personally requested that the two of them form a duet. In addition, in 2000, Arai became a member of marsh mallow. Both groups have released one album, though Arai has left both groups due to time constraints. After gaining even more prominence, Arai was given her own radio program called, "VIRIDIAN HOUSE," broadcasting on NACK5 (FM 79.5) from 23:30 to 24:30 every week.
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