Misia

Misia earned recognition as Japan's inaugural R&B superstar despite drawing on blues and soul elements in her work, and her five-octave voice—reportedly able to reach pitches beyond the range of human hearing—helped clear a path for later R&B-oriented J-pop singers such as Hikaru Utada and Yuki Koyanagi. The feat stands out further because she never appeared on television music programs, an uncommon choice within Japanese entertainment circles.

Born Misaki Ito into a family devoted to music in Fukuoka, a city long associated with its rock scene, she first encountered R&B and kindred styles while in high school under the guidance of African-American vocal teachers. She began studies at Seinan Gakuin University in 1997, yet that same year she won an audition against more than three thousand hopefuls for the BMG label and left academics to pursue music full time. Around then she settled on the professional name Misia, understood to blend either Misaki with Asia or Messiah with Asia.

Success arrived immediately. Her 1998 debut single “Tsutsumikomu You Ni...” stayed on the charts for twenty-seven weeks and moved four hundred thousand copies, while the follow-up “Hi No Ataru Basho” reached the top ten. The first album, Mother Father Brother Sister, also from 1998, held the summit for four weeks and surpassed two and a half million units sold; that year she collected two Japan Gold Disc Awards.

Love Is the Message, issued in 2000, sold another two million copies, and Marvelous followed in 2001 with sales above one and a half million, her last album to reach that threshold. Kiss in the Sky appeared in 2002, earned platinum certification, and featured Tak Matsumoto of B’z; earlier, in 2001, she had recorded the single “I Miss You (Toki O Koete)” alongside Masato Nakamura of Dreams Come True, a band she has long admired.

In 2002 she moved from BMG to Avex’s Rhythmedia Tribe imprint, where she remained until 2007 and completed four albums plus numerous singles, several of which served as themes for games, films, and television dramas. During this period she also became, in 2004, the first female solo artist to headline a “five domes” tour across Japan.

After returning to BMG she released Eighth World in 2008; the album sold one hundred thirty-one thousand copies yet failed to reach platinum. She had already tested overseas waters with a 2007 appearance in Taiwan and later took the Eighth World tour to Seoul, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Shanghai. Her ninth album, Just Ballade, came out in December 2009. She continued releasing material at a steady pace through the 2010s.