Despite her child-like persona, you can't help but sense Hamasaki was
never truly a child. Born in Fukuoka on the southern island of Kyushu, she
was just a toddler when her father walked out. "I don't even know if he's
dead or alive," she says. Raised by a single mother and a grandmother, she
began modeling locally at seven, in part to earn money for the family. It
was an unusual and lonely childhood in this country of steadfastly nuclear
families, but Hamasaki says she wasn't aware of what she was missing. "I
thought mommy's life was strange, not mine," she says. "I didn't understand
my loneliness until I moved to Tokyo." Hamasaki made that move at 14 to
pursue an acting and modeling career. Old magazine spreads feature the
sweetly smiling young starlet clad in bathing suits or prim outfits that
would never make it to her own wardrobe. After bit parts in five low-budget
movies and a handful of TV dramas, she tired of acting and, with her tiny
frame, did not have a future in modeling. Canned by her talent agency and
dropping out of school in the 10th grade, Hamasaki frittered away her days
shopping at trendy shibuya boutiques and her nights dancing at the massive
Velfarre nightclub in Roppongi.
Then a friend who worked at the club, owned by the record label Avex,
invited her out for a night of karaoke that forever changed her life. The
friend had also invited Masato ("Max") Matsuura, who introduced himself to
Hamasaki as a producer. "I'd never heard of Avex," Hamasaki recalls,
laughing. "When he asked if I wanted to pursue a singing career, I said, 'No
way.' He was this older guy, and I thought the whole thing sounded fishy."
Over the following year, though, Matsuura persisted. Finally she relented to
his request that she at last attend vocal training, only because "I had
nothing better to do." But the classes were dull and the teachers harsh. "I
felt like I'd gone back to school," she says. "If there are rules and
regulations, I can't help it, I want to break them."
Finally she confessed to Matsuura that she'd skipped most of the classes.
But instead of writing her off, he proposed sending her to New York for some
real training. "I thought he was kidding," she says. "I mean, I was 17."
Reluctantly she went, staying in a midtown hotel for three months, taking
singing classes a few blocks away. "New York was a relief-not all
hierarchical and rule-bound," she says. When Hamasaki returned to Japan,
Matsuura proposed another challenge. Because she has trouble voicing her
thoughts, Hamasaki had over that year corresponded with Matsuura through
letters, which must have echoed of simple yet poignant lyrics. "He read them
and said, 'Why don't you try writing songs?'" The idea that she could
express herself in song imbued her with a new sense of direction. "No one
had ever asked anything of me before, or expected anything of me," she says
of Matsuura, whom Hamasaki and everyone at Avex calls by his title, senmu,
or managing director. "Part of me was flattered; part of me was terrified
but didn't want to admit I couldn't do it. Plenty of people had patted my
head and said, 'Aren't you cute.' Senmu gets mad, but when he praises me, I
know I've won it. He's the one who found me and drew me out." He stuck by
her, too, when superstardom didn't occur overnight. Her first two singles in
1998 stopped at No. 20 on the charts; her next four barely broke the Top 10.
Then Love~destiny~ busted into the No. 1 slot in April 1999, and every one
of her singles have hit the top ever three since. The responsibilities that
came with her ascension as a recording star were a fair trade-off for the
joyous release of writing. "The 'Hi, this is Ayu' person on TV," she says,
slipping for a moment into her alter ego's nasal, anime-character voice, "is
the person I know they want to see. I understand it's my role to realize
people's dreams. I'm O.K. with that so long as my songs are my own. No one
can take my song away from me."
She is complicit in the brutal arithmetic of fame: trading the freedom she
cherished for the right to tell her story through songs. Indeed, she has
transcended mere songstress status and become something even more venerated
in our consumer driven society. |
