Ayumi Hamasaki Sekai - [article] 'Ku-chan' reveals Koda's secrets

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'Ku-chan' reveals Koda's secrets

Steve McClure Special to The Daily Yomiuri

Vocalist Kumi Koda is talking about one of her favorite J-pop artists. "She's R&B," says Koda. "So I want her to sing dance music. I want her to be able to dance and I want her to look good too. I want her to be like Janet Jackson, Christina Aguilera, Beyonce. So I don't really want her to sing rock."

Lending weight to Koda's comments is the fact that the artist she's talking about is none other than herself.

So why does Koda refer to herself in the third person, as some politicians are wont to do?

"She's like a different person," Koda explains. "For interviews like this, it's the private Ku-chan you're seeing, but there's a moment when it's like a switch has been thrown. I look at Kumi Koda objectively as a producer, from a third person's viewpoint. I think: 'I want Kumi Koda to wear this.' Or maybe 'I want Kumi Koda to sing this.'"

It may sound pretentious and a little bit schizoid, but that sense of detachment seems to have enabled Koda to keep her feet planted firmly on the ground even as her career moves into the J-pop stratosphere.

Koda's new album, Secret, was released Feb. 9 and has entered Oricon's album chart at No. 3. Released in both CD and DVD formats, it's Koda's fourth album, and is a slick but still engaging slice of R&B-flavored J-pop.

Sounding like a seasoned record promoter, Koda explains why the album is called Secret.

"After the album was finished, I remembered that all sorts of secrets were hidden inside it," Koda says. "One of them is a first-edition-only centerfold--one of those things you snip open to discover a sexily clad Ku-chan."

A close, scissors-aided inspection of the booklet accompanying Secret does in fact reveal several revealing shots of the pleasantly proportioned Koda.

"We also created promotional videos as special attachments for the album, and we have an album-edition promotion video for (the single) 'Hands' that hasn't been cut as a single," Koda continues. "And I have two dogs. One of them will turn up underneath the CD when you take it out of its case. And you won't know which it will be until you open the package. So, it's called Secret because of all the surprises inside it, like a toy chest."

Koda released her first single, "Take Back," in December 2000, and her first album, Affection, in March 2002. Since then she's been on a roll, as her career steadily develops momentum.

Born in Kyoto in 1982, Koda grew up in a musical environment. Her grandfather was a shakuhachi master, and her mother a koto teacher.

"I think my biggest influence has been my mother," Koda says. "She's always loved music and she started taking me to karaoke when I was really small. So I've been holding a mike since I was very young. And she was really good, too. She wasn't a professional singer, but she set an example for me."

"People would stop to listen to her when she started singing," Koda recalls. "And watching that, I decided that I wanted to have people stopping to listen to me, too. I'd been taking lessons in traditional Japanese dance since I was 3, but I decided that I wanted to sing, rather than dance."

Koda made the crucial transition from amateur to professional in her second year of high school, when she came second out of 120,000 entrants in Avex's "Dream Audition" nationwide talent search.

"They let me debut after a year of lessons," Koda says. "For example, Hiro of (Avex band) Exile taught me how to dance, and they sent me to where everyone went for voice training. This was once every two weeks. So I'd come up to Tokyo on alternate weekends to take the lessons."

In an unusual move, Avex decided to license an English-language version of a track Koda had recorded called "Take Back" to U.S. dance label Orpheus in November 2000--before the song was released as Koda's debut single here in Japan the following month. "Take Back" peaked at No. 18 on Billboard's Hot Dance Music Maxi-Singles Sales chart.

"We hadn't really intended to release it, but remixes were all the rage then," Koda says, explaining that "Take Back" was released in the United States in a remixed version after Avex's New York office suggested the track might go over well with U.S. club deejays.

Like many other Japanese artists recently, Koda has become popular among North American fans of Japanese anime and video games. Her song "Real Emotion" was the theme song for one installment of the Final Fantasy video game series, which led to Koda being invited to perform at the Ushicon anime convention in Austin, Texas, in January 2004.

"My performance was about 30 minutes long, so I think I sang six or seven songs," Koda says. "I was considering singing 'Real Emotion' in English, but everyone seemed to enjoy it more when I sang in Japanese, so I sang that in Japanese. And I sang 'Trust Your Love' (Koda's second U.S. single) and 'Take Back' in the English versions as well."

Koda says her Japanese songs got a better reception from the hard-core Japanophile fans attending Ushicon.

"The people there seemed to really be into Japanese music," she says. "When I sing here in Japan, I sometimes have people calling out the name of my character 'Yuna' instead of my own name, 'Kumi.' But the people overseas always called me 'Kumi,' and they were really enthusiastic--it was like 'Kawaii!' 'Dai suki!' 'Arigato!' in Japanese! I found that really moving, and I couldn't hold back the tears."

Koda's next overseas appearance will be at the Kamikazecon anime convention in Houston, Texas, next month.

A routine question about Koda's take on love and relationships elicits the following startling revelation from her: "I've never had anyone tell me they liked me. I've always been the one to take the first step. You know, for Valentine's Day, I actually make chocolates myself. But there are never any for me, not even obligatory giri-choco. On the first Valentine's Day after my debut, I gave chocolates to all the people at Avex, but I didn't get a single chocolate in return! And that was when I decided I was never going to hand out chocolates at work, ever again."

That anecdote neatly encapsulates Koda's personality: sweet, but not naive. Her combination of romanticism and level headedness sounds like the basis for a solid, long-term career in the heady and fickle world of J-pop.

From The Yomiuri:
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/index-e.htm