Akihiro Miwa

Early life

Miwa was born to a family which ran a small café. After seeing the movie Boy Soprano at the age of 11, he claims to have had a dream in which he was standing on stage in a concert hall, singing. It was this which inspired his interest in music. He attended the Kunitachi College of Music High School at the age of 15.

Career

He started his career at 17 as a professional cabaret singer in the Ginza district in Chūō, Tokyo, when moving to Tokyo in 1952. He started working in various nightclubs singing his favourites from the French chansons such as those of Édith Piaf, Yvette Guilbert and Marie Dubas. His claim to fame came rather early in 1957, with a smash-hit called "Me Que Me Que", which included a string of profanities not used in media at the time. He was also renowned for his effeminate beauty, making him a hit with the media. He performed a monthly show at Shibuya Jean-Jean called "Akihiro Miwa no Sekai" (the world of Akihiro Miwa) from the 1970s until its closure in 2000, as well as touring Japan.

Social activism

Miwa has written many books as well, and is known for his outspoken highly critical comments about the government, social issues and war. He was in Nagasaki when the atomic bomb was dropped in 1945, but escaped relatively unhurt. He is against the 2015 Japanese military legislation and Prime Minister Abe's regime, says that "Prime Minister Abe and those who voted for the LDP should go to the front as Japanese soldiers firstly." and criticizes Japanese militarism in the Second World War because of the experience in his childhood, however he insists that Japanese spiritual and cultural values and characteristics of the Japanese people with the origin of Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, like Bushido (the Samurai way of life) and Yamato-gokoro (means the Heart of Great Harmony in Japanese) which were destroyed by the WWII should be restored in post-war Japan.

Song – "Yoitomake no Uta"

(see ヨイトマケの唄 for further details) In 1964, Miwa first released the "Yoitomake no Uta" ("The Song of the Yoitomake") after giving a show at a small mining town, due to a mistake by a producer. While he was not entirely willing to perform at first, he was touched at the sight of workers who had come to see him, having bought their tickets with the little wages miners received then. Miwa was "ashamed and embarrassed of [himself], standing before them in [his] flamboyant clothes", and also that he did not have a song "for them".

This experience inspired him to write "Yoitomake no Uta", as well as his rule to not crossdress or wear any of his usual extravagant clothing or make-up when he sang this song, wearing instead the shabby, dark clothes of a post-World War II child and dying his literally yellow hair to a more natural black. While the song was a big success – a working song which tells of a mother's love for her child as she works as a "yoitomake", and a child's determination to not let his mother's effort go to waste after being teased for being the child of a "yoitomake", based on a story of a childhood friend of Miwa – it was criticised by the then-NAB (National Association of Commercial Broadcasters in Japan) for using several "discriminating" words, with Yoitomake being one of them. The song was eventually banned from commercial broadcasting, leading to an outcry among viewers and Miwa himself that it was being judged by one word from the title, and not the content.

After numerous covers were made of the song by artists such as Kyu Sakamoto and Kuwata Keisuke, "Yoitomake no Uta" was broadcast nationwide in the 2012 63rd NHK Kōhaku Uta Gassen. Miwa appeared in his old, plain showboy-like costume, singing in the dark with only faint pinspot light for the audience to barely distinguish his face, as his request.

Acting roles

Although Miwa is better known as a cabaret singer he has also appeared in a number of films, beginning as a laundry boy in Sennin Buraku in 1961 (under his real name). He also appeared in Shuji Terayama's Aomori-ken no Semushi Otoko in 1967. In 1968 he starred in and composed the theme song for Kinji Fukasaku's Black Lizard, based on Mishima's stage adaptation of the Edogawa Rampo novel; Mishima also had a cameo in the film as an embalmed corpse. The next year he made another film with Fukasaku, Black Rose Mansion.

In recent years he has voiced characters in Hayao Miyazaki's internationally successful anime films Princess Mononoke and Howl's Moving Castle, and appeared in Takeshi Kitano's 2005 film Takeshis'. In March 2007, he performed the role of Empress Sisi in the play L'aigle à deux têtes by writer Jean Cocteau at Parco Theatre in Shibuya. In 2009, Miwa voiced the Pokémon Arceus in the film Pokémon: Arceus and the Jewel of Life.