JAPANESE POP music is mercilessly efficient. It makes nobodies into singers, it makes singers into idoru (idols), and it makes millions of fans spend billions of yen. Then, after a few years of hysteria, it makes the idoru into nobodies again. It does not make exceptions.
But the world of J-Pop never bargained for Namie Amuro, an obstinate beauty who has revealed that the music machine has a loophole. Instead, she has undertaken the biggest Asian tour by a Japanese singer and her latest album reached No 2 in the charts. But Amuro’s turnaround breaks Japanese social patterns that go beyond music. She is a single working mother. She has endured a messy divorce with her celebrity husband and a family tragedy. She has repeatedly defied her music company bosses. Disturbingly to the industry, her return to fame has been done without the media blitzing that J-Pop supremos have always assumed essential.
