▎作者▉ Annat (機車成績單.-.-".)                        ▎看板▉ NamieAmuro  
▎標題▉ Re: 急問!!~~拜託各位安室迷幫個忙....                                 
▎時間▉ Sun Feb 11 21:34:32 2001                                       ˙˙˙
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english:
Namie Amuro put Okinawa on the map. OK, that's a preposterous idea. Amuro is
what, all of 22? She sings J-pop fluff and her most striking attribute is
her hair. To say she is the most famous thing about Okinawa is to denigrate
the memory of the tens of thousands slaughtered during the long and horrific
World War II battle. It trivializes the frustration Okinawans have endured
living as a colony first under U.S. military stewardship, and later as a
welfare state of Japan.

Yet Amuro, pretty as can be with her cappuccino-toned skin and butterscotch
hair, did indeed do something remarkable for her home island when she
splashed onto the pop music scene in 1995. She gave troubled Okinawa a new
image. She made Okinawa cool.

Amuro was discovered by Masayuki Makino, a promoter enchanted by the girl
when she tagged along with a friend to his acting school in Okinawa. "She is
a talented flirt," he now says. He put her in a song-and-dance troupe called
the Super Monkeys when she was 14. The monkeys weren't so super, and the
group fizzled. Amuro, whose childhood ambition had been to be a flight
attendant, appeared in TV dramas and as a giant furry rabbit on a children's
show before turning to singing and topping the charts with her breakthrough
1995 hit, "Try Me." They did try her, and they loved her. She was a star at
age 17. Her records were bestsellers; tickets to her concerts sold out
within 10 minutes of going on sale.
Amuro is stunningly beautiful, there is no question. One quarter Italian and
three quarters Okinawan, she's exotic in homogenous Japan, but the image is
familiar enough not to be threatening: tanned skin, pencil thin eyebrows,
long, straight hair dyed light brown, mini-skirts and platform boots. She
can sing, she can dance, sure. But it's that look that catapulted her to the
top of the heap of Japan's teen queens. Flocks of "Amuraas" soon appeared
all over Japan, young girls mimicking her style, down to the tattoo shaped
like a bar code she wears on her right wrist. The "Amuraas" are gone now,
but they have evolved into the hordes of teenage girls with bronzed skin,
silvery gray hair, white lipstick and eye shadow and gravity-defying
platform boots. This strange and decidedly unflattering persona is not
Amuro's at all. The skin is browner, hair color lighter, skirts mini-er,
platforms taller. But it has its roots in Amuro's natural Okinawan beauty.

This is not something the pop diva cares to discuss. "We don't want to
emphasize the Okinawan connection," admonished one of her managers, Akira
Kobayashi. But we did. So we asked Amuro about Okinawa anyway, much to the
consternation of Kobayashi and six other black-suited handlers who hovered
around her during an interview last week. "It's OK," she told the overly
protective Kobayashi. Then to us: "If I had a strong feeling about being
Okinawan, I would have stayed in Okinawa and done Okinawan music." The voice
coming from the petite young woman is surprisingly husky. "I don't feel like
I should be this way or that way because I am Okinawan. I just like to do
the music." Okinawans looking for an inspirational role model should look
elsewhere. There's nothing particularly Okinawan about her music, anyway.
"It's a fashion," says Rinken Teruya, leader of a popular Okinawan band. "It
mimics American music. She could be from Hokkaido."

Amuro's brief career has been filled with drama. At the height of her
popularity in 1997, she shocked fans—and Japanese sensibilities—by
announcing she had secretly married a dancer, whose stage name is Sam, and
was three months pregnant. "She was finished," said Makino, her mentor, who
has since parted company with Amuro. Her abrupt life change started yet
another trend: marrying young. Then she disappeared from public view for a
year. In December 1998, she made a comeback on the NHK television network's
singing competition. At the end of her performance, she collapsed in tears.
Japanese love a good cry; the TV show's ratings soared. Amuro was back. "No,
I didn't cry deliberately," Amuro said with a laugh last week. "The audience
welcomed me so warmly, I couldn't stop myself." Her next single topped the
charts. She sang the theme song in the latest PokEmon movie, and her husband
and son appeared in a government campaign urging Japanese to have more
babies.

But her troubles weren't over. In March 1999, Amuro's mother, Emiko Taira,
was murdered by her own brother-in-law—the climax, Okinawa police reported,
of an ugly family feud. "It was very sad and has not been easy," Amuro said.
"The only good thing is I married and had a baby before she died, so she saw
her grandchild and could play with him. Now that I am a mother, I have to
avoid being sad because that could affect my child."

In her younger, carefree days, Amuro sang peppy pop songs. The tempo of her
new music has slowed a bit, like the ballad Never End she recorded in honor
of the G-8 summit. Next she wants to write her own songs. Maybe give a
concert in Okinawa, where she has never performed as a solo act. As for the
next Amuro-driven trend? She shrugs. "I just want to be myself," she said,
but then revealed a new conservatism that comes with motherhood. "When I was
younger, I was more adventurous and I would wear anything. Now, I only wear
clothes that look good on me." Whatever she wears, Japan had better learn to
like it. Because schoolgirls still want to be like Amuro. And they don't
care where she came from.
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這樣會不會看了有點花..@@|||
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