The Most Famous

SINGERS from Japan

This page contains a list of the greatest Japanese Singers. The pantheon dataset contains 4,381 Singers, 113 of which were born in Japan. This makes Japan the birth place of the 8th most number of Singers behind Germany, and Sweden.

Top 10

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the top 10 most legendary Japanese Singers of all time. This list of famous Japanese Singers is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity. Visit the rankings page to view the entire list of Japanese Singers.

1. Kyu Sakamoto (1941 - 1985)

With an HPI of 61.13, Kyu Sakamoto is the most famous Japanese Singer. His biography has been translated into 31 different languages on wikipedia.

Hisashi "Kyu" Sakamoto (Japanese: 坂本九, Hepburn: Sakamoto Hisashi or Sakamoto Kyū, 10 December 1941 – 12 August 1985), legally registered as Hisashi Ōshima (大島九, Ōshima Hisashi) since 1956, was a Japanese singer and actor. He was best known outside Japan for his international hit song "Ue o Muite Arukō" (known as "Sukiyaki" in English-speaking markets), which was sung in Japanese and sold over 13 million copies. It reached number one in the United States Billboard Hot 100 in June 1963, making Sakamoto the first Asian recording artist to have a number one song on the chart. He was also the first Japanese artist to have a number one single on the Australian singles chart. Sakamoto died on 12 August 1985 in the crash of Japan Air Lines Flight 123, along with 519 others on board the flight, making him a casualty of the deadliest single-aircraft accident in aviation history. Only four people on board survived the crash.

2. Mariya Takeuchi (b. 1955)

With an HPI of 55.65, Mariya Takeuchi is the 2nd most famous Japanese Singer. Her biography has been translated into 31 different languages.

Mariya Takeuchi (竹内まりや, Takeuchi Mariya, born 20 March 1955) is a Japanese singer and songwriter. Regarded as an influential figure in the city pop genre, she is one of the best-selling music artists in Japan, having sold over 16 million records, and has received several accolades. Her husband is Tatsuro Yamashita, a singer-songwriter and record producer. Takeuchi was born in Taisha, Hikawa district, now the city of Izumo, Shimane, and attended Keio University. She made her singing debut after signing with the RCA record label in 1978, with whom she released her debut album Beginning, which peaked at No. 17 on Oricon Charts. She then released four albums between 1979 and 1981, all of which obtained commercial success, including the 1980 album Love Songs, which became her first work to peak at No. 1 on Oricon Charts. Takeuchi then announced she would go on a temporary hiatus in 1981, terminating her contract with RCA records. Three years later, Takeuchi and her husband Tatsuro Yamashita signed with Moon Records, and she made her comeback with her sixth studio album Variety in 1984, which was released internationally and shot her to mainstream success, and peaked at No. 1 on Oricon Charts. The track "Plastic Love" was released in 1985 as a single, and became a surprise hit outside of Japan in 2017, after a YouTube upload of the song went viral. The song has since attained a cult following and is seen as the staple in a revival of interest in city pop in the late 2010s. Following the success of her ventures throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, Takeuchi began releasing albums less frequently, her latest release being in 2014 as she shifted her focus to work and releasing standalone singles. Since 1981, every single she has released has charted on the Oricon Charts. She has stayed with the Moon record label, working with the different branches since signing in 1984 and since 1998 has been signed with Warner Music Japan, with whom she released the single "Inochi no Uta" (いのちの歌, Song of Life) in 2012, for which she re-recorded in 2020; the latter of which charted at No. 1 on Oricon Charts, making her the oldest Japanese singer to achieve a No. 1 single.

3. Damo Suzuki (1950 - 2024)

With an HPI of 51.11, Damo Suzuki is the 3rd most famous Japanese Singer. His biography has been translated into 17 different languages.

Kenji Suzuki (鈴木健次, Suzuki Kenji, 16 January 1950 – 9 February 2024), known as Damo Suzuki (ダモ鈴木), was a Japanese musician best known as the vocalist for the German Krautrock group Can between 1970 and 1973. Born in 1950 in Kobe, Japan, he moved to Europe in the late 1960s where he was spotted busking in Munich, West Germany, by Can bassist Holger Czukay and drummer Jaki Liebezeit. Can had just split with their vocalist Malcolm Mooney, and asked Suzuki to sing over tracks from their 1970 compilation album Soundtracks. Afterwards, he became their full time singer, appearing on the three influential albums Tago Mago (1971), Ege Bamyası (1972) and Future Days (1973). After leaving Can in 1973, he abandoned music and became a Jehovah's Witness. Having left that organisation, he returned to music in the mid-1980s and began to tour widely. Over the following decades, Suzuki recorded a large number of albums under different aliases, which he later grouped as "Damo Suzuki's Network".

4. Ayumi Hamasaki (b. 1978)

With an HPI of 50.44, Ayumi Hamasaki is the 4th most famous Japanese Singer. Her biography has been translated into 54 different languages.

Ayumi Hamasaki (浜崎あゆみ, Hamasaki Ayumi, born October 2, 1978) is a Japanese singer-songwriter and producer. Nicknamed the "Empress of Pop" on account of her influence throughout Asia, she is widely recognized for her versatile music production, songwriting, and live performances. Hamasaki is the best-selling solo artist in Japan, and a cultural icon of the Heisei era. Born and raised in Fukuoka, Hamasaki moved to Tokyo at 14 in 1993 to pursue a career in singing and acting. In 1998, Hamasaki released her debut single "Poker Face" and debut major-label album A Song for ××. The album debuted at the top of the Oricon charts and remained there for five weeks, selling over a million copies. This rapid rise to fame was attributed to her style of lyric-writing, listeners praising her poetic way of conveying relatable subjects. Her next ten albums shipped over a million copies in Japan, with her third, Duty, selling nearly three million. A Best, her first compilation album, further established her position as a crowning artist with more than four million copies sold in Japan. It was at this time that she represented more than 40% of her record label's income. After A Best, Hamasaki went on to experiment with her music style and lyricism, incorporating English into her work from Rainbow onwards. Later albums would range from electronic dream-pop to rock genres, the singer commenting that she focuses on what she wants to create "whether it is trendy or not". Hamasaki currently holds the record for the most albums to place in the top ten by a female artist in Japan. Hamasaki has sold over 64.50 million units in Japan, and has several domestic record achievements for her singles: the most number-one hits by a female artist (38); the most consecutive number-one hits by a solo artist (25), and the most million-sellers. From 1999 to 2010, Hamasaki had at least two singles each year topping the charts. Hamasaki is also the first female recording artist to have ten studio albums since her debut to top the Oricon, and the first artist to have a number-one album for 13 consecutive years since her debut. In addition to this, Hamasaki's remix albums Super Eurobeat Presents Ayu-ro Mix and Ayu-mi-x II Version Non-Stop Mega Mix, are recognized as two of the best selling remix albums of all time worldwide.

5. Miyuki Nakajima (b. 1952)

With an HPI of 50.28, Miyuki Nakajima is the 5th most famous Japanese Singer. Her biography has been translated into 18 different languages.

Miyuki Nakajima (中島みゆき, Nakajima Miyuki) (born February 23, 1952, Sapporo, Hokkaidō, Japan) is a Japanese singer-songwriter and radio personality. She has released 44 studio albums, 48 singles, 6 live albums and multiple compilations as of January 2020. Her sales have been estimated at more than 21 million copies. In the mid-1970s, Nakajima signed to Canyon Records and launched her recording career with her debut single, "Azami Jō no Lullaby" (アザミ嬢のララバイ). Rising to fame with the hit "The Parting Song (Wakareuta)", released in 1977, she has since had a successful career as a singer-songwriter, primarily in the early 1980s. Four of her singles have sold more than one million copies in the last two decades, including "Earthly Stars (Unsung Heroes)", a theme song for the Japanese television documentary series Project X. Nakajima performed in experimental theater ("Yakai") every year-end from 1989 through 1998. The idiosyncratic acts featured scripts and songs she wrote, and have continued irregularly in recent years. In addition to her work as a solo artist, Nakajima has written over 90 compositions for numerous other singers and has produced several chart-toppers. Many cover versions of her songs have been performed by Asian (particularly Taiwan and Hong Kong) singers. She is the only musician to have participated in the National Language Council of Japan.

6. Seiko Matsuda (b. 1962)

With an HPI of 49.77, Seiko Matsuda is the 6th most famous Japanese Singer. Her biography has been translated into 26 different languages.

Noriko Kamachi (蒲池法子, Kamachi Noriko, born 10 March 1962), known professionally as Seiko Matsuda (松田聖子, Matsuda Seiko), is a Japanese singer-songwriter, known for being one of the most popular Japanese idols of the 1980s. Since then, she has continued to release new singles and albums, go on annual summer concert tours, perform at winter dinner shows, in high-profile TV commercials and movies, and make frequent appearances on TV and radio. Her alma matter is Chuo University. Due to her popularity in the 1980s and her long career, she has been dubbed the "Eternal Idol" by the Japanese media. In January 2011, the Japanese music television program Music Station listed her the 2nd best-selling idol of all time in Japan, with 29,510,000 records sold. She placed right behind pop group SMAP and ahead of Akina Nakamori, her biggest rival of the 1980s, who was listed in third place. In 2016, however, Ian Martin of The Japan Times compared her output unfavorably with that of Hikaru Utada, describing Matsuda as "first and foremost an idol rather than an artist. Her legacy is best expressed in singles rather than albums." Matsuda once held the record of 25 number-one hits for musicians from 1983 to 2000 (broken by B'z) and for female solo artists (broken by Ayumi Hamasaki in 2010). Matsuda was a performer on the finale of Kouhaku (Red White Music Battle) in 2014 and 2015, the prestigious NHK New Year's Eve Music show on which she has performed 24 times (as of 2020).

7. Joji (b. 1992)

With an HPI of 49.59, Joji is the 7th most famous Japanese Singer. His biography has been translated into 33 different languages.

George Kusunoki Miller (ジョージ・楠木・ミラー, Jōji Kusunoki Mirā, born 16 September 1993), known professionally as Joji and formerly as Filthy Frank and Pink Guy, is a Japanese-Australian comedian, singer-songwriter, rapper, and record producer. Miller's music has been described as a mix between R&B, lo-fi, and trip hop. Miller created The Filthy Frank Show on YouTube in 2011 while he was still living in Japan, gaining recognition for playing oddball characters on the comedy channels "TVFilthyFrank", "TooDamnFilthy", and "DizastaMusic". Miller kept producing Filthy Frank videos after he traveled to the United States to attend college in 2012. The channels, which featured comedy hip hop, rants, extreme challenges, and ukulele and dance performances, are noted for their shock humor and prolific virality. Miller's videos helped popularise the Harlem Shake, which contributed to the commercial success of Baauer's song "Harlem Shake" which led to the production of memes and collaborations with YouTubers. As Pink Guy, Miller released two comedy studio albums, Pink Guy and Pink Season, as well as an extended play, between 2014 and 2017. In late 2017, Miller ended The Filthy Frank Show to pursue a music career under the name "Joji", the Japanese version of his first name. His debut album, Ballads 1, was released in 2018 and featured the single "Slow Dancing in the Dark". His second album, Nectar (2020), contained the singles "Sanctuary" and "Run". In 2022, he released the US Billboard Hot 100 top-ten single "Glimpse of Us", his highest-charting song, which was later featured on his third album, Smithereens (2022).

8. Yumi Matsutoya (b. 1954)

With an HPI of 49.54, Yumi Matsutoya is the 8th most famous Japanese Singer. Her biography has been translated into 17 different languages.

Yumi Matsutoya (松任谷由実, Matsutōya Yumi, born January 19, 1954), nicknamed Yuming (ユーミン, Yūmin), is a Japanese singer, composer, lyricist and pianist. Generally the writer of both the lyrics and the music in her songs, she is renowned for her idiosyncratic voice and live performances, and is one of the most prominent figures in the history of Japanese popular music. Her recording career has been commercially successful with more than 42 million records sold. In 1990, her album The Gates of Heaven became the first album to be certified "2x million" by the RIAJ, and she has had twenty-one No. 1 albums listed on the Oricon charts. She is the only artist to have at least one number-one album every year on the Oricon charts for 18 consecutive years. After gaining several years of experience as a session musician, she debuted as a singer-songwriter in 1972. During her early career, she worked under her birth name Yumi Arai (荒井由実, Arai Yumi). In 1975, Arai became known as a composer for "Ichigo Hakusho wo Mou Ichido", a commercially successful song recorded by the folk duo BanBan. She also gained popularity as a vocalist in the same year through the success of "Ano Hi ni Kaeritai", which became her first number-one hit on Japan's Oricon Charts. Other famous songs include "Haru-yo, Koi" and "Sweet, Bitter Sweet". She also uses the name Kureta Karuho (呉田軽穂), which is derived from the Swedish film star Greta Garbo, when offering her work to other musicians. In The Encyclopedia of Contemporary Japanese Culture, it is written that "Yuming incorporated influences from progressive rock and European pop to produce a sophisticated, upper-middle-class female Japanese voice and sound in a contemporary musical and journalistic world dominated by discussions of folk music and social critique. This musical idiom is generally thought to have been first realised on [...] Cobalt Hour". The album The 14th Moon and the three albums that ranked in the top 10 of the Japanese charts in 1976 (Cobalt Hour, Yuming Brand, and Hikōki-gumo) "contained several songs which are considered to be early classics of the J-pop genre." After marrying her musical collaborator Masataka Matsutoya in 1976, Arai began recording under her married name and has continued to do so. Throughout the 1980s, Matsutoya's music was prominently featured in advertisements for Mitsubishi Motors in her native Japan and her image was used to promote their vehicles. In addition to multiple hit singles, she has obtained enormous commercial success on the Japanese Albums Chart, particularly during the late 1980s and the first half of the 1990s. The magazine Shūkan Gendai ranked Matsutoya third (behind only Miyuki Nakajima and Masayoshi Son) in a list of the smartest Japanese figures that was determined based on the criteria of "intelligence, determination, sensibility and capability".

9. Namie Amuro (b. 1977)

With an HPI of 49.19, Namie Amuro is the 9th most famous Japanese Singer. Her biography has been translated into 39 different languages.

Namie Amuro ( NAH-mee-AY; Japanese: 安室奈美恵, romanized: Amuro Namie; born September 20, 1977) is a retired Japanese singer. She rose to prominence as a teen idol, and transitioned into a leading pop artist due to her versatility across music styles and visual presentation. Due to her career reinventions and longevity, she is known as an icon across Japan and Asia. She has been referred to as the "Queen of Japanese Pop", and her influence domestically has drawn equivalent comparisons to artists such as Janet Jackson and Madonna in Western pop culture. Born in Naha, Okinawa, Amuro debuted as the lead singer of the idol group Super Monkey's in 1992 when she was 14 years old. Despite early sales disappointments, Amuro's rising popularity helped to score a major hit with the 1995 Eurobeat single "Try Me (Watashi o Shinjite)". Signing to Avex Trax for her solo career, Amuro catapulted to fame with a string of number one singles including "Chase the Chance" and "Don't Wanna Cry". A close partnership with renowned producer Tetsuya Komuro resulted in a dance-pop sound with Western influences. Her first four releases, including Sweet 19 Blues (1996) and Concentration 20 (1997), each received multi-million certifications. Her 1997 single "Can You Celebrate?" remains as the best selling single by a solo female artist in Japanese music history. In the early 2000s, "Never End" became Amuro's last successful single before a decline in sales, and her music began evolving from pop to R&B as she reined in creative control of her career. This transition was marked by the Suite Chic project in 2002 and her sixth studio album Style (2003). Amuro's eighth studio album, Play (2007), with the hit single "Baby Don't Cry", began a period of commercial resurgence. Her comeback was solidified with the 2008 single "60s 70s 80s" and its parent release Best Fiction. She continued to experiment musically in the 2010s, dabbling in EDM and recording in English, beginning with her tenth studio album Uncontrolled (2012). It featured the million-certified single "Love Story". She later founded her own management company, Stella88, and record label, Dimension Point. Amuro finished her career with the 2017 greatest hits album Finally, which became the best selling album of the decade and made her the only artist to achieve a million-seller in each of their teens, 20s, 30s and 40s. She officially retired from the music industry on September 16, 2018. As it coincided with the closure of the Heisei era (1989–2019), she became labelled as the representative "Heisei diva" with many calling it the "end of an era", in both senses. Having sold more than 40 million records, Amuro is recognized as one of the best-selling artists in Japan by Oricon. She has received accolades from the Japan Record Awards, Japan Gold Disc Awards, MTV Video Music Awards Japan and the World Music Awards.

10. Atsushi Sakurai (1966 - 2023)

With an HPI of 48.64, Atsushi Sakurai is the 10th most famous Japanese Singer. His biography has been translated into 15 different languages.

Atsushi Sakurai (櫻井敦司, Sakurai Atsushi, March 7, 1966 – October 19, 2023) was a Japanese musician and singer-songwriter. He was the lead vocalist and primary lyricist of the rock band Buck-Tick from 1985 until his death in 2023. Initially joining as their drummer in 1983, Sakurai fronted the band for 38 years and 23 studio albums, nearly all of which reached the top ten on Japan's Oricon chart. They are commonly credited as one of the founders of the visual kei movement. Sakurai released the solo album Ai no Wakusei in 2004, and was a member of Schwein alongside his Buck-Tick bandmate Hisashi Imai, Sascha Konietzko and Raymond Watts. In 2015, he formed a solo project called The Mortal. After falling ill during a Buck-Tick concert, Sakurai died from a brainstem hemorrhage in a Yokohama hospital on October 19, 2023.

People

Pantheon has 123 people classified as Japanese singers born between 1941 and 2001. Of these 123, 116 (94.31%) of them are still alive today. The most famous living Japanese singers include Mariya Takeuchi, Ayumi Hamasaki, and Miyuki Nakajima. The most famous deceased Japanese singers include Kyu Sakamoto, Damo Suzuki, and Atsushi Sakurai. As of April 2024, 10 new Japanese singers have been added to Pantheon including Atsushi Sakurai, Anri, and Tomoko Kaneda.