News
Singer-Songwriter Hikaru Utada to Marry an Italian Man
posted on by Egan Loo
31-year-old singer-songwriter Hikaru Utada announced on Monday that she will "very soon" marry an Italian man. She acknowledged that even she laughed a little in surprise over this.
In her blog entry to both fans and the mass media, Utada said that her husband-to-be is a "fine young man sincerely loved by many friends." He has a "large, cheerful, and bustling family, like one straight out of a manga." Since her fiancé is not in the entertainment industry, she asked her fans and the media to view her personal life from a respectful distance for privacy's sake.
Since Utada is still in a mourning period for her late mother Keiko Fuji, she said that she was uncertain whether to delay the upcoming marriage. However, she recalled that when she talked about her fiancé in her last conversation with her mother, her mother's voice sounded happier than she can remember in years. With that in mind, she believes that she has her mother's support and decided to go ahead with her marriage as scheduled.
Utada was previously married to Kazuaki Kiriya from 2002 to 2007. Kiriya directed several of her early music videos, as well as the live-action Casshern film which used a track by Utada as its theme song.
Utada is an internationally known, bestselling pop artist born in New York City and raised in Japan and the United States. Her debut album, 1999's First Love, is still Japan's bestselling album ever with about 8 million copies sold. Bandai Visual used Utada's "Kiss & Cry" and "This is Love" songs for the Freedom anime project. Besides the theme song for the live-action Casshern movie remake, Utada also contributed to the live-action Hana Yori Dango 2 television adaptation.
More recently, she provided a 2007 remix of her 2000 cover of Frank Sinatra's "Fly Me to the Moon (In Other Words)" for the trailer to Evangelion: 1.0 You Are [Not] Alone (Evangelion Shin Gekijōban: Jo), as well as her "Beautiful World" song for the anime film itself. She also contributed the "Beautiful World -PLANiTb Acoustica Mix-" for the second film, Evangelion: 2.0 You Can [Not] Advance (Evangelion Shin Gekijōban: Ha). In addition to her singing career, she played the heroine Pinoko in the 2001-2002 Black Jack net anime series. She toured the United States and the United Kingdom in 2009.
Utada had been on hiatus from the entertainment business since the beginning of 2011, although she returned to host a monthly radio program called Kuma Power Hour with Utada Hikaru on the InterFM station last April. (She did not host last month's program on January 21 due to health reasons.) She did contribute the song "Sakura Nagashi" as the ending theme for 2012's Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo (Evangelion Shin Gekijō-ban: Q), but her management emphasized that the song did not represent a full-fledged return from her hiatus.
Source: Sports Nippon Annex via Hachima Kikō
