, known by her maiden name , is a Japanese former singer, actress, and idol whose career lasted from 1972 to 1980. Often simply referred to by her given name "Momoe", Yamaguchi is one of the most successful singers in Japanese music, releasing 32 singles, including three number one hits, and 21 studio albums. She also starred in 15 feature films and several television serial dramas. At age 21, Yamaguchi retired at the height of her popularity to marry her frequent costar, Tomokazu Miura; she has never performed or made a public appearance since. Therefore, she is called a legendary idol in Japan.
Biography
Momoe Yamaguchi was born on 17 January 1959 at Tokyo Metropolitan Hiroo Hospital in Ebisu, Shibuya, Tokyo.
Not long afterwards she was left in the care of her maternal grandparents. At around four, she returned to her parents and the family then moved to Yokohama. Her father, a medical doctor who was married to another woman with children, was never married to her mother. The family moved once again to Yokosuka. Her mother raised Momoe and her younger sister Toshie by herself. Toshie Yamaguchi studied in the US from partway through high school to college while Momoe made a life in Japan. Momoe has a niece in the US whom she has never met.
Career
Yamaguchi began a career in show business while she was still a student in junior high school. At the end of 1972, at the age of 13, Yamaguchi, along with many of her schoolmates, applied by postcard to appear on the idol talent search television show Star Tanjō!. After a series of successful preliminary auditions, she appeared on the show covering a hit song "Kaiten Mokuba", by Yumi Makiba earlier that year (itself a cover of "Prima Vera" written by The Ventures). Though she finished second, Yamaguchi received offers from several music producers, and signed with Hori Productions. have credited its success to its suggestive lyrics. The refrain goes "If that's what you want, I'm okay with anything you do to me; I'm all right with rumors that I'm a bad girl".
Her early songs were written for her by the Hori Productions songwriting team of composer Shunichi Tokura and lyricist Kazuya Senge. and "We all experience, just once, the sweet snare of seduction". The suggestive lyrics attracted widespread press interest. The young singer was frequently asked salacious questions such as "What do you think a girl's most precious possession is?", to which she replied magokoro ("her devotion"). Songs were also written for her by writers such as Masashi Sada, who wrote one of her most popular hits, "Cosmos".
Her popularity as a singer was paralleled by rising success in a series of films and television programs. Her second film, Izu no Odoriko, paired her with actor Tomokazu Miura, chosen because he had previously done a commercial for Glico with her. Although Yamaguchi was 15 while Miura was 22, they had great screen chemistry, and became known as the Momoe-Tomokazu "golden combi". They starred together in a total of 14 of her 17 movies, one every winter and summer.
As she became popular, her father, Kubo, decided to cash in on her success. He held bogus "press conferences" unauthorized by either Yamaguchi or her management company, and in various ways disrupted her career. Since Yamaguchi was still a minor, he sued for the right of parental authority. The court case ended in a victory for her mother. Yamaguchi declared in her autobiographical book that she ended her relationship with her father, and would never acknowledge his existence again. She also expressed the regret that if she had not become famous, this would not have happened. She performed the farewell concert at the Nippon Budokan on 5 October 1980, released her last album This is my trial on 21 October 1980, and released her last single "Ichie" on 19 November 1980. By the time of her retirement, Yamaguchi was responsible for over 25% of the sales at Horipro. She also wrote the lyrics to this song under the pen name "Kei Yokosuka", and continued to write a few songs for a while after retirement, such as Ann Lewis's La Saison from 1982.
In her autobiographical book, Aoi Toki, she said that she disliked repeatedly singing the same songs.
On 15 October 1980, Yamaguchi officially retired from show business, and on 19 November 1980, the pair were married. Despite several rumors of her comeback, she has devoted herself to being a homemaker and mother to two sons. Her husband, Tomokazu Miura, continued to work as an actor, even though his career up to then had mostly consisted of playing romantic leads in her films and television series.