Overview
, known professionally as , is a Japanese singer-songwriter, known for being one of the most popular Japanese idols of the 1980s. Since then, she is still actively releasing new singles and albums, doing annual summer concert tours, winter dinner shows, high-profile TV commercials and movies, and makes frequent TV appearances and radio broadcasts.
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 as 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 from 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 for 25 number-one hits for general artist from 1983 to 2000 (broken by B'z) and for female solo artist (broken by Ayumi Hamasaki in 2010). Matsuda was the overall finale performer 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 (until 2020).
Early life and family
Noriko Kamachi was born on 10 March 1962, in Chikuhō, Mizuma, Fukuoka Prefecture (present-day Arakimachi, Kurume, Fukuoka Prefecture), as the eldest daughter of her parents. She was born in a state of suspended animation due to a difficult birth at Kōradai Hospital, where her aunt was the director's wife. Her father was a government official at the Ministry of Health and Welfare and her mother was from a family of former village heads from Yame. She is a descendant of Kamachi Akimori of the Kamachi clan, the lords of Yanagawa Castle who were the most powerful feudal lords in Chikugo Province in the service of the Ōtomo clan in the Sengoku period.
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).