Yumi Matsutoya facts for kids

Yumi Matsutoya (松任谷 由実, Matsutōya Yumi, born January 19, 1954), known to many as Yuming (ユーミン, Yūmin), is a famous Japanese singer, composer, and pianist. She usually writes both the words and music for her songs. Yuming is well-known for her unique voice and exciting live shows. She is one of the most important people in the history of Japanese popular music.

Yumi Matsutoya has sold over 42 million records, making her very successful. In 1990, her album The Gates of Heaven was the first album in Japan to sell over two million copies. She has had twenty-one albums reach number one on the Oricon music charts. She is also the only artist to have a number-one album every year for 18 years in a row!

Before becoming a singer, she worked as a session musician (playing music for other artists). She started her singing career in 1972. In her early days, she used her birth name, Yumi Arai (荒井 由実, Arai Yumi). In 1975, she became famous as a songwriter for "Ichigo Hakusho wo Mou Ichido," a hit song for the folk duo BanBan. That same year, her song "Ano Hi ni Kaeritai" became her first number-one hit as a singer. Another one of her well-known songs is "Haru-yo, Koi."

She also uses the name Kureta Karuho (呉田軽穂) when she writes songs for other musicians. This name is a fun play on the name of the famous Swedish film star Greta Garbo.

Biography

Early Life and Musical Beginnings

Yumi Arai was born in 1954 in Hachiōji, Tokyo, Japan. She grew up with three brothers and one sister. Her family owned a fabric shop called Arai Gofukuten, which opened in 1912. When she was in junior high school, Yumi often visited an Italian restaurant called Chianti. Many famous people went there, including Akira Kurosawa and Yukio Mishima. One of these regulars, Hiroshi "Monsieur" Kamayatsu, later became her first record producer.

Her nickname "Yuming" was given to her by a Chinese bassist named Sy Chen when she was 13 years old. Yumi started her music journey very young. At 14, she worked as a musician for the first time. She also wrote many original songs. When she was 17, her first song, "Ai wa Totsuzen ni," was released. It was sung by Katsumi Kahashi, a guitarist from the band The Tigers.

In April 1972, Yumi started studying at Tama Art University. At the same time, she signed with a music company called Alfa. At first, she wanted to be only a songwriter. However, the company's founder, Kunihiko Murai, encouraged her to become a singer-songwriter.

Music Career: Yumi Arai Era

On July 5, 1972, Yumi Arai released her first single, "Henji wa Iranai." It was produced by Hiroshi "Monsieur" Kamayatsu. This first song only sold about 300 copies. Later, a new version of this song appeared on her first full album.

Her first album, Hikō-ki Gumo, was released in November 1973. She recorded it with a band called Caramel Mama, also known as Tin Pan Alley. The main song from this album was later used as the theme for the movie The Wind Rises (2013). For her next album, MISSLIM (1974), Masataka Matsutoya arranged all her songs. He later became her husband.

Her third album, Cobalt Hour (1975), included her early famous song "Sotsugyō Shashin." This song was covered by many Japanese artists and became a classic pop song. In the same year, the folk duo BanBan had a number-one hit with her song "Ichigo Hakusho o Mou Ichido." This made her well-known as a songwriter.

Yumi had good success with her fifth single, Rouge no Dengon ("Message in Rouge"). This upbeat song is seen as an early J-Pop classic. She even performed it on TV with the popular girl group Candies.

Her first number-one hit as a singer-songwriter was her sixth single, "Ano Hi ni Kaeritai." In August 1975, it became the theme song for a TV drama. When it was released as a single two months later, it quickly reached the top of the Oricon chart. The 14th Moon (1976) was her last album released under the name Yumi Arai. This album also reached number one on the Oricon chart. By the end of 1976, three of her albums were in the top 10 of the Japanese charts. This was an amazing achievement that no one has matched since.

In 1989, two of her early songs, "Rouge no Dengon" and "Yasashisa ni Tsutsumaretanara," were used as theme songs for the popular film Kiki's Delivery Service. These songs are still some of her most famous early works. Yumi Matsutoya's music was influenced by Western artists like Joni Mitchell and Carole King. She was a pioneer in mixing Western and Japanese pop music.

Music Career: Yumi Matsutoya Era

After marrying Masataka Matsutoya on November 29, 1976, Yumi decided to continue her music career using her married name. In 1978, she released her first album as Yumi Matsutoya, called Benisuzume. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, she released two albums every year. While these albums were not as big as her earlier ones, they still reached the top 10 on the Oricon chart, and she wrote many well-known songs during this time.

Her tenth album, Surf and Snow (1980), helped turn things around. At first, it didn't sell as well. But in 1986, the song "Koibito ga Santa Claus" became popular as the theme song for the hit movie Take Me out to the Snowland [jp]. The album then sold over 400,000 copies.

In 1981, Yumi Matsutoya returned to the top of Japanese pop music. She wrote "Mamotte Agetai" as the theme song for the movie Nerawareta Gakuen. This song sold nearly 700,000 copies and reached number two on Oricon. After this success, her eleventh album Sakuban Oaishimasho (1981) became her second number-one album. From that year until 1997, 17 of her studio albums in a row reached number one on the Oricon charts.

Yumi Matsutoya also published an autobiography called Rouge no Dengon in 1982. She is also known for her amazing and creative concert sets. She uses advanced visual technology on stage, which can cost a lot of money. She has released two live albums and several concert videos.

Commercial Success and Later Years

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Yumi Matsutoya's album sales grew even more. Before the Diamond Dust Fades.... (1987) sold more than any of her previous albums. Delight Slight Light KISS (1988) was her first album to sell over a million copies. From this album in 1988 to Kathmandu in 1995, she released eight studio albums, and all of them sold over a million copies. Two of these, The Gates of Heaven (1990) and The Dancing Sun (1994), sold over two million copies. The Gates of Heaven was the first album in Japan to sell over two million copies.

Her albums from this time, like The Gates of Heaven, showed the hopeful mood in Japan during the late 1980s and early 1990s. She was often called the "Charisma of Youth" or "The Enthusiastic Leader of Love." To encourage people to buy albums, she stopped releasing physical singles for about four years in the early 1990s. Her albums The Gates of Heaven (1990), Dawn Purple (1991), and Tears And Reasons (1992) all did very well.

However, in autumn 1993, she released "Manatsu no Yo no Yume," her first physical single in four years. It was the theme song for a TV drama and sold over 1.4 million copies, becoming her most successful single ever. The next year, she had two more million-selling singles: "Hello, My Friend" and "Haru-yo, Koi." Both were used in TV dramas. These popular songs were also on her album The Dancing Sun, which became her second album to sell over two million copies.

Yumi Matsutoya has been interested in the spiritual world for many years, and this interest often appears in her songs, especially in the 1990s.

In August 1996, about twenty years after her marriage, Yumi Matsutoya performed three concerts in Tokyo as Yumi Arai again. Parts of these live shows were released on video and CD. After her 29th album, The Waves of Zuvuya (1997), her record sales started to slow down.

Even though she had not wanted to release compilation albums before, in 1998, she released a double album called Neue Musik: Yumi Matsutoya Complete Best Vol. 1. It had 28 songs, including two new ones recorded with the original members of Tin-Pan-Alley. Fans even voted for some of the songs on this album. It became her biggest-selling album and her last to sell over four million copies.

Recent Years and AI Collaboration

After her successful compilation album, Yumi Matsutoya decided to make the music she truly wanted to create. Since 1999, she has released eight more studio albums.

In 2013, it was announced that her song Hikouki Gumo would be the closing theme for the Studio Ghibli film The Wind Rises. She also wrote the theme song for the Japanese release of The Little Prince, called "Kidzukazu Sugita Hatsukoi."

Between 2020 and 2021, Yumi and her husband found an unreleased song from the late 1970s or early 1980s. They thought it sounded "oddly fresh" but "impossible to recreate" today. They learned about a research team at the University of Tokyo studying voice sampling and music created with artificial intelligence (AI). They gave the song to the team to see if her old voice could be used to make new melodies. While the first results were not exactly what they imagined, parts of it were used to create the song "Call me back," released in September 2022. This song was called a collaboration between Yumi Matsutoya and "AI Yumi Arai."

A few years later, the couple found a singing software called Synthesizer V Studio. They realized that this software, combined with the progress in AI research, could help them use AI Yumi Arai's old voice samples even better. They created a special way of making music called the "Chrono Recording System." This system mixes Yuming's current voice with the AI version of her voice to create songs that "travel between the past and the present." Her husband announced in February 2025 that this system would be used for her 40th studio album, which is expected to be released later in the fall of 2025.

Awards and Recognition

Yumi Matsutoya was honored with the Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon in 2013. This medal recognizes people who have made important contributions in arts, academics, or sports. In 2022, she was also named a Person of Cultural Merit.

Working with Other Artists

Songwriting for Others

Yumi Matsutoya has written hundreds of songs for other artists, including Hi-Fi Set, Asami Kobayashi, Kenji Sawada, and Hiromi Gō. Some of these became big hits, like "Ichigo Hakusho o Mou Ichido" (for Banban, 1975) and "Machibuse" (for Seiko Miki and Hitomi Ishikawa, 1975).

Many of her hit songs were sung by the idol singer Seiko Matsuda. Several songs written by Matsutoya for Matsuda reached number one on the Oricon singles chart, such as "Akai Sweet Pea," "Nagisa no Balcony" (1982), and "Hitomi wa Diamond" (1986). These are some of Matsuda's most famous songs. When Yumi writes for other musicians, she often uses her special name, Kureta Karuho (呉田軽穂).

Collaborations and Duets

On her early albums, several famous Japanese singer-songwriters, who were not yet well-known, sang as backing vocalists. These included Tatsuro Yamashita, Taeko Onuki, and Akiko Yano. Throughout her long career, Yumi Matsutoya has sung duets with many singers, such as Takao Kisugi and Toshinobu Kubota.

She has also released several collaboration singles with other musicians. In 1985, she released the song "Imadakara" with Kazumasa Oda and Kazuo Zaitsu. In 1986, Matsutoya co-wrote "Kissin' Christmas" with Keisuke Kuwata, the leader of Southern All Stars. This song was a collaboration between two of Japan's most successful songwriters, but it was only shown on TV and never officially released.

In 1992, Matsutoya worked with Karl Smokey Ishii on the single "Ai no Wave." She wrote this song and the B-side "Roman no Dengon" with him. The single became a hit. The title "Roman no Dengon" was a playful nod to her own song "Rouge no Dengon" and Kome Kome Club's "Roman Hikou."

In 2005, Matsutoya formed a group called "Yumi Matsutoya and Friends of Love the Earth" with four artists from East Asia: Dick Lee (Singapore), Lim Hyung Joo (South Korea), amin (China), and Xu Ke (China). Matsutoya wrote the song "Smile Again" for this new group. They performed it at the Expo 2005 concert and on the TV music program Kohaku Uta Gassen.

In 2006, she wrote "Still Crazy for You" for Crazy Cats, a Japanese comedy team. She sang a duet with their vocalist, Kei Tani. This song became the group's highest-charting single ever.

In 2012, Yumi went to London to record "A Whiter Shade of Pale" with Procol Harum, a band that inspired her. She sang a duet with Gary Brooker on this new version of the 1967 classic. Yumi and Procol Harum then performed a series of concerts in Japan in December.

Discography

Studio Albums

• Hikō-ki Gumo (1973) (credited to "Yumi Arai")
• Misslim (1974) (credited to "Yumi Arai")
• Cobalt Hour (1975) (credited to "Yumi Arai")
• 14-banme no Tsuki (The 14th Moon) (1976) (credited to "Yumi Arai")
• Benisuzume (1978)
• Ryūsenkei '80 (1978)
• Olive (1979)
• Kanashii Hodo Otenki (The Gallery in My Heart) (1979)
• Toki no Nai Hotel (1980)
• Surf and Snow Volume One (1980)
• Mizu no Naka no Asia e (1981)
• Sakuban Oaishimashō (1981)
• Pearl Pierce (1982)
• Reincarnation (1983)
• Voyager (1983)
• No Side (1984)
• Da-Di-Da (1985)
• Alarm à la mode (1986)
• Diamond Dust ga Kienumani (Before the Diamond Dust Fades...) (1987)
• Delight Slight Light Kiss (1988)
• Love Wars (1989)
• Tengoku no Door (The Gates of Heaven) (1990)
• Dawn Purple (1991)
• Tears and Reasons (1992)
• U-miz (1993)
• The Dancing Sun (1994)
• Kathmandu (1995)
• Cowgirl Dreamin' (1997)
• Suyua no Nami (The Wave of Zuvuya) (1997)
• Frozen Roses (1999)
• Acacia (2001)
• Wings of Winter, Shades of Summer (2002)
• Yuming Compositions: Faces (2003)
• Viva! 6×7 (2004)
• A Girl in Summer (2006)
• Soshite Mouichido Yumemiru Darou (And I Will Dream Again...) (2009)
• Road Show (2011)
• Pop Classico (2013)
• Uchū Toshokan (Universal Library) (2016)
• Shinkai no Machi (2020)

Honors

• Medal with Purple Ribbon (2013)
• Person of Cultural Merit (2022)

See also

In Spanish: Yumi Arai para niños

• List of best-selling music artists in Japan