 Although her singing career has taken her all over Japan to perform, if she had time to spare these days, 31 year-old Natsukawa Rimi would choose to see more of her Ryukyu homeland. But this month's Center Stage star is too busy these days, having released both her 'Single Collection Vol. 1' album and her much anticipated, live 'Concert Tour 2004 ｰun-RIMI-tedｰ' DVD, this past March. Her "Single Collection Vol. 1," which was awarded the Nihon Record Grand Prize for excellence, is an anthology, containing all the singles from her previous "Nada Sou Sou" album, as well as some other recent hits, including "Kanayo Kanayo," written by Kazufumi Miyazawa of The Booms. ("Nada Sou Sou" was originally released in 2001, and spent 123 weeks on Oricon, Japan's equivalent of American Billboard magazine, becoming the new standard in Japanese pops.) The singles of this anthology have been described as "mellow, with the quality to transport the listener to a white sandy beach in the tropics," and in many, Natsukawa-san sings accompanied only by an acoustic guitar. The album has a total of fourteen tracks and is priced at ｴ2,800.
"Natsukawa Rimi Concert Tour 2004 ｰun-RIMI-tedｰ" has sixteen songs from her December 17, 2004 concert at the Nakano Sun Plaza Hall in Tokyo. Of course these too, are mainly of the Okinawan pop variety, but she does include "Asadoya Yunta" as well as her latest single, "Kokoro Tsutae" which is not on the collection of singles album. The live DVD is priced at ｴ4,900.
And so it goes that when Natsukawa-san was recently asked by a fan where an ideal vacation of one-week would see her going, she replied that after just doing some shopping on the main island of Okinawa, which would be her favorite way to relax, she would enjoy seeing those parts of Okinawa that she has never visited, such as the outer islands of Yaeyama, such as Yonaguni Island. She also yearns to spend more time on Hateruma Island, where her father is from, and on Iriomote Island, where her mother grew up. Natsukawa-san, whose real name is Kaneku Rimi, hails from Okinawa's Ishigaki Island and although, by her own admission, she doesn't swim, she has scuba dived there once and would like to do so again!. A veritable tropical paradise (and world-famous dive spot,) Ishigaki is located some 250 miles southwest of Okinawa Island, and is part of the Yaeyama Island group, the most remote and southwestern region of Japan. Located just north of the Tropic of Cancer, the Yaeyama Islands lie at nearly the same latitude as Honolulu and Miami and are closer to Taiwan than to Okinawa Island, much less than to the Japanese mainland. Life in Ishigaki is laid back and that mellow island atmosphere infuses Natsukawa's pure and gentle singing style.
In talking about what has influenced her singing style and career most, Natsukawa-san points to her father, Natsukawa Shizuo, as being her main creative mentor and influence. "It was from him that I learned enka, and thinking about it now, I am so glad that he taught me not just Okinawa style lullabies and pops, but enka as well, as I can draw upon all of these forms for inspiration." Her father can vividly recall that from the time she was three years old, her musical sense of timing was perfect. "Even as a little girl, she could sing Ishikawa Sayuri's well-known, "Tsugaru kaikyo fuyu geshiki" all the way to the end and while she really couldn't clearly pronounce all the words, she had a such a good sense of timing and rhythm. I knew then that she could become a singer." Shizuo-san plays the sanshin and performs traditional Okinawan style music, and the year she sang "Tsugaru kaikyo fuyu geshiki."
From the time she decided to set her sights on becoming a professional singer, she stopped singing traditional Okinawan music because of how it requires a unique style that she didn't want to only be confined to. Also, she didn't play the sanshin. In talking about that, she comments, "my father felt that my becoming an enka singer would lead to wider avenues, musically. When I was a little girl, I had the impression that all singing done in front of an audience was enka! I had my particular favorite songs, but if I didn't finish the songs my father assigned me to rehearse, he wouldn't sing me those of the entertainers that I liked. He would even give me marks on the lyrics, for how much emotion I put into my singing. And every day when I got home from school, I'd have to practice singing first and foremost, even if friends had come over to our house to play, they had to wait until I was down practicing. Our joint family dream was to appear on NHK's "Kouhaku Uta Gassesn."
Well-known Okinawa singing group, BEGIN, (who composed "Nada Sou Sou,") remembers that their first encounter with the young Rimi-chan was at a festival in Ishigaki. Her older sister, Mayumi, was a classmate of the band members.
She later went on to try out for Ryukyu Radio's "It's Your Turn to be a Karaoke Champion," and program announcer, Yanagi Taku, recalls what an impression Rimi-chan made on the program staff. "At rehearsal, her performance was pretty usual in terms of quality, but the talent she displayed when it came time for the actual, live-air program, just blew everybody away." NHK talent program director, Fujiyama Saburo, has similar recollections of how when he met her for the first time, she was such a shining star, with an obvious great future in store.
But when getting her career off the ground in Tokyo initially suffered some setbacks, Rimi returned home and disappointed, was soothed by her father's calm advice to give things a little more time. She decided to go to the Okinawa mainland, to visit Mayumi who was running a pub in Naha city. Rimi decided to stay on and help her.
Mayumi remembers those times clearly:"When Rimi came back from Tokyo, she didn't even have a karaoke microphone. So, when customers would ask her to sing, she would just pretend she had one, and she sang with an air mike that just made it all the more obvious how much she loved to sing! I can remember that some customers would even cry, listening to her sing her more moving numbers. And soon, people started to come to the pub just to listen to her. It got around by word of mouth how good she was, and the place would become completely packed. Her karaoke selection was mainly Western music and she sang hits from all the super-star women artists like Whitney Houston, Celine Dion and Mariah Carey. I guess she liked songs that required the full power of her voice. Her best song was the theme song from the "Titantic."Yanagi Taku-san also recalls that these same types of songs were the ones she loved listening to while she was at the radio station, music that required a singer's full voice or complete power.
One of the customers that frequented Mayumi's pub, Yasutani-san, offered Rimi-chan a chance to become a regular on the radio program he directed, "Ishi-chan's Vitamin Radio."Natsukawa-san remembers the initial anxiety she felt at the time. "I really wasn't a very talkative person, so I worried about how it would go. But the staff and everybody there were all around my same age, and so gradually, I could just open up and be natural and enjoy myself in that situation."Mayumi as well reflects on her sister's shyness."She never really talked much in contests when she was little, and being on stage made her nervous. And usually the night before a contest, she would come down with a fever, I remember that. Even before her first "Kouhaku Uta Gassen," she had a fever the night before, as well."
To look at Natsukawa-san in concert these days, however, you would never believe that she used to have a problem talking on stage. She is so at home and comfortable when she performs, and yes, loves to talk to the audience.
Purity of voice is synonymous with Natsukawa Rimi. She is not only a singer, but also a lyricist and composer, who likes to stay creatively responsive to the types of songs that her fans love. "I'll always sing to my fullest ability, short of running my voice into the ground," she comments. "It's a difficult thing today to be an artist, as there are so many talented people who write both their own music and play an instrument. So I also have to write, but time is always a constraint for me, I don't have enough of it. I might watch movies as an outside stimulus but I need creative input from other things as well for ideas for songs."
Kurosawa Kaoru of the five-man cappella band, The Gospellers, talks about music and Natsukawa as well."It's not enough for a song to simply be just good these days. An artist has to have the ability to quickly grasp a song's essence. In this day and age of studio recording where an artist's musical sense and rhythm can be simulated electronically, songs can get perfectly recorded in under four takes, say, even if your voice cracks in the studio. But there really aren't musicians who, unaided, could get a song right in just four takes. Natsukawa-san's voice has the same captivating qualities of a little girl's voice. Her musical feeling is good, as is her ability to enter the essence of a song. All these natural abilities combined are rare, and I can't think of other singers off hand who possess all these qualities. I mean, to naturally possess all of those talents puts you in the class of say Misora Hibari. Natsukawa's songs have the ability to pull in what is the immediate surroundings, as well as draw upon other good music. And even though her songs might not originate from the deepest depth of her being, they have incorporated any number of outside elements. I think she is a treasure in Japanese music today, and should be carefully nurtured." Kurosawa actually requested Natsukawa-san to write a song for the group, which apparently took her around three years to finish.
Natsukawa Rimi likes to think that she, at this point in her life, has four familiesﾑ her parents, sisters and more than ten nephews and nieces in Ishigaki; the friends who helped her out during her Okinawa radio/singing in her sister's pub era; the staff and employees who work with her now on her concert/record tours; and her fellow musician friends, who all treat her with the same love and affection they would bestow upon a real sister. And if affection were the only measure, quite clearly, her fans would also count her as a family member as well!
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