Chihiro Onitsuka | Profile Employing a mix of folk rock and heartfelt ballads in her guitar and vocal driven delivery, Chihiro Onitsuka fits into the singer/songwriter category of artist. Growing up on the island of Kyushu, south of Japan's main island Honshu, Onitsuka was raised listening to pure American pop like The Carpenters and Carole King. Influenced in high school by the American artist Jewel, with whom she shares several stylistic tendencies, she began writing and performing her own music at that time. After graduating from high school in 1999, Onitsuka moved to Tokyo to purse her career as a singer and songwriter. After writing approximately 60 songs in the six months after moving to Tokyo, Onitsuka made her debut with the single "Shine" in February 2000, but it failed break into the Oricon charts despite a decent buzz. Her second single, the emotionally charged vocal and piano-driven "Gekko", was selected as the theme song for the popular television drama Trick, triggering a long residence on the charts and topping out at #11. Two more singles, "Cage" and "Memai/Edge", followed, charting at #15 and #6 respectively. The full-length Insomnia was released in March 2001. The album was a monster hit, hitting #1 on the charts, selling over a million copies, and surprising an industry which had not expected sales of this magnitude. The success of Insomnia even caught the attention of people at Silicon Valley-based Applied Materials, and they chose the song "Innocence" to use in a nationally televised commercial. The single "Cage" saw US release on EMI in July 2000, but sales were not strong enough to merit the release of a full album. Onitsuka's music continued to sell well, with her 2002 second album This Armor hitting #3 on the charts, and her third album Sugar High hitting #2. In 2003, a box set of singles was released against her wishes, triggering a split from both her label (Toshiba-EMI) and management company in 2004. In June of the same year, Onitsuka named Sony Music Artists as her new management company, signing with the Universal subsidiary A&M Records as her label the next month and immediately becoming their top artist. In September 2004, Onitsuka turned heads at a Space Shower-sponsored concert when she performed as a secret guest, covering a Nirvana song in makeup that "would turn on Marilyn Manson", as one publication put it. The new look went hand in hand with a new single, the rougher "Sodatsu Zasso", which she debuted live at the same concert along with a Nirvana cover. The single dropped in October to high expectations, but on the day of release, Onitsuka surprisingly announced that she was taking a temporary break from the music business due to health reasons. by Bill Haw
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