Imaginary interview with Ayumi Hamasaki
by Charactorium · Ayumi Hamasaki (1978 — ?) · Literature · Economics · Performing Arts · 6 min read
Tokyo, a quiet rehearsal studio in Shibuya, a few hours before a recording session. On the coffee table: a worn lyric notebook and a hearing aid placed next to a water bottle. Ayumi Hamasaki, soft-spoken but sharp-eyed, agrees to look back on thirty years of a career she says she led “like a long confession.”
—Do you remember the moment you left Fukuoka?
I was seventeen years old with a bag too light for what I thought I was going to conquer. In Fukuoka, I was leaving a modest childhood in southern Japan, and I went up to Tokyo alone—no agent, no money, no one to tell me it was madness—which, in hindsight, probably saved me. I went through a series of small jobs, hours on my feet smiling at customers who didn't look at me, and at night I kept a little pride in my pocket. People often ask if I was afraid. I tamed fear on the subway, gazing at tired faces that looked like mine. When Avex Trax spotted me in 1997, I didn't feel relief. I felt that the real ordeal was finally beginning.
No one to tell me it was madness—which, in hindsight, probably saved me.
—What do you keep from those years of survival before success?
A certain harshness toward myself, and infinite tenderness for those who doubt. On the streets of Shibuya, the neighborhood that beats at the heart of the Japanese music industry, I understood that the city owes you nothing: it takes those who insist. I slept little, ate poorly, but I was already jotting down snippets of phrases on receipts. That hunger—the real one, of the belly, and the other, of the soul—fueled my first album two years later. People think J-pop is made of glitter. For me, it was born in a freezing apartment and a half-filled notebook. You don't manufacture a voice: you earn it through nights you'd rather forget.
The city owes you nothing: it takes those who insist.
—How would you describe your way of writing lyrics?
I never knew how to write what I hadn't lived. In 1999, I told a journalist from Rockin'On Japan that music should be a sincere confession, not a manufactured product—and I still believe it, word for word. Every lyric I set down must be truthful, torn from my own experience, otherwise it sounds false to my ears before it ever reaches others'. My lyric notebook never leaves me; it's scribbled, stained, sometimes soaked with tears I only admit to in private. A Song for ××, my first album, was already that: a diary disguised as pop. Melodies, you can share, entrust to arrangers. Words, no. Words are my skin.
Melodies, you can entrust to others. Words are my skin.
—Why insist on writing every lyric yourself, in an industry that produces fast?
Because without that, I'd just be a face on a cover. Many young female singers of my era were idols, shaped from A to Z by their agency, adorable and interchangeable. I refused to be an object to be filled. In the evening, it's my time: nights are my secret studio, when silence finally lets you hear what rumbles inside. I write alone, for a long time, until the sentence stops lying. My producers at Avex knew it—they could discuss everything except my lyrics. That demand cost me friendships and a lot of sleep. But when a teenage girl tells me one of my songs kept her from sinking, I know why I fought for every comma.
I refused to be an object to be filled.
—What did dominating the charts in the late 1990s mean to you?
A vertigo, honestly. In 1999, I became the first Japanese artist to place five number-one singles in the same year on the Oricon, that chart which, in our country, crowns or condemns. Then in 2000, Duty crossed three million copies. Three million people bringing home a little crystal case, a CD single with its illustrated booklet, like bringing home a talisman. It was the peak of the physical disc, just before everything shifted to digital. Today I realize how lucky I was to reign at that precise moment, when holding music in your hand still had weight, a smell of new plastic. They called me the empress of pop. I preferred to think I was just an insomniac who got lucky.
A CD, like bringing home a talisman.
—How did you experience the shift to digital and streaming?
Like watching a tide rise: you can curse it, but it will rise anyway. I grew up in the era of the collectible CD single, those limited editions fans would snatch up around the crossing of Shibuya. Then came i-mode phones, ringtones, and soon the strange idea that you could own all the music in the world without holding anything. I had to relearn my craft more than once. My countermeasure was the stage: at the Tokyo Dome, sold out, you can't download sweat, or the vertigo of a set collapsing in a rain of lights. Streaming dematerialized music. It never succeeded in dematerializing presence. There, on the boards, I remained irreplaceable.
Streaming dematerialized music. Never presence.
—People say you controlled every detail of your image. Why that insistence?
Because my image was still my words, but in silence. I was one of the first Japanese artists to handle all my art direction: videos, covers, costumes. I even took up photography, an old film camera in hand, supervising shoots like proofreading a text. On stage, I could change costumes five or six times in a concert—gothic dresses, angelic silhouettes, futuristic armor stitched by great couturiers. It wasn't coquetry. Each costume told a fragment of the song. Entrusting that to others meant accepting that my language would be poorly translated. I preferred to carry it all, even if it exhausted me. An artist who delegates her face ends up not recognizing herself in the mirror.
My image was still my words, but in silence.
—What would you say to those who dream of that creative autonomy today?
That it comes at a very high price, and it's worth every yen. When I started, a woman who insisted on approving her visuals was seen as capricious; a man, as visionary. I absorbed that imbalance by working twice as hard—validating costumes in the afternoon at Avex, then writing my lyrics at night. Cultural globalization has opened immense doors—J-pop and K-pop now circulate everywhere—but it has also accelerated the grinding machine. My advice is in one sentence: learn to say no before you learn to smile. Keep a territory, even tiny, where no one decides for you. That patch of land, for me, was my notebook and my videos. It allowed me to stand for thirty years.
Learn to say no before you learn to smile.
—You kept singing while losing your hearing. How did it begin?
As early as 2000, that very year Duty triumphed, I felt my left ear slowly fading. A rare disease, they told me, irreversible. Imagine: at the peak of sales, applauded by entire halls, I was losing access to the sound that was my reason for living. I revealed that deafness in my left ear, then in 2017 I announced, on my official website, that the other ear had abandoned me as well. On my bedside table, a hearing aid—an object I no longer hid. Singing on pitch without hearing yourself means trusting the body's memory, the vibrations in your chest, an instinct learned through pain. I turned a loss into discipline.
Singing without hearing yourself means trusting the body's memory.
—Where do you find the strength to continue despite this growing silence?
In faces, in letters, in those millions of people who wrote to me after 2017 to say my deafness gave them courage. I didn't want to be an example. Life decided otherwise. When I step onto the stage at Yokohama Arena and feel the floor tremble under the cheers, I no longer really hear the crowd—I feel it, which is perhaps truer still. I understood late that my music never needed my ears, but my stubbornness. I was given success, wealth, then my inner silence was taken away. So I turned that silence into a material, as others turn sound. That, I believe, is when I became a true artist.
My silence was taken away. I turned it into a material, as others turn sound.
This imaginary interview was generated by artificial intelligence from sources documented in Ayumi Hamasaki's profile. It dramatises what the figure might have said based on what we know about them, but does not constitute attested historical testimony. For primary sources and factual documentation, refer to the full profile.