generasia:Featured article for 2018 week 19
miwa
miwa is a Japanese pop singer-songwriter managed by Tristone Entertaiment Inc.
miwa began writing songs at 15. She began to teach herself how to play the guitar after she entered high school, but gave up and paid for professional lessons after discovering she wasn't making much progress on her own. Her high school had a ban on students having part-time jobs. Despite this, miwa secretly worked, and eventually used these savings by her second year of high school to buy a Gibson J-45 guitar. After this, miwa played live concerts mostly around Shimokitazawa in Tokyo and in Okinawa in the summer (her parents had a house there). Due to her high school also having a ban on students working in the entertainment business, she had to do these lives in secret (without even telling her school friends). In this time, miwa released two self-published independent singles, "Song for You / Today" and "Soba ni Itai Kara" in 2007 and 2008.
miwa was signed to Sony Music Entertainment Japan during her third year of high school. She debuted as an artist in 2010, while attending Keio University. Her debut single, "Don't Cry Anymore," was chosen to be used for the drama Nakanai to Kimeta Hi's theme song. The single was a minor commercial success, breaking the top 20 on Oricon's single charts and being certified by the RIAJ as selling 100,000 full length cellphone downloads a month after its release. In April 2010, the song won the award for best drama theme song at the 64th The Television Drama Academy Awards. miwa released her second single, "Little Girl," in late June. Her third single, "Change," was the twelfth opening theme song for the Bleach anime, and was a top 10 single.
Her 24th major single "Update" is released this week on May 9th.
