Miho Nakayama

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Miho Nakayama is a famous Japanese model, actress, and a former J-pop (“Japanese pop,” referring to Japanese popular music) singer of the 1980s who was able to make a smooth and successful transition from pop star (“aidoru” in Japanese) to model and actress.

She was born in Koganei, Tokyo in Japan on March 1, 1970, and is known as the older sister to Shinobu Nakayama, also a J-pop star. Besides her J-pop career, Nakayama is highly recognized on Japanese television, appearing in a wide array of popular T.V. commercials, and is also renowned for her starring role as a high-school student trying to hide her true self in Nakayama Miho no Tokimeki High School, a Famicom Disk System dating sim.

Nakayama was first discovered by a scout while she was shopping in Harajuku, a popular teen hangout in Tokyo—this led to her J-pop and acting debut in 1985, when she was only 15 years old. Through her debut, she released the hit single, “C,” and also took a leading role in the teen flick Bee Bop High School (Bi bappu haisukuru) as Kyoko Izumi. She went on to make appearances in a few more films in the 80s—Bee Bop High School: Koko yotaro elegy (1986), reprising her role as Kyoko, and in 1989, Zatôichi and Docchinisuruno. However, while none of her roles in these films did much for her acting career, she was busy focusing on her J-pop career, releasing 17 albums in only five years.

Once the 1990s hit, Nakayama decided to stray from the predictable (and some would say overdone) J-pop music genre by actually writing her own songs and changing her tune, experimenting with jazz and Latin, and released another 23 albums before she “retired” from the music business.

Meanwhile, Nakayama finally broke through Japanese cinema with a critically acclaimed starring role as Itsuki Fujii/Hiroko Watanabe in the hit film Love Letter in 1995. Three years later, Love Letter managed to snag the coveted Audience Award at the Montreal Film Festival. In 1998, Nakayama appeared opposite Kimura Takuya in the dramatic T.V. series Nemureru mori, after which she appeared in a few more T.V. series and also the film Meoto manzai in 2001.

Nakayama has also been active as a model throughout the years, but has been most heavily involved more recently, in particular appearing in television commercials as a spokesmodel for JCB credit card, Kirin Beer, KOSE cosmetics, and NEC, a high-tech company.

The actress-singer-model is currently married to Jinsei Tsuji (as of June 3, 2002), an award-winning novelist and musician, and they have one son together. As of September 2006, the family is living in Paris, France.

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