Akihiro Maruyama, better known by his stage nameAkihiro Miwa, is a Japanese singer, actor, director, composer, author and drag queen.
Career
He started his career at 17 as a professional cabaret singer in the Ginza district in Chūō, Tokyo, when moving to Tokyo in 1952. He started working in various nightclubs singing his favourites from the French chansons such as those of Édith Piaf, Yvette Guilbert and Marie Dubas. His claim to fame came rather early in 1957, with a smash-hit called "Me Que Me Que", which included a string of profanities not used in media at the time. He was also renowned for his effeminate beauty, making him a hit with the media. He performed a monthly show at Shibuya Jean-Jean called "Akihiro Miwa no Sekai" from the 1970s until its closure in 2000, as well as touring Japan.
In 1964, Miwa first released the ":ja:ヨイトマケの唄|Yoitomake no Uta" after giving a show at a small mining town, due to a mistake by a producer. While he was not entirely willing to perform at first, he was touched at the sight of workers who had come to see him, having bought their tickets with the little wages miners received then. Miwa was "ashamed and embarrassed of , standing before them in flamboyant clothes", and also that he did not have a song "for them". This experience inspired him to write "Yoitomake no Uta", as well as his rule to not crossdress or wear any of his usual extravagant clothing or make-up when he sang this song, wearing instead the shabby, dark clothes of a post-World War II child and dyeing his literally yellow hair to a more natural black. While the song was a big success – a working song which tells of a mother's love for her child as she works as a "yoitomake", and a child's determination to not let his mother's effort go to waste after being teased for being the child of a "yoitomake", based on a story of a childhood friend of Miwa – it was criticised by the then-:ja:日本民間放送連盟|NAB for using several "discriminating" words, with Yoitomake being one of them. The song was eventually banned from commercial broadcasting, leading to an outcry among viewers and Miwa himself that it was being judged by one word from the title, and not the content. After numerous covers were made of the song by artists such as Kyu Sakamoto and Kuwata Keisuke, "Yoitomake no Uta" was broadcast nationwide in the 2012 63rd NHK Kōhaku Uta Gassen. Miwa appeared in his old, plain showboy-like costume, singing in the dark with only faint pinspot light for the audience to barely distinguish his face, as his request.
Television and film
Although Miwa is better known as a cabaret singer he has also appeared in a number of films, beginning as a laundry boy in the film ' in 1961. He also appeared in Shuji Terayama's Aomori-ken no Semushi Otoko in 1967. In 1968 he starred in and composed the theme song for Kinji Fukasaku's Black Lizard, based on Yukio Mishima's stage adaptation of the Edogawa Rampo novel; Mishima also had a cameo in the film as an embalmed corpse. The next year he made another film with Fukasaku, Black Rose Mansion. In recent years he has voiced characters in Hayao Miyazaki's internationally successful anime films Princess Mononoke and Howl's Moving Castle, and appeared in Takeshi Kitano's 2005 filmTakeshis. In March 2007, he performed the role of Empress Sisi in the play L'aigle à deux têtes by writer Jean Cocteau at Parco Theatre in Shibuya. In 2009, Miwa voiced the Pokémon Arceus in the film . From 2005 to 2010, he co-hosted the successful weekly television programŌra no izumi '' alongside spiritual counsellor Hiroyuki Ehara and Tokio member Taichi Kokubun. While the show initially aired as late-night program, its popularity bumped it up to a primetime slot in 2007.
