BY KEI SHIRAHAMA

Ayumi Hamasaki's best album 'A-BEST' was released on 28th March, 2001. It has sold over 3,500,000 copies, and it is big hit. The costumes of her CD jackets or those she wears in music programs on TV are original, and influence women. So she has gained popularity as a fashion leader with her own designs. And she has won many prizes, such as the Japanese Record Prize and the Best Jeanist Prize, for her songs and fashion. She is the reigning queen of song. In many cases people notice her looks, but the reason that Ayumi Hamasaki, a 22 year old woman, catches people's hearts and is loved by everyone is because the world of her words enters their hearts.

She was born in Fukuoka in 1978, and because her parents divorced, she was brought up at home by her mother and grandmother, but her mother and grandmother were always so busy that since the time she was in elementary school, and to overcome her loneliness, she came to dislike other people and not to believe in others.

Her daily life of balancing school and job as a model after she had decided to go to high school in Tokyo was very trying. And she came to think, "I don't have to make friends with people I talk to about our future if I can enjoy my time with them," because her feeling of distrust grew to include her surroundings.

Eventually she left school and the office. And she spent her days fooling around long into the night. While living such a life, she was spotted by 'avex trax,' and she came out. Since that time she has released 22 single CDs, 12 album CDs, nine videos and eight DVDs. She has achieved popularity dramatically and is now regarded as a best singer in modern day Japan.

The reasons for her popularity are her charm and her ability as a singer. She has set out the truth in all her songs ever since she made her first record. And she has been singing the words of her world in her beautiful and vigorous singing voice. Her works are composed under the idea "I can't write a lie. I can't write words in fancy. I want to set down my experiences or my friends' experiences while looking at other positions. I want to express my real feeling as a word in my songs. And I want to be honest to myself at all times."

And the song that best expresses her world of words is 'A Song for XX.' This song was first recorded in 'A-BEST.' And these words were written in the days when she was pulled between herself and her surroundings or by people in society when she came out and was becoming a star.

A Song for XX

Why are you crying?

Why are you missing your own way?

Why do you stop?

Please tell me the reason.

When can I become a person?

When can I continue to be a child?

Where have I been running from?

And where must I continue to run to?

I had no place I could be in. I couldn't find it.

I didn't know what I could expect from my future.

People continued to say, "You are a tough child" all the time.

People said to me, "You are great, because you didn't cry."

I didn't wish for such words,

so I behaved as if I couldn't understand them.

Why are you laughing?

Why are you by me?

Why are you leaving me?

Please tell me the reason.

When did you come to be tough?

When did you feel the weakness of yourself?

Please tell me when we can come to understand each other,

I'm waiting for the time.

The sun will rise soon. I have to go soon.

I shouldn't stay in the same place for a long time.

"If I believe other people, I'll be left alone by them some day," I thought.

I had no power to believe my surroundings in those days.

Maybe I knew too many things.

People continued to say, " You are a tough child" all the time.

People said to me, " You are great because you didn't cry."

People said such things to me more and more,

I came to feel only laughing was trying.

I was born lonely and I had to live by myself.

Such a daily life was normal, I thought.

In this song, she depicts a 'feeling of distrust of her surroundings and of herself in the past and now' and 'anxiety about the future.' But she depicts the feeling that people want to change into something with a hope deeper than their feelings, as people try with resignation to finish everything they do by singing these words 'The sun will rise soon. I have to go soon. I shouldn't stay in the same place for a long time.' In Ayumi Hamasaki's world of words, she depicts her real feelings in the recesses of her mind which want hope and love and trust in her surroundings, while she depicts trying to live vividly the experiences of her life.

In a society where people avoid believing in and loving other people since such things are difficult, the singing of her own words voices with much power her real feelings as a person: today Ayumi Hamasaki enters people's hearts, and they identify themselves with her and love her, because they retain the same feelings and weakness in the recesses of their minds, just as she does. Ayumi will continue to enter people's hearts and to reign as the best singer in modern society of Japan as long as the attitude behind her composing the words "I want to be honest to myself at all times" does not change.