From Yatsushiro City, Kumamoto Prefecture. Japanese singer Aki Yashiro made her debut in 1971 and broke through with the 1973 single/album “Namida Goi” (Tearful Love). Her other hits include “Ai no Shuchaku-Eki” (At the End of Love’s Line), “Mou Ichido Aitai” (I Want to See You Again), “Onna Minato-Machi” (Seaside Town Woman), and “Funa Uta” (Boatman’s Song). In 1980, Yashiro won the 22nd Annual Japan Record Award with the song “Ame no Bojo” (Longing for Love in the Rain). She is the best-selling female enka singer of all time.

Yashiro is also a recognized painter. Her work was accepted five years in a row by the prestigious Société des Artistes Français (Society of French Artists) for its annual exhibition, earning her permanent associate membership.

In recent years she has expanded her musical horizons, releasing the jazz album Yoru no Arubamu (Songs Around Midnight) in 2012. The record was released on streaming services in 75 countries, the most for any album by a Japanese artist in history, and won her the Jazz Artist of the Year Award at the 2013 Billboard Japan Music Awards.

In March 2013, Yashiro performed at the renowned New York jazz club Birdland, and was joined on stage by jazz singer Helen Merrill.

In October 2015, Yashiro released the blues album Aiuta (Songs of Sorrow).
In 2016, Yashiro was appointed Cultural Ambassador to Japan by the Mongolian government.
In October 2017, Yashiro released the jazz album Yoru no Tsuzuki (The Night Continued).
In June 2018, Yashiro performed with Sylvie Vartan during the French pop singer’s last Japanese tour.In August she was awarded the Order of the Polar Star, Mongolia’s highest state honor presented to foreign citizens.
Since April 2019 Yashiro has been hosting the weekly TV show Yashiro Aki Ii Uta Ii Hanashi (Aki Yashiro’s Good Music, Good Stories) on the Japanese satellite TV channel BS11.

In 2021, the 50th anniversary of her debut, Yashiro was presented with the Grand Prize at the Matsuo Entertainment Awards for her spectacular achievements in the Japanese music industry. On September 25 of that same year, Yashiro released Yashiro Aki Besuto Hitto (Aki Yashiro’s Greatest Hits) to commemorate her 50-year singing career.

DOMMUNE is Japan\\\\\\\'s first live streaming studio, which was opened in 2010 by Naohiro Ukawa, a unique figure in the contemporary Japanese art scene, as a base for disseminating new culture in the age of social streaming. It suddenly appeared as the "final media" in the age that was said to be the dawn of SNS, and among the profusion of live streaming programs, it boasts overwhelming program quality and number of viewers, and since its opening, it has continued to exist as a unique cultural platform where various guests from all over the world appear whenever they visit Japan. It also influenced the London-based music channel BOILER ROOM, and DOMMUNE is in charge of the Japanese branch of BOILER ROOM TOKYO. It is no exaggeration to say that DOMMUNE created the template for almost all of the sound and art streaming and culture streaming that is currently overflowing around the world. Over the past 14 years, they have distributed approximately 5,000 programs, approximately 10,000 hours, and 300 terabytes of content, with a total audience of over 200 million. In an age where the traditional concepts and formats of "broadcasting," "publishing," and "advertising" are collapsing, they have experimented with live video distribution and continue to innovatively explore new possibilities for visual communication day and night. In 2021, they received the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology\\\\\\\'s Art Encouragement Award.
https://www.dommune.com/

DOMMUNE, which was launched in March 2010 and is said to be the originator of live streaming channels in Japan, is an internet streaming station that has been broadcasting talk and live shows to the world for 14 years since its launch. The mastermind, Naohiro Ukawa, considers the act of shooting, distributing, and recording the programs produced daily in the studio to be his own "contemporary art" works. DOMMUNE\\\\\\\'s latest project, "LANDSCAPE MUZAK," is a series in which musicians from all over the world explore hidden and sacred places in Japan, perform live shows in villages that resonate with them, and turn the road movies into a program. The project also involves visualizing this worldview with collaborating artists and installing works in each region. Following the first collaboration with Terry Riley, whose live performance during the COVID-19 pandemic at the Kitazawa Flotation Plant site, dedicated to the Sado Gold Mine, which later became a World Heritage Site, became a hot topic worldwide, the second collaboration connects Yashiro Aki, who has had ties to Niigata and Sado since her days as a member of the "Truck Guys" in 1977, with Himezu Fishing Port, which boasts one of the largest squid catches in the prefecture. And the third collaboration treats the Noh stage of Sado Island, where Noh has become integrated into daily life, as an "acoustic device," and welcomes Haino Keiji to create a completely new Noh performance that returns to the origins of the expression "virtual Noh." "LANDSCAPE MUZAK" is an earthwork for the SNS era that makes full use of social streaming, and a site-specific post-exotica project.