Anna Tsuchiya

Anna Tsuchiya 土屋 アンナ
Background information
Birth name	Anna Marie Heider-Tsuchiya
Also known as	ANNA, Anna-T
Born	March 11, 1984 (1984-03-11) (age 25)
Origin	Tokyo, Japan
Genres	J-pop J-rock
Occupations	Singer lyricist actress model
Instruments	Vocals
Years active	2002–present
Labels	Mad Pray Records
Associated acts	Spin Aqua Josh Freese Wes Borland
Website	Anna T.com

Anna Tsuchiya (土屋 アンナ, Tsuchiya Anna^?) is a Japanese singer, lyricist, actress, and semi-retired model.^[1] Anna was born to a Japanese mother and an American father with Irish and Polish roots ^[2] She has a younger brother, Kenneth, and an older sister, Angela, who was a model as well.

Modeling career

Tsuchiya's career began at the age of fourteen after being suggested by her older sister Angela, who was an unsuccessful model.^[3] Tsuchiya entered the same agency as Angela, and was hired to model for Seventeen. Her demand grew, and by 2002 she was doing television ads for Uniqlo, Edwin, and Kosé products.

She tried hard to lose weight during her stint as a model. At 1.67m (5 ft 6 in) and 44 kg (97 lbs), she was considered to be overweight and short for a model in Japan.

She experienced mental and physical agony at the time, and can hardly remember anything she ate back then. After an incident when Tsuchiya was fifteen years old in which she awoke starving one morning to find that her legs didn't work owing to severe malnutrition, she was forced to drag herself — using only hands — to the refrigerator.

According to her, some models would tell her, laughing, "How can you keep modeling with no shame?", "What's up my little girl, how much did you eat yesterday?", or simply, "Oh my god! You're one ugly fat bastard!" and then laughed at her. Someone said to her in a backstage dressing room, "Get out of here, fat is contagious, asap, asap, you smelly twat!" (according to Anna, that one was the same age as Anna, 14, and "freaking pretty"), when she modeled for Seventeen.

Tsuchiya was quoted as saying, "We were all teens at that time. I guess you guys expect some epic stories like — Anna did it, and those who laughed at Anna now have miserable lives flipping burgers at McDonald's or distributing handbills at Jusco or appearing in porn videos — but sorry, y'all know God is such a daft prick, now some of those who laughed at me have got bigger successes than me and are super rich... ahh, super stars. I sometimes feel frustrated with it, but okay... I mean, they made me better".

Anna spent her middle-teenage years modeling for Seventeen, and in the course of time, she made friends with some of the same-aged female models, or older models including Yoshika Yuhnagi (1983 - 2001), and soon she began to put up at their apartments or condominiums, where they lived by themselves. Around this time, she began smoking and drinking.^[4]

Tsuchiya also confessed that she often picked on "fatter" models, especially on foreign models - like other teenage models did - who were mainly from North America, South America, Europe or somewhere and came to agencies to work for some sub-stream fashion magazines (in Japan) such as Elle and Vogue, to give vent to her pent-up frustrations or simply to make fun of them, especially when she was drunk. These models, who were usually "fatter" than Tsuchiya, basically couldn't understand Japanese so they just smiled back no matter what she said. As one of those "plays", Tsuchiya often spoke to them in English with some offensive words which related to obesity.^[5]

Anna eventually retired from modeling at the age of 18. She explained the reason for the retirement as a "giving up", and she said about it afterwards, "I realized I can never compete with such gifted superhuman people like her any more" – "If I wanna be a girl like them, I need to die of hunger 100 times or more." or simply "I got tired".

Even though she got involved in other projects afterwards, to this day she remains an in-demand model for magazines like Kera, Soup, and Zipper.^[6] Besides, Tsuchiya is considered one of the most famous and successful mixed-race models in the 2000s in Japan along with Jessica Michibata.^[7]

Though Anna was born and raised in a mainland region of Tokyo, she often uses many slang phrases that are normally used only by the people living in the southern islands Kyushu or Okinawa, and she sometimes speaks in southern dialects that the mainland people can't understand. According to her, the majority of Seventeen models she encountered, especially the most successful, were from the southern islands or northern regions. Without much effort, she managed to learn various dialects and slang from them. These legacies subsequently helped Anna when she acted as her most noted role Ichigo, a punk-style Bōsōzoku delinquent girl, in a film, Kamikaze Girls, which increased her popularity.

According to a model who modeled for Seventeen at the same time as Tsuchiya^[8], some of those who often teased Tsuchiya had recognized her as an admirable person, because Tsuchiya often tried going on an extreme diet as if she had "almost died". They knew much about it so they looked on her as "a tough one" and in the course of time began to identify her as their fellow, and called her by her name, namely Anna or Tsuchiya, while other "overweight models", like Keiko Kitagawa and Kaela Kimura, were always called by their extremely vulgar nicknames. Some of them praised Tsuchiya afterwards, saying things like "well done".

Music career

At the age of 18, when Tsuchiya terminated her contract with Seventeen, she decided to get away from any sort of show-business, terminating most of her ad-contracts and leaving her agency. But after being offered by former Oblivion Dust member K.A.Z , she restarted the band activity that she had been doing since the age of 16. In mid 2002, Tsuchiya joined with K.A.Z to form Spin Aqua.^[9]

Soon after she debuted as a singer, Anna was sometimes dubbed as "The Second Nanase" by several music medias because of her various resemblances, especially her surprising facial resemblance to Nanase Aikawa, a popular female singer whose popularity peaked during the 1990s.

The duo released three singles, one album, and a video collection, but didn't fare well commercially. They later slipped into hiatus before permanently disbanding in 2004, due to Tsuchiya's pregnancy.

Tsuchiya was quiet musically until 2005, when she announced plans to go solo for the first time. She would write the lyrics to almost all of her songs in Japanese/English, having better command of an English accent than her peers. However she is not a fluent speaker of English. On August 24, 2005 she released her first mini-album, Taste My Beat under Avex's sub-label, Mad Pray Records.^[10] Then released her first single Change your life and the second single called Slap that Naughty Body / My Fate. She also released her first remix album, Taste My Xxxremixxxxxxx!!!!!!!! Beat Life! on the same day. Her third single, Rose was used as the opening theme from the Nana anime, alongside fellow Avex artist Olivia Lufkin who would be singing the ending theme song. The hype brought from this release boosted Tsuchiya's music career a lot, as Rose managed to reach a position of #6 on Oricon charts (her first top 10 placement, and 21 placings above her next best placing product at the time).^[1]

Then, Tsuchiya made her first overseas appearance at the Japan Expo in Paris, France in July 2006.^[11]

And to reinforce her growing popularity in Japan, Tsuchiya's debut studio album, Strip Me? was released shortly afterwards. The album features a growing number of commercial tie-up songs, which includes ones for Whiteen, Kirin, and Kosé Visée.

She returned in early 2007 with a new single called "Kuroi Namida", which was used as the new ending theme song for the Nana anime. This was followed by the third Nana anime opening single, "Lucy" in early February which directly preceded a second full length album self-titled Anna Tsuchiya Inspi' Nana (Black Stones) which contains the singles from the show and some new songs; then a quasi-soundtrack album called Nana Best which includes some popular and some unreleased songs by both Olivia Lufkin and Tsuchiya from the TV series. Both Lufkin's and Tsuchiya's songs from these albums were played at Shibuya AX in March 2007.^[12]

Then, Tsuchiya did a called "world fes tour", starting in June 30 at Anime Expo 2007 in U.S., following in July 27 at Pentaport rock festival in Korea and in July 29 at Formoz Festival in Taiwan, then a summer tour in Japan, including a performance for second time at Summer Sonic Festival.^[13] Among all that, she released the single Bubble Trip / Sweet Sweet Song in August 1.

The single Cocoon was released on January 30 of 2008, and in June Tsuchiya released another single called Crazy World with the collaboration of the Japanese artist AI. She then released another single in September, called Virgin Cat, which was used to promote the show The L Word in Japan.

A month later she followed up with her third full length album (second non-NANA related), NUDY SHOW!, which contained her singles from Kuroi Namida to Virgin Cat.

The latest is a remix album called "Nudy xxxremixxxxxxx!!!!!!!! Show!".

A recent single 'Guilty' was featured in the ending credits of the film Resident Evil: Degeneration.

Acting career

Tsuchiya made her acting debut in Novala Takemoto's adapted runaway hit Kamikaze Girls (下妻物語, Shimotsuma Monogatari^?) in 2004 as punk yanki "Ichigo Shirayuri". Her role brought her both immediate attention and critical success; winning several awards in Japan. This was continued to act/voice in various movies and dramas as The Taste of Tea, Dororo, Sakuran and provided the voice of Lindsay Lohan's character "Maggie Peyton" in the Japanese dub of Herbie: Fully Loaded.^[6] Her latest film is the live action from The Legend of Kamui

Personal life

In 2004, Tsuchiya announced her engagement to model and actor Joshua Niimura^[14][15], the younger brother of the model Friedia Niimura (Rin Kozue). Joshua worked in the same modelling office as her. On November 19, 2004, Anna's first child, Sky (澄海, sukai^?), was born. Sky is featured in a photobook with his mother, titled, Happy Days - Anna, Mama ni Naru!.^[16] In July 2006, it was announced that Tsuchiya and Niimura were getting a divorce.^[17] In May 2008, Niimura died of heart failure, aged just 25 at the time of death.^[18]

In September 19, 2009 was announced on her blog that she was pregnant and she married a stylist named Yamato who is three years older than her . Yamato has been Tsuchiya's stylist for many years now. Their relationship apparently started about two years ago. Tsuchiya is said to be three months pregnant, with the baby due next spring.^[19]

Controversy

Tsuchiya's fame has not been without controversy. In an interview on NHK in 2007 she stated that her deep sultry voice was the result of "boozing and smoking from an early age," and she is also known for speaking in "improper ways" (i.e., using impolite language). Despite this, her agency insists that Tsuchiya did not drink while under age. Her fans remain indifferent.^[20]

Discography

Note: For Spin Aqua discography, please see Spin Aqua.

Albums

Singles

DVDs

Vinyls

Collaborations

^† This collaboration was made as a cover version not with him.

Filmography

Films

Photobooks

^† this is a compilation of her column at Flyman Postman Press

Awards

• 2004 – Kinema Junpo Awards (Best New Actress)
• 2004 – Mainichi Film Awards (Best New Actress)
• 2004 – Houchi Film Award (Best new Actress)
• 2005 – 28th Japan Academy Prize (Best New Actress, Best Supporting Actress (nominee))
• 2005 – 26th Yokohama Film Festival (Best New Actress)

References

External links

• Official website
• ANNA LJ Community
• ANNA et OLIVIA (French blog)
• Songwriting Collaboration - Video Clip 'Vienus Jean' TVC