Izumi Sakai

Sachiko Kamachi (蒲池 幸子), known professionally as Izumi Sakai (坂井 泉水), was a female Japanese pop singer, songwriter, music producer and member of the group Zard.

As Sakai was the only member in the group for the majority of the 16 years which it was active, Zard and Sakai may be referred to interchangeably.

In addition to taking a new name, Sakai revised her year of birth from 1967 to 1969.

She was the best-selling female recording artist of the 1990s and has sold over 38 million copies of sales, making her one of the best-selling music artists in Japan of all time.

Born in Hiratsuka, Kanagawa, Sakai grew up in Hadano, Kanagawa.

Her father was a driving instructor, and she had a younger brother and younger sister.

After her death, a neighbor recalled that Sakai was “beautiful and popular” in elementary school.

She was also athletic, joining the track and field team in junior high and playing tennis in high school.

Graduating from Shoin Women's College (now Shoin University) in Atsugi City, Kanagawa, Sakai worked in a real estate company office for two years before being scouted by Stardust Promotion.

Throughout her life, Sakai remained close to her family and stayed mostly out of the public eye.

Upon achieving career success, she helped pay for her parents’ home renovation.

Acquaintances say that she commuted by subway on a daily basis.

In 1990, Daiko Nagato, a music producer for Being Corporation, noted her potential as a singer-songwriter.

Through this connection, she created a Being subsidiary called Sensui (same Kanji characters as Izumi) and started her career taking the name Izumi Sakai.

On February 6, 1991, she appeared on television to promote her third single, "Mō Sagasanai," and first album, Good-bye My Loneliness.

She wore glasses to the interview, and disclosed that she had not slept the night before.

Sakai also indicated that she often slept in the morning rather than the evening.

Sakai began playing the piano at age four and aspired to be a musician at a very young age.

She visited galleries, attended theater productions, made dry flowers, and painted in oil in her spare time.

She also stated that one reason she did not like to travel was that she was not accustomed to eating sashimi and preferred cooked food.

Because she was hardly ever seen in public, there were unsubstantiated conspiracy theories in Japan that works by Zard were not produced by the woman pictured (Sakai): She was referred to as an urban legend.

Sakai appears to have been shy.

In her first appearance on Music Station, she was asked what took Zard so long to appear on camera.

She replied that she wanted to make sure that the Zard project would in fact succeed first.

In the other six interviews, Sakai expressed shyness on camera.

In 1991, Sakai joined the five-member pop group Zard as lead vocalist.

The group name did not have any particular meaning except Sakai felt that word Zard sounded like a rock group.

She also took the name as derived from words such as "blizzard" and "wizard."

The group's name very quickly became synonymous with Sakai herself, and Sakai wrote the lyrics to all of Zard's songs except Onna de Itai and Koionna no Yuuutsu, both of which were written by Daria Kawashima.

Izumi Sakai was Zard's sole member at the time of the band's debut, although between late 1991 and early 1993 four other members were introduced.

The melodies of early Zard hits were written by prominent Japanese composers, most notably Seiichirō Kuribayashi and Tetsurō Oda.

Izumi Sakai wrote nearly all of the lyrics to Zard songs, totalling over one hundred fifty.

A veteran recording producer described that while most artists communicate through the transparent glass in the recording studio, Sakai preferred covering the glass with a curtain.

By 1993, the four male band members left the group but Sakai chose to keep the Zard name throughout her career.

In fact, a staff member revealed that when Sakai saw multiple people lining up for her concert tour in 2004, she was taken aback and hid herself.

After some effort, she was able to walk up to the crowd and thank them for coming.

However, her shyness did not reflect an inability to work well with others.

It has been noted that after she had gone home early one day she arranged for food to be sent to her staff at her office who were working late into the evening.

For the next two years following her scouting, she was a Toei "karaoke queen" and a promotional model appearing in television commercials for Japan Air System.

The following year Sakai was a Nissin race queen.