Kue Chans Journey of Discovery - 1st Chapter for the 1st Generation

INTROduction

These are the girls that started it all. In 1997 Tsunku set out to start the group through a female rock vocalist wanted for his band Sharam Q. He used an audition scheme on Asayan (a Japanese TV show) to find this vocalist. The winner was Heike Michiyo who became a soloist for Hello Project. The five runners up were then selected by Tsunku to form the new all girl j-pop group. He sent them out to sell 50,000 copies of their single "ai no tane" in 5 days. Though this seems an almost impossible feat to many, the girls achieved it in only 4 days after calling friends and family. After giving them recognition he gave them dancing and singing training to prepare them to become the most popular j-pop group in Japan.

(information found at wikipedia and re-written my kue-chan)

YUKO NAKAZAWA or yuu Chan

I feel obliged to start, in typical Morning Musume fashion, with the oldest member known. Though Yuko has now graduated from morning Musume I feel that to really know the MM we all love, we must start at the beginning. And so my first article will be on Miss Nakazawa the first leader of Morning Musume.

Yuko is well known to us all as the scariest member of MM. Her famous grimace is marked in the memory of all who have seen it. I first came across it in the utaban (Japanese television show which is very close to Morning Musume) episode where the 4th generation were introduced. They recognized her as the scariest and a quote I will always remember her saying, at the end of the question activity (e.g. who is the scariest and they press a button relating to which one, this then appears on a board) after the last question is said and ends up with half of the 4th generation picking her "If it was a good question, it wouldn't relate to me at all." The question for those who were wondering was "who should graduate next?"

Yuko Nakazawa while being the leader of MM started a solo career shortly after it was formed. Her songs are known as more mature, slow and ballad like compared to the dance pop style of most Hello project performers. I think the reason she started her own solo career is because MM wasn't quite the kind of music she wanted to be part of but staying in MM gave her the chance to get noticed in the industry and it was able to set her up for that solo career.

Yuko was 24 when MM was formed and almost 28 when she left. The oldest member ever to be in Morning Musume. Since then members are more likely to be 12-15 when joining (the audition rules state generally that you must be under 21 to enter).

In 2001 Yuko graduated passing her role onto Kaori Iida and Kei Yasuda (at that stage she was 14 years older then the youngest member Ai Kago - 13). She told the press she wanted to pursue other things before she turned 30. Since then she has hosted shows and performed on stage. She is known mostly for hosting Hello! Morning.



This is Ai no Tane on Asayan in 1997. Just incase you wanted to see the originals at work ^-^