Kadowaki Mai Changes Her Name!
Sort of, anyway. Romanization remains Kadowaki Mai, but the kanji has changed from 門脇舞 to 門脇舞以. God knows what the significance of that is though. That got me thinking about how loads of seiyuu (or rather, Japanese entertainers in general) change their names, most of the time for cosmetic reasons.
Change of Kanji, same reading
Changing kanji characters whilst retaining the same romanization and pronunciation seems to be fairly common. Yukino Satsuki did a similar thing to a few years ago (雪乃五月→雪野五月), and Nakata Kazuhiro as well (中田和宏→中多和宏). There’s a bunch of names I can reel off who’ve done the same: ie Tamura Yukari, Iwai Yukiko, Arishima Moyu, Takahashi Chiaki and (not a seiyuu) Ishikawa Chiaki (one half of See-Saw).
Change of Kanji, a new name
There’s a rather fuzzy line between this and acquiring a stage name, but the likes of Nojima Hirofumi (野島裕史, formerly 野島祐史 – Nojima Yuuji) and Horikawa Ryo (堀川りょう – used to be 堀川亮; originally read Makoto but changed it to Ryo) have such subtle changes I don’t think you could say they’d gotten a stage name.
Acquiring a stage name
I wonder what Nakahara Mai’s real name is, I don’t think it’s Abe Maiko like some believe it to be. Then again, if it really is Abe Maiko then I’m not surprised her management suggested she got herself a stage name, lol. KAORI’s (Hachi in NANA) has previously used the stage names Kawana Midori and Kawana Akiko, and Kujira’s real name is Matsumoto Wakako.
Then there’s Yuzuki Ryoka (Eruruu in Utawarerumono, Haruka in My-HiME etc), a seiyuu (with a dark past) whose talent I admire. She used to be an, ahem… ‘adult idol’ sometime in the early 90s(?) under the name of Kadomatsu Kanori. She had previously used the name Nagashii Ayumi working as a teen model. I don’t know which one is her real name anymore ~_~ Changed her name to Yuzuki Ryoka around 1997 when she moved into doing seiyuu work.
Then there’s an endless list of seiyuu out there who’ve changed either their given name or their surname -Mizuki Nana’s real surname is Kondou, Miyata Kouki’s real name is Harunori, Matsuki Miyu’s is Mieko, Narita Ken was formerly Narita Tsutomu etc etc. I think all those are changes for the good, unlike the strangely named Yamada Fushigi, (no pun intended) formerly Yamada Kyoko.
Kanji→All hiragana
I remember hearing/reading a long, long time ago that Koorogi Satomi (こおろぎさとみ) changed her name to all hiragana because her surname (興梠) was too difficult to write. There’s also Sasaki Nozomi who changed to all hiragana because her name in kanji (佐々木望) is exactly the same as Sasaki Nozomu’s. Ueda Yuji, Kumai Motoko and Kanai Mika are a few other seiyuu who’ve switched to all hiragana format.
Shortened
There’s others who choose to simply shorten their names; the likes of Yukana (Nogami), Hazuki (Tanaka), TARAKO (Isono) & Sayuri (Yamauchi).
Then there’s some who can’t seem to decide on a name, or appear to get bored easily.
1. Nagashima Shigeru → Nagashima Yuuichi → Chou (inexplicable. Chou??)
2. Ishibashi Chie → Sawaguchi Rie → Sawaguchi Chie
3. Terada Makoto → Omaeda Den → Amachi Mugihito → Mugihito
4. Izumi Shouji (泉尚摯) → Izumi Hiroshi (いずみ尚) → Izumi (ヰズミ)
That’s all for the lesson in the intricacies of kanji within Japanese names. Chinese entertainers don’t seem to do it that much eventhough there’s plenty of room for change what with all the possible different intonations. They make up for that with all manners of ridiculous Christian names…. Mango Wong? Figaro Zheng? Kingdom Yuen? Panda Xiong? Fish Leong? Evergreen Mak? Rabee’a Yeung? Kingone Wang? Did they just put all sorts of random words in a hat and used the first one they drew? And Emotion Cheung Kam Ching is neither funny nor clever (you’ll have to speak Cantonese to know that one). Oh, and I had a friend from China called Echo Gong… I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when she introduced herself.
I guess I could do the same with my own name – I get tired of ppl asking me how to write 漪 so perhaps I should change it to 衣. Or 一. Anyway I promise I’ll do something more interesting next time…. maybe a piece on seiyuu families.
This was very interesting, just so you know.
I mean, OMG trivia!
The part on Chinese entertainers is hilarious. It wasn’t like that in my generation, so I would catch names of these new singers and assume they’re in the minority.
I wonder if Yukana shortened her name due to her dark past….
Thanks for the comments, I’ve spent years filling my brain with all sorts of stupid and random info and I hope ppl out there find this stuff as entertaining as I do ^^
Yukana seems to be a magnet for controversy, the brouhaha over the Gundam thing a year or 2 ago was just weird. It doesn’t seem to have affected her career much though, in fact she’s moving on from strength to strength – doesn’t need to rely on special favours really, she’s talented enough.
Miyamura Yuko wasn’t so lucky – being revealed as a former AV actress right when she was at the peak of her powers – cue spectacular career nosedive.
I think most of the older Chinese entertainers have nice, normal names – Jacky Chan, Teresa Teng, Lisa Wang, Kenny Bee, Leslie Cheung, Andy Lau etc etc.
Except for ‘Dodo’ Cheng. I can just imagine her thinking “I want a totally unique name that noone else has! OK, I’ll call myself Dodo! I’ll be the only Dodo on the planet!” or something like that. (Though her actual English name is Carol, but does anyone know her as that?)
Checked out some older topic but thought I say something anyway.^^
I think you misunderstand that stuff Yuzuki Ryouka did back then as Kadomatsu Kanori. That wasn’t AV or anything but just a movie/video with her nude scene(the bath scecne) when she was an actress/gravure idol back then. That linked to AV because it was close to Japanese AV standard back then which is alot softer I guess.^^
As for Miyamu, that ruckus back then wasn’t really about her being an AV actress but more of something stupid she did back then let her old boyfriend or something took the video of them doing it.^^; I don’t really think it affect her that much since she still appear here and there sometimes. The reason she hasn’t been that active is probably her being married and having a daughter now.
I’d say Yukana’s fuss back then probably helped her quite a bit really.^^; She wasn’t that well known until recent years. Well precure helped alot obviously since she wasn’t that popular even though she was in CCS.
Oh I didn’t say that Yuzuki/Kadomatsu was an AV star, I was thinking ‘adult idol’ more in the sense of all those nude photobooks/shoots that she’d done. What can I say….. she has a nice body(B89-W60-H90)!
I’d seen pics of that bath scene (was it All Night Long?) ages ago, but funnily enough I just saw it again ’somewhere’ on a BBS today, lol. I’m sure she was nekkid in some of those other ero-horror movies she did, but I don’t think I really care/want to know…
Unfunnily, I get quite a lot of hits off people searching for ‘Kadomatsu Kanori pics’ etc. They need to learn to Google more effectively, haha.
In Nojima Yuuji’s case, I think he probably change it a bit due to his little brother so the name won’t sound too familar since Nojima Kenji is pretty well known with he being the replacement Hikaru of Macross.^^
Not really related to this part but I think you’ve talked about Nakahara Mai’s name somewhere right? I remember hearing it from the utawarerumono radio special where Kirii Daisuke and her as the guests that first name, Mai is her real name(same kanji) and the first name’s origin is simplely a wrong phone call at her agency and a bit with her hometown(Nakamaru).^^;
It was in this post (the Nakahara one) ^^; But yeah, the radio special did explain how she got her stage name and it’s something like what you said. Still no idea about her real surname though, and where the ‘Abe Maiko’ thing arose from I’m not sure.
I think it was in the same talk where Mai thought of Hiro Nojima as her ‘ideal man’, wasn’t it? She’s one of my favourite seiyuu – I do have a good laugh reading all the debate about whether she’s had plastic surgery done, and how much she resembles Takamizawa (the Alfee guitarist).
Yeah she did mention that in that routine Onsen intervew questions.(all program use the same more or less except minor difference change to related to the programs.). Also if Koyama and Yuzuki also mentioned that a bit in that one where Nojima appeared as the guest few weeks back. Is Nojima pretty loaded or doing pretty well I guess? They talked a bit about that pot(eh…not pot but nabe.^^) party they had at his place which they go through all his rooms except his bedroom which was locked. The cast sure is close from the sounds of it.
Utawarerumono really is something.^^ Now that the radio even have a new corner started this week taking in fans’ idea on the possible sequel. Leaf/Aquaplus is also pretty damn cooperative even releasing that Shin utawarerumono CD.^^ I guess it is a big cash cow for them. Pretty nice to see that I thought. Maybe a theater version really would happen in the future. Who knows.^^