Ayumi Hamasaki, Japan's most prolific singer/songwriter, is celebrating 10 years in the music industry and will mark the occasion with a tour of Southeast Asia and a concert in Hong Kong.
Considered one of Japan's leading fashion trendsetters, Ayumi (right), or 'Ayu', as she is known to her fans, is a role model for many Japanese girls. Her ever-changing style both in music and fashion has drawn comparisons with Madonna - and like the 'Material Girl', her sound covers a wide range of styles, including pop, rock, dance, trance, classical and even traditional Chinese music.
Born in 1978 in Fukuoka prefecture, southern Japan, Ayumi was abandoned by her father at the age of three, leaving her in the care of her grandmother while her mother worked to support the family.
By the age of seven, Ayumi was a child model. They moved to Tokyo when she was 14 to pursue her modelling career - signing up with talent agency SOS. She was later dropped for not being tall enough and went on to release her first album, a collection of limp rap tunes titled, Nothing from Nothing, that disappeared without a trace.
She briefly turned her hand to acting, which also proved unsuccessful. It was at this point that her career looked to be in meltdown, but she was introduced to Avex Trax music producer Max Matsuura and joined the team's vocal training programme. The regime proved too tough for Ayumi and she was sent for lessons in New York - an environment considered more suited to her personality.
Ayumi's career really took off in 1998, when she released five singles that made it into the Japanese charts - establishing the doll-faced singer as a star in her in her own right.
In 1999, her Avex debut, A Song for XX, went straight to the top of the Japanese charts, going on to sell more than a million copies. The album later won Ayumi a Japan Gold Disc Award (Japan's equivalent of a Grammy) for best new artist.