64-year-old singer Ayako Fuji appeared on Tetsuko Kuroyanagi's long-running talk show "Tetsuko's Room" (TV Asahi) on August 11th. She spoke about her life with rescued cats and her father's war experiences.
Fuji lives with two rescued cats that she adopted six years ago. She recalls that when she told pianist Fujiko Hemming, who passed away last year, that she was adopting the cats, she was told, "Oh, you'll have to repay the favor with the cats." She added, "Having them has made my days more fulfilling."
She wrote her own lyrics for Fujiko's signature song, "La Campanella," and decided to sing it. She thought it might be too difficult and put it off for a while, but after seeing a video of US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arguing, "the lyrics just came to me." Her pen name is Ono Aya. She performed the song in the studio and enthusiastically commented, "Even if it's hard to put into words, putting it to a melody spreads the message. I want to sing to bring peace to the world."
This year marked the 33rd anniversary of his father's death at the age of 76. After the war, his father remained in China and ran a business for around two years. "After the war, he was scheduled to be interned in Siberia, but apparently he escaped in a jeep with five friends. I think he would have been shot if he had been found," he revealed.
"My father told me a lot of things that really happened during and after the war," he said. "He said that there was nothing to eat, so he boiled the belt he was wearing and added grass because it was leather, saying it would make a good broth. I asked him if something like that actually happened in Japan."
Fuji said, "I gave birth to a child at the age of 20, so I had no intention of leaving my child behind and moving to Tokyo to try my hand at becoming a singer. But my father told me, 'Go and take on the central stage in Tokyo. I'll take care of your grandchildren.'" She added, "Without my father, I wouldn't be who I am today."
When her dream of performing on the NHK Kohaku Uta Gassen for the first time came true, she called her father in the hospital and he told her, "I have no regrets now." She will never forget that. She told him, "It's just the beginning," but he passed away in April of the following year, after seeing her first appearance. "I want to tell him that I have a great-grandchild for you. I'm sure he is still watching from somewhere," she said of her feelings for her father.
