Singer Leon Niihama appeared on Tetsuko Kuroyanagi's long-running talk show "Tetsuko's Room" (TV Asahi) broadcast on April 18th. He was moved to tears by an unexpected letter he received from his mother, who had once strongly opposed his goal of becoming a singer.
As Kuroyanagi read out a letter from his mother, which said, "Now I am also one of your fans," Niihama listened with a solemn expression, tears quietly streaming down his cheeks from both his eyes.
Urged by Kuroyanagi, Niihama told the camera, "I'll definitely do my best to grow bigger and bigger so that I can make you happy."
When he occasionally comes home, his mother, who was once very against him, now says things like, "Welcome back, Leon." "My mother is the most important person in my life, and she checks every program, every radio show, every newspaper," he says.
His father was an enka singer. He was a baseball player from the second grade of elementary school to the third grade of high school, but he became interested in his father's work, which had raised him with a singular focus, and during the summer vacation of his third year of high school, he worked as a bag carrier for his father, with his head shaved.
It was a tough moment for him as a son to see his father being scolded by the director, but his father never showed those hardships to the family. "I admired my father not only as a singer, but as a person. Wanting to be like my father was what motivated me to become a singer," he revealed.
