Shōko Nakagawa
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| Shōko Nakagawa | ||
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| Background information | ||
| Also known as | Shokotan, Shokotasu | |
| Born | May 5, 1985 (age 21) | |
| Origin |  Tokyo, Japan |
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| Genre(s) | Japanese Pop | |
| Occupation(s) | Singer | |
| Years active | 2006-present | |
| Label(s) | Sony Records | |
| Website | Official Website | |
Shōko Nakagawa (中川翔子 Nakagawa Shōko?, born May 5, 1985, in Tokyo) is a female Japanese idol and multi-talented celebrity (an actress, seiyū (voice actor), illustrator, singer and blogger). She is the daughter of Katsuhiko Nakagawa. Her blood type is A.
She belongs to the Watanabe Entertainment talent agency. Her nickname is Shokotan. (In the blog by Mika Kaneda, who appeared with her on "Ōsama no Brunch", she is called Shokotasu. She is left-handed.
She has listed Bruce Lee, the idol Seiko Matsuda, and the anime characters Vegeta, Trunks and Sephiroth as people she respects.
She is famous for liking manga and anime, and also enjoys watching professional boxing.
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[edit] Life
- In 1994, when she was nine, her father Katsuhiko Nakagawa died of leukaemia, and from then on she was raised by her mother alone.
- In 2001 she won the Grand Prix award at the Popolo Girl Audition, thus making her debut in the entertainment world.
- At the time of her debut, she belonged to the Jackie Chan talent agency.
- Later, on the "Yume-Ga-Oka Residence" programme on SKY PerfecTV!, she was given a Jackie Chan photobook by Midorikawa Shobō, who were guests on the show. She commented "I thought he was an enemy of Bruce Lee's", apparently referring to Enter the Dragon, but this is a curious statement, given that she belonged to the Jackie Chan talent agency and has also met Jackie Chan himself.
- In 2002 she was chosen as Miss Shōnen Magazine 2002.
- In 2004, when she appeared in a brief section of "Kangaeru Hito" ("People who think") on the Fuji TV network, she showed her ability as an illustrator, which won her a regular place on the later version of the programme which started with minor changes in early 2005, "Kangaeru Hitokoma" ("Thinking about one frame [of a cartoon strip]").
- From May 2005, for just under a year, she appeared as a regular on the TBS programme "Ōsama no Brunch", which made her well-known among the general public.
- In July 2006, she released her debut CD, "Brilliant Dream". It entered the Oricon chart at number 29, with initial sales of 6313 CDs.
[edit] Personality
As she is active in a variety of areas, including acting, manga, singing and blogging, she is known as a multi-talented entertainer or "multi-tarento", as opposed to simply an "idol" or "tarento".
She is highly knowledgeable about otaku culture, a rare trait for an idol. She says that this is because of the influence of her father, Katsuhiko Nakagawa. He did things like giving her full sets of comics such as Ge Ge Ge no Kitarō or Akanbō Shōjo, saying "You can't become an adult unless you read these." Perhaps because of this education, she knows more about relatively older anime, 80's idol songs and retrogaming than is common for people of her age. She also loves Dragon Ball.
She likes the tokusatsu Super Sentai series, and in particular looks up to Yūri, "Time Pink" of the Mirai Sentai Timeranger team as a "god". At the time she stood in line all night to watch the live Timeranger show at Kōrakuen Fairground (now Tokyo Dome City Attractions) in the front row. In 2004, she achieved a longstanding ambition by putting in a guest appearance in the 38th episode of Tokusō Sentai Dekaranger. (She also appeared as a child in Chikyū Sentai Fiveman.) She has always wanted to become the next Pink Ranger, and has gone out for auditions four times, but failed each time because "she doesn't have good athletic ability." She has said that she was drawn to the entertainment world out of admiration not for her father but for Mika Katsumura, who played the role of Yūri, and that during gravure work she uses Katsumura's photobooks and DVDs as a guide. She later appeared together with Katsumura on Men B, and the two are now as friendly as if they were sisters.
She is also a fan of Bruce Lee, and has a wide knowledge of kung fu films. She has studied Cantonese, and visited Hong Kong many times with her mother (However, she confessed on TV that in fact she soon gave up Cantonese, and hardly speaks it at all, although she keeps it on her profile.) She got to know Jackie Chan when she met him by chance at a restaurant he runs. Jackie Chan now keeps a picture she drew on display at his offices in Hong Kong. She has her own tracksuit and nunchaku she made herself, which are decorated with pink fur. She is also a great fan of Seiko Matsuda, and is known to be a fan of Soul'd Out, Morning Musume and Country Musume; she has gone to their concerts.
She is skilled as a manga cartoonist and illustrator. She worships Kazuo Umezu, and wants to become a mangaka. On the Fuji TV show Kangaeru Hitokoma, on which she is a semi-regular guest, she showed this side of herself by drawing in the style of Kazuo Umezu. Some of her work was shown on the May 11, 2006 edition of Downtown Deluxe on the Nippon TV network, and was much praised. As of 2006, her manga "SHOCOTAN * QUEST" is being serialised on her official website. The fact that even after becoming a celebrity she has not given up on drawing led to her being selected as a member of the judging panel in the "Jump Damashii" section of the Shūeisha publication Weekly Shōnen Jump, starting from Jump number 13 of 2006.
She does not like cooking, and in a special version of Koi no Apron (TV Asahi) in August 2005, she disappointed the judges with her rolled cabbage, which marked the first time that she had used a kitchen for 10 years. She appeared on Koi no Apron again in November, this time making cream puffs and coffee jelly, but gave another poor showing, with the lowest ranking of any of the Apron Girls for that day.
In July 2006, she confessed to having a weak digestion, but managed to keep the situation light-hearted with jokes, while wearing a serious expression on her face.
Shōko is also enthusiastic about the Wikipedia Project. In a blog entry dated November 25, 2006 she praised the free online encyclopaedia for its articles, especially those related to the otaku culture (presumably from the Japanese version of Wikipedia). She is especially fond of the collaborative writing aspect the project incorporates and has even jokingly said she wanted to jumble her own article.
[edit] Cosplay
She is also known for loving cosplay, and buys up many clothes at auction, (particularly costumes for Neon Genesis Evangelion, the Final Fantasy series and Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon). This hobby has helped her in her role as a gravure idol.
She often cosplays alone, but it has been confirmed that her friends Ayaka Itō and Chiaki Kyan also join her in cosplay when they visit her home. When they do, Nakagawa usually takes the role of long-haired characters, with Itō or Kyan playing short-haired characters. (For example, if they play characters from Sailor Moon, Nakagawa might play Usagi, with Itō being Ami, for Evangelion, Nakagawa might be Asuka, and Itō Rei, and for Pretty Cure, Nakagawa might be Honoka, and Itō Nagisa.) On days when she cosplays, she always updates her blog more than usual.
On the May 30, 2006 airing of Kasupe!, in the section entitled Fuji Ginkō Geinōjin Satei-Gakari (フジ銀行 芸能人査定係?), "Fuji Bank Celebrity Evaluator", it was discovered that she liked the manga Kachō Shima Kōsaku, eliciting a comment from the host, Sayaka Aoki, that she had pretty "grown-up tastes". On the same programme, she said that when it came to her hobbies she didn't worry about how much money she was spending, suggesting that she spends quite a lot on buying manga and costumes. However, she appears to think a little before deciding whether to buy computer games.
On Private Lesson - Tadashii Wada Akiko no Tsukurikata (個人授業(プライベートレッスン)～正しい和田アキ子の作り方～?), "Private Lesson - The Right Way to Make an Akiko Wada", shown on October 4, 2006, when she appeared as a tutor, she entered dressed as Haruhi Suzumiya from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, dancing to the end theme from that anime. Immersed in the role of Haruhi, she expounded passionately on "otaku studies" in a disrespectful tone, bewildering her student, Akiko Wada, from start to finish. She showed off her cosplay versions of Misato from Evangelion (which she filmed herself), Doremi from Ojamajo Doremi, and Vegeta from Dragon Ball, and to finish, got Wada to join in, with Wada playing Rei to her Asuka, and even gave acting directions.
[edit] Blog
Her official blog, Shokotan * Blog, opened in 2004, and by April 2006 it had received a total of 100 million hits. As one might expect from her personality, there are very many otaku-style entries, and she updates it extremely regularly, perhaps because of a compulsive streak in her personality, or perhaps, as she admitted in an interview, because she uses it as a kind of notepad. In the month of April 2005, there were 600 updates, and on January 28, 2006, there were 70 updates, a record number for a single day. It is likely that she holds the record for the greatest number of blog updates by an idol. She has become known as the "New Queen of the Blog", after the original "Queen of the Blog", Kaori Manabe. Due to her blog's popularity, in September 2005, Koma Books released a compilation of her blog entries, also entitled Shokotan * Blog.
In the past, the blog sometimes took liberties with copyrights, including lyrics from songs and screenshots from computer games, but as of 2006, these entries have been deleted. (These stood out because of the number of updates and her status as a hardened otaku, but the same behaviour can be seen in normal bloggers. For more information on copyright problems in Japan, see the article on JASRAC.)
From September 2004, posters on the News Sokuhō (VIP) Ita bulletin board on 2 Channel, which had just been set up, took note of her otaku-style interests and her drawings, which were very different from what one might expect from an idol, and she came to be treated as the idol of that board, and fêted like a goddess. Because of this, she started to use the slang dialect of the board in her blog, and write ASCII art imitating Raizon Naitō, (for example, ⊂二二二（ ＾ω＾）二⊃) in her photographs.
From September 2006 onwards, there were many media reports about her blog and writing style, but some gave the impression that she had invented VIP slang herself, angering some citizens of 2 Channel. However, since many people do not know what a blog is, editors may have decided to leave out details, and she is not necessarily to blame for this misattribution. In fact, when she appeared on the talk show Odoru Sanma Gyoden (踊るさんま御殿?), "Dancing Sanma Palace", and had to explain what a blog was together with the other guests, the editing became noticeably unnatural. From this, and from the long recording time for that show, it can be concluded that it took a fair amount of effort to get the host, Sanma Akashiya, to understand what a blog was.
After her appearance on a telethon, the number of accesses to her blog increased, leading to continual trackback spamming by pornography sites, businesses and showbusiness news sites, making it difficult for her even to update the blog. Sometimes "non title" was displayed instead of the title, or entries she posted were not displayed. As a result, the trackback function was suspended, and the page became a published diary, rather than a blog. At present, fans can only send her messages in real time via her mobile phone guestbook, for which there is a fee.
[edit] Cats
She is so fond of cats that she once took home an abandoned cat she found while filming. At present she keeps three cats as pets. They are Chibita (a spotted male, also called "Nekomura" because he looks like Neco Nekomura from Kyō no Nekomura-san (きょうの猫村さん?), "Today's Helping of Nekomura-san"), Mami (a female tortoiseshell, named after Magical Angel Creamy Mami, and also called "Mamitasu" or "mmts"), and Luna (a black male, named after Luna from Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon on Dot City Presents Shōko Nakagawa - Shokotan).
Of these three, she particularly adores Mami, who appears in her blog frequently. Mami's cute looks have attracted many "Mamitasu fans"; she has appeared on television and in magazines, and was the subject of a photobook, "Giza * Mamitasu!!", published in August 2006. Another sign of Nakagawa's adoration for Mami is an act which appears frequently in her blog, called "good smell" (putting one's nose to the rear of a cat and smelling it). Mami is also made to join in with her owner's cosplay, particularly as Luna from Sailor Moon, although recently the black cat Luna has taken over this position.
[edit] Discography
- Singles
- Brilliant Dream (July 5, 2006)
- Strawberry Melody (ストロベリmelody? February 14, 2007)
[edit] External links
- Web page by Watanabe Entertainment (Japanese)
- Official web page Shokotime (Japanese)
- Shokotan blog (Japanese)
- 'Otaku idol' dazzles Tokyo Game Show MSN-Mainichi Daily News (English)
- Shoko Nakagawa, Gamer-Cosplayer Idol (English)
