Kudo Shizuka – generasia

Kudo Shizuka (工藤静香) is a Japanese pop singer and actress. She was very popular from the late 1980s through the early 1990s. She was also member #38 of the super idol group Onyanko Club and member of the gravure group Momoko Club.

In 1984, Kudo Shizuka auditioned for the Miss Seventeen Contest (along with other Onyanko Club members) and won. The following year, Kudo, along with Kiyohara Aki and Shibata Kuniko, formed the group Seventeen Club. They released 2 singles before calling it quits.

After Seventeen Club broke up, Kudo went on to auditioned for the idol group Onyanko Club on May 1986 and passed, becoming the 38th member of Onyanko Club. She was known as a yankee within the club. Kudo started off by singing backup on other Onyanko Club members’ solo single, starting with Watanabe Marina’s debut single. In 1987, she formed the subgroup Ushirogami Hikaretai with Ikuina Akiko and Saito Makiko. She also started to sing main vocals for Onyanko Club during the same time, starting with the eighth single.

After Onyanko Club broke up in 1987, Kudo Shizuka pursued a solo career with the single “Kindan no Telepathy”. Soon after, her popularity skyrocketed with her future singles reaching #1 on the Oricon charts. She is consider by many to be one of the “Idol Four Queens of the 1980s”, along with Minamino Yoko, Asaka Yui, and Nakayama Miho. She also started to write her lyrics starting with the mini-album Karelia. She started to self-produce her own music and started to compose her own songs in 1994, starting with the single “Blue Rose”.

During the same time as her solo debut, Kudo also made her debut as a talento and actress by appearing on various doramas and variety shows. She was a semi-regular on the show Tunnels no Nama de Daradara Ikasete!. In 1997, she was in a duo unit Little Kiss with Tunnels member Ishibashi Takaaki, releasing the single “A.S.A.P”.

In 2000, she married SMAP member Kimura Takuya and had two daughters in 2001 and 2002.