Hamako Watanabe

Hamako Watanabe 渡辺 はま子
Hamako Watanabe in 1938
Background information
Birth name	Hamako Kato (加藤 浜子)
Born	(1910-10-27)October 27, 1910 Yokohama, Japan
Died	December 31, 1999(1999-12-31) (aged 89) Yokohama, Japan
Years active	1934-1989

Hamako Watanabe (渡辺 はま子, Watanabe Hamako, 27 October 1910 – 31 December 1999) was the

Watanabe was born and raised in Yokohama, and claimed that her grandfather was a quarter American. She graduated from the Musashino Academia Musicae in 1933, and soon obtained a job as a music instructor at the Yokohama Gakuen Women’s High School. However, the same year, she won an audition at Polydor Records, but after only one song (which was not released), her contract was not renewed. Per the advice and recommendation of Tamaki Tokuyama, her mentor from the Musashino Academia, she transferred to Victor, who released her debut song in 1934.

Her acting debut also occurred the same year at a stage musical at the Hibya Public Hall in Tokyo. When the lead singer, Chikoko Kobayashi suddenly dropped out of the performance, Watanabe was quickly promoted to understudy, and played the role of a fisherman’s daughter alongside Ichirō Fujiyama and Roppa Furukawa. She resigned from teaching in 1935. In the mid-1930s, Watanabe had a number of hit songs. However, government censors came down on her in 1936 over the risqué lyrics on a number of her songs.

Wartime years

In April 1937, Watanabe transferred from Victor to

Post-war career

After her repatriation to Japan, Watanabe married in 1947, and opened a flower shop in Yokohama, while attempting to restart her career. She continued to produce a number of hit songs in the later 1940s, including Tokyo no yoru ("Tokyo Nights", 1947), Adieu Shanghai (1948), Yokohama monogatari ("Yokohama Story", 1950). In 1950, she participated in the first tour of Japanese artists to the United States, making performances in various cities, and capitalizing on her part-American ancestry. In 1952, she made a number of trips to the Philippines, where her songs remained very popular, in part to ask Philippine President Elpidio Quirino to pardon the Japanese prisoners remaining in the Philippines and to let them return home.

From 1951 through 1958, and in 1964 and 1973, Watanabe participated in the year-end