夏木マリ | zh

Mari Natsuki (夏木 マリ Natsuki Mari), real name Junko Nakajima (中島 淳子 Nakajima Junko; born 2 May 1952), is a Japanese singer, dancer and actress.

She was born in Tokyo, Japan, and started work as a singer from a very young age, her specialty being jazz and a level of sensuality that was somewhat shocking in a Japan as conservative as it was at the time. Her movements, even while singing, are smooth, graceful and have a trademark undulating of the hand at the audience which, with a simple imitation, can bring only her to mind.

Natsuki further shocked the Japanese audiences by performing in full nudity in the Fukasaku Kinji movie Satomi Hakkenden (Legend of the Eight Samurai) in 1983.

Despite her explicit and desirable femininity, Natsuki concentrated all her energy into her art and shunned traditional values of becoming the homemaker or quitting her job after a certain age. Thus, she never married, which made her quite an icon for what is called a Kakkoii Onna, or “classy woman” in modern Japan today. But to the surprise of all, on the 18th of October 2007 she announced that she’s engaged to marry percussionist Nobu Saito in spring 2008.

Today she continues to work as an expressionalist singer and performer, as well as an actress. She participates in a wide variety of musical theatre including that of Yukio Ninagawa. She provided the voice of the witch Yubaba in Hayao Miyazaki’s movie, Spirited Away, played the young witch’s mother in the TV remake of Bewitched in Tokyo, and has twice been nominated for a Japanese Academy Award. She plays the character Big Mama in the Japanese version of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. .