Kohmi Hirose

Kohmi Hirose is a Japanese pop singer-songwriter, lovingly known in her homeland as the Queen of Winter. ∙ Classically trained as a child, she switched to pop music after studying with L.A.-based vocal coach Seth Riggs, who famously worked with Michael Jackson, Ray Charles, and Barbra Streisand. ∙ She debuted in 1992 with the LP Bingo! and landed her first hit the following year with “Romance no Kamisama,” which shot to No. 1 on the Japanese charts. ∙ Hirose’s Queen of Winter moniker stems from her decades-long partnership with a Japanese sporting goods store, which has used her songs in numerous winter commercials. ∙ The Best “Love Winters”, a 1998 compilation of her early singles, went to No. 2 on the Japanese charts and sold more than 2 million copies. ∙ In 2009, Hirose—an early adopter of Twitter—became the first Japanese artist to perform a concert on the platform, taking the stage with a laptop and interacting with fans online throughout the show. ∙ During the early 2010s, she hosted a series of radio and television programs for the Japanese broadcaster NHK.