Hitomi Shimatani (島谷ひとみ, Shimatani Hitomi, born September 4, 1980 in Kure, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan), is a female J-pop singer signed to the Avex Trax label.
Shimatani started her career as an Enka singer with the release of her debut single "Ōsaka no Onna" (大阪の女, Ōsakan Woman) in 1999, but later decided to get into the dance/pop style for her music. Shimatani's music has also appeared in video games and also anime series.
Biography
Early life
Hitomi Shimatani's childhood dream, like many others, was to become a famous singer. At the age of seventeen, when she was still in high school, Shimatani decided to pursue this goal and attended "The Japan Audition 1997" hosted by the music label avex trax. Hitomi was chosen out of around 200,000 other girls who participated and received a recording contract with avex. However, before starting her music career, she wished to finish high school -- to which avex agreed, but with the stipulation that Shimatani attend vocal lessons at the same time. She agreed. She also liked playing tennis when she was young.
After having finished school and feeling ready to her first step as a young singer, in 1999 Hitomi released her first single called "Ōsaka no onna" (大阪の女, Woman Of Osaka?), an enka song. Although the single received much critical acclaim and even won some awards, it sold rather poorly, causing either Shimatani, avex, or both to decide that "Ōsaka no onna" was to be both the beginning and the end of Shimatani's enka career. She started to record more songs and in 2000 she released her second single, "Kaihōku" (解放区, liberated district?), which was drastically different, stylistically, than her previous with its extremely pop leanings.
Before she started her pop career, a single titled "涙くんさよなら" (Namida-kun Sayonara) was released under the name Blue-eye Land.
