Singer-songwriter and rapper Chanmina appeared on Tetsuko Kuroyanagi's long-running talk show "Tetsuko's Room" (TV Asahi) on April 30th. She talked about her past experiences of failing all her auditions, her experiences with slander and bullying, and how she overcame them.
Born in South Korea, she has lived in Japan since she was three years old. Although she didn't understand Japanese at the time, she enrolled in a regular elementary school. She still remembers being bullied, such as being thrown into a pond and having her schoolbag crumpled.
She auditioned 18 or 19 times, but "failed every single time." "The main reason was my appearance. I've never been the type to be suited to belonging to a group, so I think they saw through that," she analyzes. "It hurts when you get rejected. Every time I get rejected, I think, 'Not again,' every time I see the notification."
The first thing he got accepted into was the "High School Rap Championship." He thought that was just the beginning, so he decided to shoot a music video to show that he was a composer. He asked students at a film school to help him and borrowed money to make it. When it was released, he said, "I thought people would evaluate my music, but the overwhelming majority of the comments were about my appearance. I was called ugly, fat, and all sorts of other terrible things." He recalls that "it was a pretty painful moment."
At the time, there were many people who judged others based on their appearance. There were others who took the lead, but many people felt that they had no choice but to endure whatever was said to them since they were in the public eye. "I thought that was wrong, and I felt I had to do something, so I wrote a song," he said.
"There's no need to conform to any mold, and I want people to do what they love," she said. "I simply turn my own stress and inexpressible emotions into music, and I create music hoping that it can be a part of the lives of those who listen to it."
