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Tamaki Miura


  • Biography
1884-1946. Vocalist. Miura, who convinced her father who was against her becoming a musician, enrolled at the Tokyo School of Music (now the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music) in 1900, on the condition that she would marry a military doctor. After graduating, she became an assistant professor in her school at the young age of 20. She went to Europe in 1914 and made her stage debut in a performance of Madame Butterfly at the Royal Opera House in London. She went on to perform actively as the first Japanese international prima donna by performing with the famous tenor Caruso at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York.

  • Association with Minato City
The beauty on a bicycle was talked about all over Tokyo

Miura was born in 1884 in Shiba Imairi-cho as the daughter of Japan’s first public notary. Tokyo Jogakukan, where she attended school, was established as the pioneer of women’s education in Japan. It was located in Toranomon rather than where it is now, in Hiroo, and Miura’s talent as a vocalist was discovered there. Her father, who was against her becoming a singer, thought that getting her to travel to school on a bicycle would embarrass her enough to make her give up the dream of becoming a singer. So he gave her an English bicycle to commute to the Tokyo School of Music in Ueno. However, Miura continued to commute to school on the bicycle, and it did not deter her from achieving her dream of becoming a singer. Because it was very rare in those days for a young woman to ride a bicycle, onlookers crowded the streets from her home in Shiba Imairi-cho to Ueno just to see her, and she became a sensation as the “Beauty on a Bicycle” in a newspaper that printed her photograph.

References
Concise Nihon Jinmei Jiten (Concise Japanese Biographical Dictionary) (Sanseido)
Senkusha tachi no shozo (Portraits of Pioneers) (Domesu Shuppan)
Nihon Kijin, Marejin Jiten (Encyclopedia of Eccentric and Extraordinary Japanese People) (Tokyodo Shuppan)

  • Literary Works
Waga Geijutsu no Michi (My Path in Art) (Sumeramin Bunko)
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  • Related Publications
Ocho Fujin (Madame Butterfly) Harumi Setouchi / Kodansha Bunko)
Nakidokoro Jinbutsushi (The Book of Extraordinary People) (Yasuji Toita / Bungei Shunju)
Koi to Geijutsu he no Jonen (Pathos for Love and Art) (Kazuko Saigusa / Kodansha)
Gei no Michi Hitosuji ni (A Life Dedicated to Performance) (Minako Ohba / Shueisha)
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