Kana Nishino

The J-pop singer Kana Nishino belongs to the small host of Japanese performers who made it through high-profile music contests -- in her case, the 40,000-strong Miss Phoenix Audition in 2005. But the ground was being prepared long before that: Nishino, who was born in 1989, studied English from an early age and visited the U.S. twice as a child, acquiring a love of hip-hop and R&B, which in her case became combined with an interest in Japanese folk music. She sent her demo tape to the contest without informing her parents, but they allowed her to get signed to SME Records in 2...