Yoko Ishida

Yoko Ishida is a Japanese singer who made a career singing theme songs for anime series and branched out into proper J-pop in the mid-2000s. She specializes in cute, fluffy pop songs; she also composes and records songs for children, and is known as an avid fan of "para para," a Japanese pop-dance style popularized by SMAP in the ‘90s. Niigata-born Ishida got her lucky break the typical J-pop way -- she won a singing contest. In her case, it was the Anime Song Singer Contest in 1992; she was 19 at the time. The success brought her a deal with Columbia, on which Ishida debuted...