Written by Jack Herbert
Precocious New York-based songbird
Hikaru Utada, "Hikki", stands out in a music industry packed with cute, talentless people.
Born in New York, she showed talent from an early age and released her first US single (under the name "Cubic U") before she was 12.
Before she was 20, she married Kazuaki Kiritani, a photographer 15 years her senior, successfully fought life-threatening cancer and sold 6 million records.
With fluent English, incredible tenacity and an impressive set of lungs, she may be the one of the only Japanese acts with any hope of denting the US charts.