Yoko Ono
Japanese retired artist, musician, and peace activist
Last updated
Gregor Tatschl from Österreich · CC BY-SA 2.0
Her collaborative album Double Fantasy won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1980.[1]
Life and work
Ono was born into a wealthy Japanese family; her father was a banker and former classical pianist.[2][3] She survived the 1945 fire-bombing of Tokyo in a family bunker in the Azabu district.[4][5] After the war, she re-enrolled at the elite Gakushūin school and was a classmate of Prince Akihito.[6] She married composer Toshi Ichiyanagi in 1956 and later divorced him in 1962.[7][8]
Ono and Lennon married on March 20, 1969, in Gibraltar and held a week-long bed-in for peace in Amsterdam.[9] She released her first solo album, Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band, in 1970.[10] Feeling "asphyxiated by conservative teachers," Ono left Sarah Lawrence College in 1956 without graduating.[7]
What the cited sources add
The same source notes that Ono's maternal grandfather, banker Zenjiro Yasuda, was ennobled in 1915.[11] The Stanford Report article quotes Murray Sayle calling Ono "the prophetess who, with the help of John Lennon, brought the amalgam to a West at long last ready to reconsider its own values"[5] The Biography Channel account states that Ono's ex-husband Anthony Cox was awarded custody of Kyoko after claiming Ono was an "unfit mother" due to drug use.[12] The HowStuffWorks article describes Lennon offering "an imaginary five shillings" to hammer an imaginary nail into Ono's artwork at their first meeting.[13]
References
- Wikipedia, "Yoko Ono" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Greatest of All Time Top Dance Club Artists : Page 1"; "Yoko Ono – Charts & Awards – Billboard Singles", AllMusic; "SYR4 – Goodbye 20th Century", NME, December 1, 1999; "Meredith Monk: Songs That Defy Time and Country New Sounds Hand-picked music, genre free", newsounds (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- "Yoko Ono: biography", AllMusic. facts only, no text reused. web.archive.org
- Wikipedia, "Yoko Ono" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Isoko Ono", Myheritage.nl; "Yoko Ono: biography", AllMusic; Haven, "Yoko Ono to speak at Stanford, Stanford Report", Stanford University, December 19, 2008 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Yoko Ono" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Sayle, "JPRI Occasional Paper No. 18 The Importance of Yoko Ono", Japan Policy Research Institute, November 2000 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Haven, "Yoko Ono to speak at Stanford, Stanford Report", Stanford University, December 19, 2008. facts only, no text reused. web.archive.org
- Wikipedia, "Yoko Ono" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Yoko Ono: biography", AllMusic; Haven, "Yoko Ono to speak at Stanford, Stanford Report", Stanford University, December 19, 2008 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Yoko Ono" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Sheff, "Yoko: A Biography", Simon & Schuster, 2025, p. 22; Haven, "Yoko Ono to speak at Stanford, Stanford Report", Stanford University, December 19, 2008; "Yoko Ono", biography.com (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Yoko Ono" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Yoko Ono: biography", AllMusic; "Yoko Ono Biography", Biography Channel (UK) (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Yoko Ono" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Kruse, Robert J. II, "Geographies of John and Yoko's 1969 Campaign for Peace: An Intersection of Celebrity, Space, Art, and Activism", in Johansson, Ola, Bell, ; Norman, "John Lennon: The Life", Doubleday Canada, 2008, p. 608; Harry 2001, p. 682; Norman, "John Lennon: The Life", Doubleday Canada, 2008, p. 608 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Yoko Ono" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Women in Music: Trailblazing Female Singers, Songwriters and Musicians", makers.com (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Sayle, "JPRI Occasional Paper No. 18 The Importance of Yoko Ono", Japan Policy Research Institute, November 2000. facts only, no text reused. web.archive.org
- "Yoko Ono Biography", Biography Channel (UK). facts only, no text reused. web.archive.org
- Buskin, "John Lennon: John Lennon Meets Yoko Ono", HowStuffWorks.com. facts only, no text reused. web.archive.org
Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Yoko Ono (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Yoko Ono (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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