Aoi Teshima

Japanese singer and voice actress for Studio Ghibli films.

Aoi Teshima, a singer and voice actress, was born in Kasuga, Fukuoka, on June 21, 1987. Her parents loved classic musical films like The Wizard of Oz and Breakfast at Tiffany's, which shaped her early tastes. She credits "Moon River," along with the music of Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, and Billie Holiday, as the foundation of her love for jazz and her own musical style. In junior high, she was deeply moved by Bette Midler's 1979 song "The Rose," and her amateur cover of it led directly to her debut as a singer.

After junior high, Teshima attended the C&S Music School in Fukuoka, where she earned high school and junior college qualifications while honing her singing. She began an amateur music career in 2003, performing at the Yamaha Music-sponsored DIVA event in Fukuoka in 2003 and 2004. In March 2005, she sang at the Japan-Korea Slow Music World event in South Korea, where her performance was well-received and caught the eye of anime director Gorō Miyazaki. Studio Ghibli music producer Toshio Suzuki was reportedly very impressed after hearing her demo of "The Rose" at Miyazaki's recommendation.

Her major debut came on June 7, 2006, with the release of "Theru's Song," the theme for Miyazaki's film Tales from Earthsea, in which she also voiced the character Theru. The single reached number five on the Oricon charts, with about 300,000 CD shipments and roughly 650,000 music downloads—the largest for a Studio Ghibli theme song at the time. She sang two songs, "Light" and "Warmth of the Moon," for the Nintendo Wii game Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon. In 2006, her song "Miracle Star" was used as the theme for the Japanese version of Arctic Tale. She worked again with Gorō Miyazaki on his 2011 film From Up on Poppy Hill, singing the main theme "Summer of Goodbye" and other songs, and voicing the character Yuko.

On September 30, 2012, she received the Citizens Cultural Award of Kasuga City. On February 10, 2016, she released the first single from her tenth album, Ren'dez-vous, which was used in the Japanese drama Love That Makes You Cry and topped the Billboard Japan Hot 100 chart. Teshima describes herself as stubborn and strong-willed, and also notes that she is camera-shy.