Akihiro Miwa

Miwa has written many books as well, and is known for his outspoken highly critical comments about the government, social issues and war. He was in Nagasaki when the atomic bomb was dropped in 1945, but escaped relatively unhurt. He is against the 2015 Japanese military legislation and Prime Minister Abe's regime, says that "Prime Minister Abe and those who voted for the LDP should go to the front as Japanese soldiers firstly." and criticizes Japanese militarism in the Second World War because of the experience in his childhood, however he insists that Japanese spiritual and cultural values and characteristics of the Japanese people with the origin of Kojiki and Nihon Shoki, like Bushido (the Samurai way of life) and Yamato-gokoro (means the Heart of Great Harmony in Japanese) which were destroyed by the WWII should be restored in post-war Japan.

He started his career at 17 as a professional cabaret singer in the Ginza district in Chūō, Tokyo, when moving to Tokyo in 1952. He started working in various nightclubs singing his favourites from the French chansons such as those of Édith Piaf, Yvette Guilbert and Marie Dubas. His claim to fame came rather early in 1957, with a smash-hit called "Me Que Me Que", which included a string of profanities not used in media at the time. He was also renowned for his effeminate beauty, making him a hit with the media. He performed a monthly show at Shibuya Jean-Jean called "Akihiro Miwa no Sekai" (the world of Akihiro Miwa) from the 1970s until its closure in 2000, as well as touring Japan.

Although Miwa is better known as a cabaret singer he has also appeared in a number of films, beginning as a laundry boy in the film Fūryū Kokkei-tan: Sennin Buraku in 1961 (under his real name). He also appeared in Shuji Terayama's Aomori-ken no Semushi Otoko in 1967. In 1968 he starred in and composed the theme song for Kinji Fukasaku's Black Lizard, based on Yukio Mishima's stage adaptation of the Edogawa Rampo novel; Mishima also had a cameo in the film as an embalmed corpse. The next year he made another film with Fukasaku, Black Rose Mansion.

In 1964, Miwa first released the "Yoitomake no Uta" ("The Song of the Yoitomake") after giving a show at a small mining town, due to a mistake by a producer. While he was not entirely willing to perform at first, he was touched at the sight of workers who had come to see him, having bought their tickets with the little wages miners received then. Miwa was "ashamed and embarrassed of [himself], standing before them in [his] flamboyant clothes", and also that he did not have a song "for them".

From 2005 to 2010, he co-hosted the successful weekly television program Ōra no izumi (The spring of aura) alongside spiritual counsellor Hiroyuki Ehara and Tokio member Taichi Kokubun. While the show initially aired as late-night program, its popularity bumped it up to a primetime slot in 2007.

In recent years he has voiced characters in Hayao Miyazaki's internationally successful anime films Princess Mononoke and Howl's Moving Castle, and appeared in Takeshi Kitano's 2005 film Takeshis'. In March 2007, he performed the role of Empress Sisi in the play L'aigle à deux têtes by writer Jean Cocteau at Parco Theatre in Shibuya. In 2009, Miwa voiced the Pokémon Arceus in the film Pokémon: Arceus and the Jewel of Life.

After numerous covers were made of the song by artists such as Kyu Sakamoto and Kuwata Keisuke, "Yoitomake no Uta" was broadcast nationwide in the 2012 63rd NHK Kōhaku Uta Gassen. Miwa appeared in his old, plain showboy-like costume, singing in the dark with only faint pinspot light for the audience to barely distinguish his face, as his request.