TOKYO —

When 14-year-old Diana Yukawa first grabbed the limelight in Japan playing the violin at a memorial service, she had the trappings of a tragic heroine struggling with the loss of her father to the infamous 1985 Japan Airlines crash.
   
Now, nine years after her debut in the music scene in 2000, the Tokyo-born, London-based Yukawa is reinventing her image from a child prodigy with a tragic past to a 23-year-old contemporary violinist.
   
‘‘I wanted to really try and show that the violin is not just a classical instrument,’’ Yukawa said, describing her musical mission to show ‘‘the message that being a violinist you can perform any kind of music and you don’t need to be just one category, and that it can be across the board.’‘
   
Her third album, ‘‘The Butterfly Effect,’’ which will be released by the BMG Japan label on Oct 21, reflects this transition from a strictly classical music violinist, with two classical albums under her wing, to a violinist bold enough to experiment with fusion with other genres.
   
Often, though, her identity as a violinist is overshadowed by her other, more powerful image as a relative of one of the more than 500 victims killed in the Aug 12, 1985, JAL jumbo jet crash in Gunma Prefecture.
   
‘‘It’s something that obviously I can never change because it’s my history and that’s what happened and that’s what I was born into,’’ she said, recounting the tragedy that killed her father, Akihisa Yukawa, an executive of a Sumitomo Bank affiliate, weeks before her birth.
   
After her father’s death, she and her older sister Cassie, who were born to their unmarried parents Akihisa and British ballet dancer Susanne Bayly, had to struggle not only with the emotional pain of losing their father but the ordeal in being denied the right for compensation from JAL since the statute of limitations expired.
   
In 2001, JAL compensated the sisters, both British citizens, in an out-of-court settlement, and this year, her father’s name was finally added to the younger Yukawa’s birth certificate.
   
‘‘It was not long before we came to Japan that we received the updated copy of my birth certificate with his name on so it really is like to have been reborn this year in a way,’’ said Yukawa who climbed to the ‘‘Osutaka Ridge’’ crash site again this year, performing an original track, ‘‘Sail Into The Sunset,’’ in memory of her father.
   
What inspired her to focus on her music was the pressure of being portrayed by the public as a child prodigy with a tragic past of losing her father to the worst single-aircraft accident in aviation history.
 
‘‘I wanted to be seen as a musician aside from the fact that my father was in the accident, so lots of different reasons contributed to me taking so long to get to the point of this album, which feels like the first debut of the real Diana in a way,’’ said Yukawa, who began playing the violin at age 5.
 
Her latest album is a first for her in many ways—her first to perform with her older sister, her first to work with popular Japanese composer Toshiaki Matsumoto, and her first to write original songs.
   
Giving a unique flavor to her album was her recording at the Abbey Road Studios in London, where big names such as The Beatles had used, in an attempt to make the recording ‘‘sound like a live performance,’’ she said, adding she is first releasing her album in Japan before marketing it in Europe and the Middle East.
   
As she strives to be known independently from the accident, she recognizes that her past will always be part of her package as an artist.
   
‘‘I don’t mind because I understand that people find it interesting and it’s something that they want to know about and ask questions about…as long as people have a respect for the fact that it was just a huge tragedy and it can bring a lot of pain,’’ Yukawa said.
   
‘‘It just has to be a good balance of talking about it while trying not to focus on it too much,’’ she added.

© 2009 Kyodo News. All rights reserved. No reproduction or republication without written permission.

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6 Comments

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  IvanCoughalot at 04:38 PM JST - 18th August

  Blimey - who's all grown up now?

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  usaexpat at 12:13 AM JST - 19th August

  Good for her she certainly entered this life in tragedy, I'm glad she's finding success.

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  terebiko at 11:35 AM JST - 19th August

  I'm guessing she got the title of her album from SATC. Will be interested in hearing her music.

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  Apsara at 08:28 AM JST - 20th August

  The concept of the butterfly effect and chaos theory was around looong before SATC, but perhaps she first heard about it there, you might be right

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  crashblossoms at 03:06 PM JST - 4th February

  mmm...crash blossoms

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  escherplexus at 11:23 AM JST - 6th February

  Nice to read that Diana Yukawa has risen above her misfortunes.

  But curiously the headline for this particular article has inspired an English neologism called 'crash blossoms' which is now commonly applied to newspaper headlines with multiple possible interpretations.

  See New York Times URL:

  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/magazine/31FOB-onlanguage-t.html

  An example might be: Grandmother of eight makes hole in one

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