Akemi Ishii
Japanese singer (1965-)
Akemi Ishii (Japanese: 石井明美; born 26 August 1965) is a Japanese singer, best known for the song "CHA-CHA-CHA".
Life and career
Born in Tateyama, after graduating from high school, Ishii moved to Tokio, working in a beauty salon in Ginza and in a snack bar in Roppongi, where she was scouted by a talent agent. Put under contract in April 1986, she made her record debut four months later with "CHA-CHA-CHA", a cover of the Italo disco song with the same name by Finzy Contini. The song was chosen as theme song of the TBS drama series Seven Men and Women and became a major success, ranking first on the Oricon Chart and selling over 800,000 copies. The same year, she received the Award for Best New Artist at the Japan Record Awards.
In 1990, Ishii had another major hit with "Lambada", a cover of Los Kjarkas' "Llorando se fue". The same year, she got married and retired. She divorced in 1993, and came back to the music business with "あなたらしくいて", the theme song for Nippon Television series Tuesday Suspense Theater.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Akemi Ishii” is japanese singer (1965-). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Akemi, Ishii and Japanese, not as a finished interpretation.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q8973064. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1965, 1986, 1990 and 1993.
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This entry incorporates text from “Akemi Ishii” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.