Yukiko Okada
Japanese pop singer (1967-1986)
Kayo Satō (佐藤佳代), known professionally as Yukiko Okada (岡田 有希子) (August 22, 1967 – April 8, 1986), was a Japanese singer and actress, active in the mid-1980s. After winning a nationwide television show at age 15 in 1983, she debuted as an idol in 1984. Her death by suicide two years later led to a number of copycat suicides, a phenomenon that would bear her name.
Early life
Yukiko Okada was born as Kayo Satō on August 22, 1967, the second daughter of the Satō family. The family later moved to Nagoya. In elementary school, Okada loved to read, especially manga, and she was a talented artist. In junior high school, Okada wanted to become a singer and applied for every possible audition, anything from major productions to the smallest talent recruitment, hoping to become a star. She was rejected every time until she was finally accepted to a TV talent program, Star Tanjō! on Nippon Television – similar to Star Search, though the final stage was her singing to get interest from talent agents – singing Kitahara Sawako's "MY BOYFRIEND" for the audition, and Akina Nakamori's "Slow Motion" for the final round, which she won in March 1983.
Career
Okada made her debut in 1984, when on April that year, she released her first single, "First Date", written by composer and singer Mariya Takeuchi.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Yukiko Okada” as japanese pop singer (1967-1986). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the people & ideas register because the source frames it as japanese pop singer (1967-1986). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q254611. VIAF identifies the subject as 251112442. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1967, 1986, 1983 and 1984.
Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Yukiko Okada” 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.