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Shinji Harada

Japanese singer-songwriter

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionFeb 15, 2026
Entity authorityQ7497579
Source-derived summary

Shinji Harada (Harada Shinji、原田真二) is a pop music artist in Japan. He was born on December 5, 1958 in Hiroshima.

After three years of practicing guitar, at the age of fifteen he was ready to play guitar with the band Yamaha.

Harada became a musical sensation in Japan when he released his debut single Teens' Blues on October 25, 1977 when he was 18 years old. He released two more singles, Candy in November and Shadow Boxer in December same year. All three singles ranked within the top 20 in the Oricon chart simultaneously, which had never happened before. The debut album Feel Happy was to become number one in the first week of release in Japan in 1978. A documentary film about him, Our Song, was made in 1978. Harada has been prolific, releasing more than 70 singles from 1977 to 2015.

Harada as a songwriter, has written or composed for Koji Kikkawa, Junko Yagami, Anri, Hiromi Go, Akina Nakamori, and other artists.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Shinji Harada” as japanese singer-songwriter. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Shinji, Harada and Japanese.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1958, 1977, 1978, 2015—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1958-12-05. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Shinji, Harada and Japanese providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Shinji Harada”, the useful work is to connect “japanese singer-songwriter” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7497579. VIAF identifies the subject as 252202751. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1958, 1977, 1978 and 2015.

Critical limits

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.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Shinji Harada”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Shinji Harada primary sources, Shinji Harada archive and Shinji research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Shinji Harada”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Shinji Harada” 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.