Back in 2002 singer-songwriter Kawashima Ai started out as a street performer at the age of 16 and dreamed of performing in front of 1,000 people. In 2005, she finally achieved her goal and has since become a famous singer and pianist. This year on March 17th, six years after her last street performance, she decided to perform on the streets again in order to collect money for those affected by the Great Tohoku Kanto Earthquake.



Unfortunately it will still take a while until she can perform on the streets of the Kanto region affected by the disaster, but so far she has been able to perform in Hiroshima, Fukuoka and Yamaguchi. Today she was actually able to perform on the streets of Sannomiya, Kobe and Kawanishi, the area that heavily suffered from the Kobe earthquake 16 years ago. Since 2005 she has always performed at charity concerts that helped raise hundreds of millions of yen for the reconstruction of this region.



Kawashima was looking forward to performing on the streets in the Osaka-Kobe region, “I especially wanted to perform in Kobe, but I wasn’t sure if it was really good timing since many people here still have a scar left in their hearts from the Kobe earthquake. However, everyone in Japan cares about the earthquake that happened in East Japan and especially the people in Kobe, who know about all the pain and sorrow. Even if it isn’t much, I hope people will donate for the disaster relief.”

She sang a total of three songs in Kobe including, “Tabidachi no Hi ni” and “Daijōbu da yo“.


After her first performance in Sannomiya, she commented, “As expected, it is a really warm city. A lot of people came to greet me after the performance. Everyone was so warm… really. 16 years have passed since the earthquake here. Everything has been rebuilt, but many people still feel the grief in her hearts. I know, because I have been performing in this city for the past seven years.”


Her second performance on the streets of Kawanishi was very touching as well. She said, “Even more people gathered here. Both Kobe and Kawanishi were struck by the Kobe earthquake. After the performance an older woman was giving me a 1,000 Yen bill with her trembling hands and smiled, ‘Back then we received a lot of help and a lot of love from people throughout the country, therefore we shouldn’t hesitate to do the same this time.’ Those words and this smile alone made it worth it to perform at this place.”

Together with today’s performance, Kawashima was already able to collect a total of 880,000 Yen.


source: tokyohive