Ito Yuna

Name: Ito Yuna, 伊藤由奈
Birthday: 9-20, 1983
Birthplace: Los Angeles, California US
Citizenship: American

Ito Yuna Information
Yuna got her break acting as Reira in the movie NANA, and released her debut single from the movie "ENDLESS STORY" under the name REIRA starring YUNA ITO, which reached #2 on the Oricon, just below Nakashima Mika's GLAMOROUS SKY single from the movie. However, Yuna's single went on to outsell Mika's. This feat put her at #20 on the top 50 singles of 2005 on the Oricon charts.

In 2005 Ito Yuna was voted "Best New Artist" in the Best Hit Kayousai 2005. Pureyes, one of the A-side tracks on Yuna's 2nd single, Faith / Pureyes was featured in a Bioclen Zero CM. Her third single, Precious, is the theme song to the movie LIMIT OF LOVE Umizaru.

Yuna graduated from McKinley High School in Honolulu. Her parents own a Japanese restaurant in Kaimuki. Yuna is half-Japanese, half-Korean as her father is Japanese and her mother is Korean. She speaks English as her native language, and Japanese as a second language. She can also write fluently in kana.

Yuna's third single was perhaps her biggest hit after the Nana-era. Precious was announced as the theme song for the 2006 movie, "LIMIT OF LOVE ~Umizaru~". The single included two b-sides, "I'm Free" and "Secrets", both co-written by Ito herself. Precious sold over 200,000 copies and was the 5th highest downloaded song at the end of year 2006 in Japan. In the 2007 Japanese MTV Music Awards, Yuna won the Best Beat of Asia (Japan) for Precious.

Sony later announced a 2-month Single Project. She covered "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'", for the Daihatsu "Coo" commercial, featured on her 4th single "Stuck on You". She also performed the ending theme song to AXN Japan's Japanese television broadcast of the American television series Lost with her 5th single losin'.

An interesting bit of trivia is that her name, when written in Western form ("Yuna Ito" as opposed to "Ito Yuna") becomes the Japanese pronunciation of the English word "unite".

Ito Yuna Biography

Ito Yuna Early life
Ito was born to a Japanese father and a Korean American mother in Los Angeles, California. Three months later, she and her family moved to Hawai'i, United States, where she remained until the start of her singing career in Japan. She has one sibling, a younger brother named John . She graduated from McKinley High School in 2001. When Ito was little, she used to sing to songs of both Mariah Carey and Janet Jackson and dreamt of becoming a singer
2005
In early 2005, Ito auditioned and was chosen for the role of charismatic vocalist Reira Serizawa in the feature film adaptation of Ai Yazawa's manga series Nana. She also subsequently performed a theme song to the movie, "Endless Story", while debuting under the billing "Reira starring Yuna Ito" and reaching no. 2 on Oricon's Japanese single rankings. As the singer and the actress picked to play Reira Serizawa, Ito's identity was kept a secret until the movie's release.

2006
It was only in 2006 that her 2nd single, Faith / Pureyes, was put on the market, with "Faith" featured as the ending theme to the television drama, Unfair, and "Pureyes" being a song for the Bioclen Zero contact lens television commercial. This single sold about 50,000 copies which was a disappointment considering "Endless Story" had outsold Mika Nakashima's "Glamorous Sky" with over 450,000 copies.

When Nana the movie was finally released in Japan, movie-goers were drawn to the "wonderful, high-pitched", voice of Ito. Ito was featured on magazine covers, posters and eventually had her first TV appearance on TV Asahi's Music Station music television program, performing "Endless Story".

On August 4, 2006, film production company Toho announced that Ito would reprise her role of Reira Serizawa in Nana 2, with a second single for Reira starring Yuna Ito scheduled for December 6 and Nana 2 opening on December 9, 2006. Truth was released as Ito's last single in 2006 and 6th in total. Previews for the song were put on the net on November 8, 3 weeks after it first aired on Japanese radio.

In December, Ito was shooting Nana 2 and promoted the film alongside her co-stars. Toho stated that this time, the role of Reira would have a more relevant part, however, Ito again only had few appearances.