is a Japanese singer and former model. She was a member of the

Japanese idol An is a type of entertainer marketed for image, attractiveness, and personality in Japanese popular culture, Japanese pop culture. Idols are primarily singers with training in other performance skills such as acting, dancing, and modeling. Idol ...

girl group A girl group is a music act featuring two or more women in music, female singers who generally vocal harmony, harmonize together. The term "girl group" is also used in a narrower sense in the United States to denote the wave of American female p ...

ZYX The Zygii (, ''Zygoí'') or Zygians were described by Strabo as a nation to the north of Colchis. He wrote: ''And on the sea lies the Asiatic side of the Bosporus, or the Syndic territory. After this latter, one comes to the Achaei and the Zyg ...

and

Cute Cuteness is a type of attractiveness commonly associated with youth and appearance, as well as a scientific concept and analytical model in ethology, first introduced by Austrian ethologist Konrad Lorenz. Lorenz proposed the concept of baby sc ...

up until departing to pursue a solo career in modeling. In 2013, she returned to her music career with the release of her debut solo single "Crush On You."

Career

2002–2004: Hello! Project Kids and ZYX

Umeda was born in

Minami-ku, Yokohama is one of the 18 Wards of Japan, wards of the city of Yokohama in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. As of 2010, the ward had an estimated population of 197,019 and a population density, density of 15,550 persons per km². The total area was 12.67 ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

. In 2002, she auditioned for Hello! Project Kids with the song "White Love" by

Speed In kinematics, the speed (commonly referred to as ''v'') of an object is the magnitude of the change of its position over time or the magnitude of the change of its position per unit of time; it is thus a non-negative scalar quantity. Intro ...

. Her audition tape was aired on

Morning Musume , formerly and commonly known as and colloquially referred to as , is a Japanese girl group, holding the second highest overall single sales (of a female group) on the Oricon, Oricon charts as of February 2012, with the Oricon record of most to ...

's variety show ''

Hello! Morning was a weekly Japanese TV show featuring members of Morning Musume, and sometimes other Hello! Project members on TV Tokyo. It was also known by the shorter name of . On April 1, 2007, the show ended after seven years of broadcast. A new show fe ...

''. She was placed in the group with 14 other girls. In the same year, she appeared in the movie ''Koinu Dan no Monogatari''. In 2003, Umeda became a member of the subgroup

along with

Mari Yaguchi is a Japanese singer, actress, and television personality. She joined the girl group Morning Musume in 1998 as a second generation member and was the leader of subgroups within Hello! Project, such as Mini-Moni, Morning Musume Sakuragumi, and ZY ...

from

Maimi Yajima is a Japanese singer and actress. She was a member and the leader of Cute, a girl idol group within Hello! Project. Career Yajima first joined Hello! Project in 2002 as one of the fifteen children chosen from the Hello! Project Kids audi ...

Saki Shimizu is a Japanese former singer. Her career began in 2002 when she passed the audition for Hello! Project Kids, an all-female teen pop group within Hello! Project. She continued to sing in that group and became a part of two smaller groups compos ...

Megumi Murakami is a Japanese choreographer and former singer and actress. She first gained recognition when she joined Hello! Project Kids and later became the lead vocalist of the girl group Cute until her retirement in 2006. Career 2002–2005: Hello ...

, and

Momoko Tsugunaga is a Japanese former singer, actress, and radio personality. Tsugunaga joined Hello! Project as a member of Hello! Project Kids at the age of 10 and later became part of the girl groups Berryz Kobo and Buono! Following Berryz Kobo's hiatus, sh ...

. They released their debut single, "Iku ZYX! Fly High" on August 6, 2003, followed by "Shiroi Tokyo" on December 10, 2003. Later, in 2004, she participated in singing "

All for One & One for All! ''All for One & One for All!'' is the first (and only) mini album by Hello! Project unit H.P. All Stars, released on December 1, 2004 in both a normal and limited edition, the limited edition having a different cover. It reached a peak of #5 on ...

", a collaboration single released by all Hello! Project artists under the name "H.P. All Stars."

2005–2009: Cute

In 2004,

Berryz Kobo was a Japanese idol girl group formed by Up-Front Promotion in 2004 and associated with Hello! Project. The group's members consisted of Hello! Project Kids members Saki Shimizu, Momoko Tsugunaga, Miyabi Natsuyaki, Chinami Tokunaga, Maa ...

was created with the intention of rotating all of the members of Hello! Project Kids to make time for school, but the idea was later scrapped, and the remaining girls who were not chosen were rebranded under the name

on June 11, 2005. On August 1, 2009, Hello! Project announced that Umeda was graduating from the company on October 25, 2009, the last day of Cute's concert tour, to become a fashion model.

2010–present: Solo career

In 2010, Umeda was signed into a model agency called Illume Models. She made her runaway debut in Girls Award Summer 2010 and continued to appear as a regular model at every seasonal show until 2013. She also appeared at the

Tokyo Girls Collection The , sometimes abbreviated as TGC, is a semiannual fashion festival launched in 2005. It is mainly held near Tokyo area and some local cities such as Kitakyushu, Nagoya and Okinawa Prefecture, Okinawa. The fashion event showcases the seasons fas ...

Spring/Summer 2012 show. In 2013, Umeda left modeling to return to music and signed with Brand-New Music. She released her first solo album ''Erika'' on February 12, 2014, with the lead single "Crush On You." In 2018, she became the advisor for the girl group Turtle Lily.

Personal life

On August 15, 2021, Umeda announced on her blog and

Instagram Instagram is an American photo sharing, photo and Short-form content, short-form video sharing social networking service owned by Meta Platforms. It allows users to upload media that can be edited with Social media camera filter, filters, be ...

account that she had married Hirokasu Goto, a radio personality from

Niigata Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture in the Chūbu region of Honshu of Japan. Niigata Prefecture has a population of 2,131,009 (1 July 2023) and is the List of Japanese prefectures by area, fifth-largest prefecture of Japan by geographic area ...

, and that she was pregnant with their first child. Their son was born on January 1, 2022.

Discography

Albums

Filmography

Film

Television

Music video

Theater

Radio

References

External links

Erika's Sweet Diary - Erika Umeda Official Blog
{{DEFAULTSORT:Umeda, Erika 1991 births Living people People from Minami, Yokohama Singers from Yokohama Cute (Japanese idol group) members ZYX (pop group) members Hello! Project Kids members Japanese female models 21st-century Japanese singers