Aya Ishiguro

Aya Yamada (山田 亜弥?), better known by her birth name Aya Ishiguro (石黒 彩?, born May 12, 1978) is a Japanese singer, writer, TV personality, fashion designer. She is most famous for her participation in Japanese girl group pop group Morning Musume.

Overview
Aya Ishiguro was a runner-up in a 1997 contest to find a new female rock idol. After the contest was over—with the winner being solo singer Michiyo Heike—music producer, former rock musician, and contest judge Tsunku decided to focus on five runners-up, which included Ishiguro, Natsumi Abe, Kaori Iida, Asuka Fukuda, and Yuko Nakazawa.

Tsunku promised to take the quintet under his wing if they sold 50,000 copies of their debut single "Ai no Tane" within five days. They accomplished this task within four, and Tsunku upheld his end of the bargain.

During Ishiguro's years in Morning Musume, she was given mostly harmony lines due to her low singing voice, which was used to support the voices of others. However, in late 1998 Tsunku decided to create first sub-group Tanpopo, a subgroup of Morning Musume (by then consisting of eight members) that included Ishiguro, Iida and second generation member Mari Yaguchi. Tanpopo's songs were slower and more mature than the majority of Morning Musume's, which allowed Ishiguro's voice to shine through. After seven singles and three albums with Morning Musume, and four singles and one album with Tanpopo, Ishiguro left both groups and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hello%21_Project Hello! Project] in January 2000, shortly after the release of the single "Love Machine" in September 1999.

Personal life
In May 2000, Ishiguro married Shinya Yamada from Japanese visual kei rock band Luna Sea while four months pregnant and changed her name to Aya Yamada (山田 亜弥?). The couple have three children: daughters Rimu (玲夢?) (born 2000) and Sona (宙奈?) (born 2002) and son Youta (耀太?) (born 2004).

Ishiguro became a homemaker who dabbled in various careers ranging from fashion designing, writing (she has written a 2004 book about her transition from being an Japanese idol to a mother, Kosodate Project), and hosting television shows, in which she interviewed celebrity wives. She also re-united with the new Tanpopo members briefly to sing the Grand Symphonic version of the song "Tanpopo".