Hello. My name is Mai Sakamoto.

Since 2016, my husband Shinta Sakamoto and I have been singing

and creating musictogether as maishinta and IRIS SUN.

For those of you who are new to me, let me introduce myself.

I grew up in a very small village in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan.

From junior high school, I went to a private school for girls, which was a mission school.

Every year, a guest speaker from a humanitarian aid organization would come to the school and give a lecture.

When I was 15 years old, I heard a lecture by Ryohei Takatsu,

a staff member of an NPO working in Nepal,

and was so moved that I visited Nepal by myself when I was 17.

I volunteered at various places while staying with the Takatsu family for about a month.

After that, I started my own business in 2009 after graduating from university.

I became a "social entrepreneur" while doing various jobs related to Nepal.

I ran a non-profit organization to support women in Nepal

and started an organic cosmetics brand to create jobs for women victims of human trafficking.

In the course of my work, I gave lectures at various venues such as TED,

published essays, appeared in many newspapers and magazines including "Jounetsu Tairiku,"

set up a store in Omotesando, a prime location in Tokyo,

gave presentations to investors, etc. Anyway, since becoming independent,

I have been extremely busy. I worked very busily after I became independent.

From the outside looking in, my activities were very successful.

But I was exhausted.

“I couldn't continue like this.”

In 2016, when my fatigue was at its peak, I decided to experiment.

"Let's take the attention and love I had been giving to the women of Nepal and give it 100% to myself and see what happens."

I thought that if each of us could make ourselves happy,

there would be no one to support and no one to be supported,

and the world would be in harmony on equal terms.

I turned all of my consciousness, which had been directed outward, inward.

I began to simply follow my innate desire to express myself.

And then, without any context (epiphany?)

One day, out of the blue, I decided to sing.

I went to a private voice training class.

And there, I had the biggest vocal breakthrough of my life.

I remember my teacher saying to me at that moment, "This is your true voice.

More than the loudness of my voice, I was moved by how good it felt to have every cell in my body tremble.

I realize that we can have such a happy experience with just one body.

Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I remembered.

From that day on, I felt as if I had acquired a one-of-a-kind treasure.

And then, a week after that lesson experience

I met my future husband, Shinta Sakamoto, a musician.

I am ashamed to admit that at our first meeting, which was almost the first time we met.

I overslept and was 40 minutes late.

During that time, he saw a TED speech I had given and was inspired to write a poem for me.

He saw a TED speech I once gave and was inspired to write a poem.

That became the title of our first song, "HOHOEMI," which is also the title of the album.

(↑Here is a video from our visit to Nepal together in the summer of 2016)

Since the birth of "HOHOEMI," I've been trying to immerse myself in music making

I closed the store in Omotesando, bowed down to the wonderful investors who had been supporting me,

and downsized the company.

I had to make many changes, such as closing the Omotesando shop

and scaling back the size of the company to focus on making music.

I continued to follow my deepest interests.

Three years after I started making music, I had a baby.

Now I live with my daughter and her husband in a small town in Miyagi Prefecture, where I was born.

Here we continue to love each day and continue to make music.

In the past 6 years, we have finished recording 205 songs,

and there are still a huge number of songs in the sketch stage that we would like to complete.

(↑Last live concert before the birth @ Tower Records Shibuya)

As I mentioned earlier, in fact, since 2016 and especially the last two and a half years since the birth of my daughter I had not been actively taking in information from the outside and had never heard of web.3 or NFT.

This May, our daughter will be enrolling in a preschool for children, and we have decided to become full time artists. We learned about this concept just as we were about to resume our activities as full-time artists.

In fact, for the past six years, we have continued to feel the difficulty of making a living by making pure music that we want to make.

As we progressed through the process of creating music and delivering it to listeners I had been manufacturing and selling my own products as an entrepreneur.

I found something very puzzling.

When I submitted my work to Apple Music and Spotify, which are the largest music services in the world, I was told that the artists who created the music were not free to use the music as they wished.

I had been making my own original cosmetics and selling them.

I had always made my own original cosmetics, priced them myself, and sold them. I was very uncomfortable with the fact that it was common practice to take something I had made and price it at a very low price. I felt very uncomfortable.

I also clearly felt that artists were being exploited by the platform side.

I remember we were really relieved when we rescued all of our work from Apple Music and Spotify.

Then we started to price them according to our own sensibilities and present them in our own online store.

It was a very comfortable feeling, and we will continue to ignore the existing conventions of the music industry. We decided that we would continue to ignore the existing conventions of the music industry and release our works as we pleased.

Then, on the evening of June 3, 2022, my world was flooded with information about web.3 and NFT.

With goosebumps all over my body, I took in the little information I had in Japanese and read it in English through translation. I took what little Japanese information I had and translated it into English to read and learn about what was happening in the world.

I am still learning, but I felt that the fastest way to learn was to experience it for myself, so I shared this information with Shinta. I decided to share this information with Shinta and present my collection on the evening of June 7.

Actually, in addition to the music I have produced over the past six years I wrote a full-length novel in Japanese in 2018 of about 120,000 characters.

The music we have produced and the world of the novel actually overlap. I have been searching for some way to create a work that includes the world of the novel.

This led to the "planet matisse" collection.

This collection contains everything about our lives.

We have a strong desire to contribute to the world while making music.

We also want to tell our daughter, who will grow up in the future, that this world is a wonderful place to play.

We ourselves express ourselves freely and with joy, and our NFT works reach good collectors and are appreciated.

And the NFT work becomes a living organism, passing from person to person, living out the life of each piece.

We are thrilled to see this from the bottom of our hearts.

We hope you will add our work to your collection.

We will continue to create art throughout our lives.

And we believe that each of our works will live out its life as a living organism when added to your collection.

We have long awaited to meet our colleagues across the globe, beyond national borders, who resonate with our sound.

We sincerely hope to bring this work to people all over the world.

And we look forward to the day when we can meet and exchange words on the discord and metaverse with those who resonate with us.

First, when the 111 keys are delivered to their owners, we will open the discord as a waiting room for the spaceship to planet matisse.

Then, when the next 1111 keys are delivered, the spaceship will arrive at planet matisse and hold a music concert in the metaverse.

From there on, the spacecraft will continue its activities in online venues as well as

We will create real studios, visit countries where there are collectors, and hold real live concerts.

We have an unlimited number of things we want to do through our music.

Let's have fun together!

WAGMI!

Mai SAKAMOTO

P.S..

Thank you for reading my long introduction.

As a way of saying thank you, I am pasting here all the songs from our album "HOHOEMI", which crystallizes our 6 years of progress.

I hope you enjoy it;)

MAI SAKAMOTO / 酒本麻衣

Artist / Entrepreneur

Born in 1982 in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan.

Dropped out of the University of Montana in the U.S. and Sophia University in Japan. Graduated from Keio University, Faculty of Policy Management.

At the age of 15, she met a humanitarian aid worker in Nepal, and at the age of 17, she moved to Nepal to participate in NGO activities.

In 2009, upon graduating from university, she started the Coffret Project to bring out the beauty of Nepalese women through cosmetics.

In 2013, she launched Lalitpur, an organic cosmetic brand, to create a place where Nepalese women who had no relatives can work with pride.

In the course of her work, she began to receive an increasing number of requests to give speeches and talks at various venues, including TED, and as she gained more experience, she became aware of the wonder of the voice.　She began writing her own poetry and reciting.

In 2016, she met her future husband, Shinta, and started singing and making music. She closed her Lalitpur Omotesando store and downsized her business, and then set up a private studio with Shinta in the nature-rich Okumusashi area, where she produced music for about three years.

The 171 songs they produced during that time were streamed for a limited time, with all proceeds going to Nepal.

In 2019, she and Shinta established a music label, 8th MAY Records, and released three full-length albums as a unit, "maishinta", which were sold at Tower Records nationwide, and a best-of album, "HOHOEMI". She has also released three full-length albums as IRIS SUN, an improvisational piano and vocal project with Shinta.

Awards: 2012 Avon Women's Award, 4th Youth Leader Award, etc.

Appearances: TED x Sapporo/ TED x SFC, etc.

TV: "Jounetsu Tairiku", etc.