Emi Suzuki

Emi Suzuki (鈴木 えみ born September 13, 1985 in the People's Republic of China) is a Japanese fashion model and occasional actress. Widely known by her nickname Emichee, she has often been described as a "charismatic model" and is particularly popular among gyaru teenagers in Japan.

Emi Suzuki 鈴木 えみ
Emi Suzuki in February 2009
Born	Wú Zǐliáng (吴子良)
Modeling information
Height	5' 9½" (1.77 m)

Early life

Born in Shanghai, China as Wu Ziliang (Chinese: 吴子良; pinyin: Wú Zǐliáng), she is the only child of Chinese immigrants who came to Kyoto when she was 12, becoming naturalized Japanese citizens. She changed her name to the Japanese Emi Suzuki (鈴木依美).

Shortly after arriving in Japan, she attended Fujinomori Middle School, a public junior high school in Kyoto, and became fluent in Japanese within a year. Suzuki attended Kyoto Ryōyō High School for several months, before dropping out to pursue a full-time modeling career.

Career

Suzuki's career began when she auditioned for Seventeen at the age of 13. Shortly thereafter, her popularity rose, and she became a prominent model. In 1999, Suzuki appeared in her first TV commercial for Dancemania Speed 2 alongside Franky Gee.

In 2002, she began appearing in designer-brands' private collections, notorious for maintaining strict requirements regarding the BFP standard, and after appearing in the music video for Ketsumeishi's 2005 mega-hit song Sakura

Suzuki had decided to retire from modeling and go back to Kyoto before turning 20 in 2005. Her agency Stardust Promotion and the publisher Shueisha started a new magazine, Pinky, with low fiancial support. In response, she terminated her contract with Seventeen in 2006 and began her contract with Pinky as a frequent model. To date, all of Suzuki's covers with the magazine have been with her solely, except for one notable exception in a 2007 issue. Suzuki was featured on the first issue of the magazine.

While working as a model for Pinky, she has also worked as a model for many other fashion magazines and has modeled for a variety of ads, such as Shiseido, Suntory, OPC (Calorie Mate). Aside from appearing magazines, ads, and countless collection-shows, she has appeared in many TV series, such as The Long Love Letter, The Queen of the Lunch, Water Boys 2, and made efforts to work with the TV series Yukan Club in 2007.

In November 2007, having earned an estimated total of $29 million in the past 10 months, several medias named her one of the top ten earning models in Japan in 2007.

In January 2010, Suzuki made a surprise appearance as an alumni on Fuji Mezamashi TV's "Today's Countdown", a news program which she appeared on in her novice years (2001–2002). Despite having a busy work schedule, she referred to herself as a semi-retired model, and hinted that she did not wish to pursue an acting career.

Controversy

Weight

Suzuki has been named as a too-thin model in Japan; through her career, her official weight has been around 94 lb (43 kg). Moreover, much like other successful models like 1990s model Asami Ishikawa, Suzuki has been noted for her metabolic ability, as it is supposed to be "too fast and powerful" and a vital key to her success.

On October 21, 2008, Suzuki appeared in the midnight television program "Chrono's Gear" in her local city Kyoto, and weighed herself there. On the day, her weight was 90 lb (41 kg).

In November, 2008, the special editorial "The Starving Princess Part 8: Can't Stop, Won't Stop" in Takarajima, a monthly lifestyle magazine, named Suzuki as "The 6th thinnest female model in the 2000s". The editorial reported her body spec, which was calculated by several specialists, as 5' 9½" (1.77 m), 93 lb (42 kg), and 13.4 (BMI).

Public reception

According to her former fellow models who worked with her for Seventeen, including Anna Tsuchiya and Naoko Tokuzawa, Suzuki "ate enough" everyday. Tsuchiya described Suzuki as a "dumb a*s monster", as Suzuki "ate enough everyday" and still was "far taller-and-lighter" than Tsuchiya, and especially before appearing in television spots, Suzuki ate a "humongous amount of food" and was often slumped asleep to the floor with it like a overeaten cat or a dead drunkard, while Tsuchiya chronically suffered from heavy starvation.

Another one of the former fellow models Ayano Seki described Suzuki as "a monster whose metabolism is insanely fast compared to normal human beings". Seki gave the following examples of peculiarities with her metabolism: her hair grew too quickly; she liked to have a suntan in the summer time, but her skin would lose its tan and return to its original tone in an extraordinarily short period of time; in preparation for appearing in the music video of Sakura, she had to eat large quantities of food to make her face chubbier, and after the work, she lost all of the extra weight with "amazing speed". Many of her fellows had nicknamed Suzuki "Fedor", indirectly meaning "monster" Because of this, in 2008, TBS once tried to plan a special New Year's Eve program featuring a one-to-one conversation between Fedor Emelianenko and Suzuki, titled "2 / 6,000,000,000 -The Last Emperor vs. The Last Empress-" (after Fedor Emelianenko's alias "Man of 1 / 6,000,000,000"), with reserves of at least $20 million guarantees for them, but it did not come off on accounts of their respective schedules. Weekly Gendai referred to these, and referred to Suzuki as being a product of the 3rd golden age of Seventeen.

Personal life

Most aspects of Suzuki's private life remain mysterious. Through her career, she has revealed only a minimum part of her personal information. Nana Eikura, best friend since 2003, stated, "Emi rarely talks about herself to others, even me." She further revealed that the model lives alone in an expensive apartment and her room was organized and bare, save for "a refrigerator, a bureau, a sofa, a single-bed, a vase and some books".

File:Emi Suzuki as a child.jpg

Suzuki at the age of 9

Suzuki has been spectulated to enjoy watching MMA. Since the early 2000s, there is a vogue among Seventeen models for liking K-1 and Pride FC, and according to Sayaka Ogata (a former ST model), Suzuki in the course of time began to watch it like other ST models and was seemingly interested especially in Wanderlei Silva. In addition to it, a writer who competed to edit an MMA magazine claimed that he witnessed Suzuki once at the Saitama Arena. On the day, the Pride FC held a tournament there, Pride Grand Prix 2006 Final, where the fighters included Wanderlei Silva and some others. Suzuki made a guest appearance at the mixed martial arts event Dynamite!! 2009 on December 31, 2009 after an invitation from Nozomi Sasaki, the ringside commentator / former model who once referred to Suzuki as like her sister.

Anna Tsuchiya spent private time with Suzuki when they both were 17. After being proposed by Suzuki, Tsuchiya canceled her modeling schedule and then followed Suzuki. Tsuchiya and Suzuki stayed for 5 days in an inn near Lake Biwa. According to Tsuchiya, Suzuki had already been too famous in Kyoto at the time, so she was often surrounded by a crowd of especially young girls who wanted to shake hands with her, and many of them ("brats") called her Emi-nee. Tsuchiya has got a photo of her and Suzuki, which was taken at this time, striking a pose of a wrestler ("the pose of Jun") in miko clothes. "Emi-nee" became one of the most known nicknames for Suzuki along with "Emi-chee".

In her very early working years, she was also good friends with numerous visual-kei musicians that included many future successful stars. She made numerous guest-appearances in music videos for numerous visual-kei artists, and was featured by many of them. For example Hakuei (formar lead-vocalist of Penicillin) and Kiyoshi (who is best known as the guitarist of Hide with Spread Beaver) heavily featured her as a rising model on their radio show and featured her in their band Machine's single "010 Zero-One-Zero" booklet's "Special Thanks" section; Sex Machineguns' bassist Noisy featured her in his album Dustar first limited edition's booklet, saying "Best wishes to you, our goddess Emi-chan".

Also, though successful models usually avoid appearing on TV shows especially variety shows, she has made numerous guest-appearances on several variety shows in Kyoto, including the KBS quiz show Dance Shuffle where she showed that she didn't know the existence of the country Canada, and the FM-Kyoto variety program Sunnyside Balcony where she responded to the question about what the name of the founder of Christianity was, seriously saying Albert Afghanistan, and she saw a portrait picture of the president of the USA George W Bush and was asked what his name was, seriously responding CM Punk.

In 2008, Suzuki gave Nana Eikura a car as a birthday present when Eikura got a driver license at the age of 20. Eikura was surprised five months after the day when she found out that the price of the car was more than 8 million yen (roughly $80,000). It was a model of Lexus. Other people who received some gifts from Suzuki include Ryuji Ito, Jun Kasai, Abdullah Kobayashi, and may include Masada, Cima, Wifebeater, and Go Shiozaki.

External links

• Stardust official site
• Little Bit - official blog
• emisuzuki.com, an unofficial website which has been named as a source referring Suzuki's BWH by IMDb