Tomohisa Yamashita (山下 智久, Yamashita Tomohisa?, born April 9, 1985), also known as Yamapi (山P, Yamapi?) is a Japanese idol, singer-songwriter and an award-winning actor. He is a member and leader of the J-pop group NEWS and has achieved 11 consecutive number ones (singles and albums combined) on the Oricon charts since their debut in 2003. He has also garnered two number one singles as part of Shuji to Akira and as a solo artist. Yamashita graduated in September 2008 from Meiji University's faculty of commerce with a degree in marketing.[1]
[edit] Biography
He entered Johnny & Associates when he was 11 years old and is affectionately called YamaPi (short for Yamashita and the colour pink) by his friends, which is a nickname given to him by Hideaki Takizawa. His closest friends call him by the name "Pi", which was first used by his best friend Jin Akanishi, who is part of the group KAT-TUN.

When he was young, he loved to go to the park and play with the sandpit. His father left the family when he was young, that's why he changed his name. When he was transferred to another school, a boy expressed his love to him. Apparently, the boy mistook him for a girl. The sports that he learned from kindergarten to Primary 4 are karate and baseball. Yamapi got a purple belt for Karate. He joined the Athletes club in Junior High for swimming and short running in which he got a record of 7.6 seconds in 50m short run.

Due to his pretty face, his fellow juniors and closest friends admit that during their junior days, Yamapi is always given special treatment by the sempais as he is "too cute to bully". Ikuta Toma said in an interview that whenever they see Yamapi they can't stop cooing "cute". Garnering impressive attention even before debuting, Yamashita was often seen performing at the centre. To this, Kazuya Kamenashi once said that in the Jimusho that there were the Johnny Juniors and then, there was "Yamapi".
[edit] Johnny's Junior
Since joining Johnnys, he has been a member of Jr. groups B.I.G., Four Tops, and most recently NEWS. Yamashita began to appear in television dramas soon after he joined Johnnys. In 2000, at age 15, his performance in Ikebukuro West Gate Park earned him an award for "Best New Comer". That same year, he was voted first place in the Annual Junior Awards for "Best Boyfriend", "Most Beautiful", to name a few for the first time.

When Takizawa made his debut with Tsubasa Imai as Tackey & Tsubasa in 2002, he left as the leader of Johnny's Juniors. Around the same time, Yamashita and the three most popular Tokyo Juniors Toma Ikuta, Jun Hasegawa, and Shunsuke Kazama formed Four Tops. Four Tops then began to host the Junior television program, The Shōnen Club.

[edit] Post-Debut
In September 2003, eight other boys from Johnny's Juniors were chosen to form the group NEWS with Yamashita as the leader. NEWS's formation came as a shock to not only the fans of Four Tops but its own members as well. Yamashita later revealed that at the time, aside from Ryo Nishikido, he had barely talked to any of the other group members since they were all juniors in relation to his status within Johnny's and he had been informed that the group would merely be a temporary one-month unit. In fact, he also shared that he had never met Yuya Tegoshi before, and their first meeting ever was as fellow band mates. At the time Yamashita had been with Johnny's for around 7 years, whereas Tegoshi had only been around for 10 months.

NEWS made its formal debut on May 12, 2004. Since its debut, NEWS has had all consecutive #1 singles on the Oricon Ranking Chart. To date all 11 singles and albums have all debuted #1.

In October 2005, Yamashita and Kamenashi Kazuya from KAT-TUN formed Shuuji to Akira to promote their drama, Nobuta wo Produce. It was named after their characters in the show, Shuuji and Akira. They also released a single, Seishun Amigo, as Shuuji to Akira, which sold over one million copies in four weeks. Seishun Amigo was the number one best selling single on the Oricon Yearly Single Rankings for 2005. NEWS, however, was temporarily disbanded and all group activities suspended after the suspension of two of its members for underage drinking.

In spring 2006, Yamashita starred in Kurosagi, a drama based on the manga of the same name. For this purpose, Yamashita recorded his first single as a solo artiste "Daite Señorita" which was #1 in the Oricon ranking.He received artist of the year along with T& T and KATTUN.His single was 4th best selling single of 2006 selling more than 600,000 records which twice the amount of NEWS's record.Much to his success rumors have speculated that Yamashita Tomohisa is set to pursue a career as a solo artist but was later proven to be untrue as stated that, Tomohisa prefers to stay with the group not as their leader but simply as a member. His modesty and well grounded nature is much recognized not only by his band members but throughout the JE fandom.

As of June 2006, he became part of an unofficial group within Johnny's Entertainment called "No Border", which includes members: Matsumoto Jun of Arashi, Murakami Shingo of Kanjani8, Satou Atsuhiro of Hikaru Genji, Ikuta Toma of Johnny's Junior's, Domoto Koichi of Kinki Kids, Yamaguchi Tatsuya of TOKIO and Takizawa Hideaki of Tackey & Tsubasa. The group was formed when the 8 members from different JE groups met up for dinner and decided to name themselves No Border. They are known to interact freely, bypassing the sempai-kouhai relationships formed by JE. There is a 7 part round-robin on their jwebs about the formation of the group. Each member has a specific color - White, Black, Red, Pink, Purple, Gold, Blue, Grey. However, who holds which color is still unknown.

In the latter half of 2006, Yamashita and Thai brother duet Golf & Mike teamed up with Kitayama Hiromitsu (Kis-my-ft2), Inoo Kei (J.J. Express), Totsuka Shota (A.B.C.), and Yaotome Hikaru (Ya-Ya-Yah), to form a temporary unit called Kitty GYM, though there has never been a second T. This unit was made to cheer on the Japan Women's Volleyball team, and they released a single in August called "Fever to Future" under the name "GYM" which stands for Golf, Yamashita, and Mike, respectively.

Yamashita returned as a member of NEWS on 31 December 2006 on Johnny's Countdown 2006-2007 and released Hoshi wo Mezashita which as expected debuted to the number 1 spot.

Early 2007, Yamashita along with KAT-TUN's Koki Tanaka and Taisuke Fujigaya of Kis-my-ft2, starred in Byakkotai, a two-part mini-drama.

Kurosagi, a movie spun-off from the sucessful TBS drama, was released on 8 March 2008. Yamashita starred in the film, making this his first starring role in a movie. With only a budget of 2 million US dollars,the movie grossed approximately 15.5 million dollars. Such success is expected to result to more movie offerings for Tomohisa. Yamashita announced on March 15, 2008 that he was 6 credits short from graduating from Meiji University. He will aim to graduate in September 2008. [2]

Yamashita Tomohisa stars in Code Blue along with other popular actresses Aragaki Yui and Toda Erika.

Annons

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July 2009