In show business, you can't look as if you made up your own labels. Only someone as big as Michael Jackson gets away with calling himself the King of Pop.
Last month, when singer Anna Tsuchiya performed nine songs at a concert in Paris as part of the Tokyo Style Collection, Japanese tabloids reported that in France Tsuchiya is known as "Japan's Madonna." How she earned such a moniker isn't clear, but if you compare the two women you find little to support the analogy.
The child of an American father and a Japanese mother, the 22-year-old Tsuchiya became a popular fashion model in her teens and later starred in the movie "Shimotsuma Monogatari (Kamikaze Girls)," where she played a foul-mouthed free spirit trapped in the sticks of Ibaraki Prefecture. She then launched a solo singing career and scored big with the theme song for the animated TV series "Nana," which is about a punk-rock singer.