Why M ?
 

i wonder, why the song M is named M?

i mean, the lyrics said its "maria..." but ayu could just simply used "MARIA" as the song title. maybe ayu afraid there'll be bad reputation since she used a name of religious? but artist such as hitomi and rinka ever used the title too. sorry if the question had been asked before.

I don't know really, but maybe there's a double-meaning to it? For example, "M" like "MARIA", "M" like "Marriage". Something like this.

Maybe Deli or another member will know more about it. ^^

Maybe for the shape of the letter.
It is really nice, lol.

No I think it's for MARIA, Ayu is christian I guess..

The song title was going to be something else, but then she changed it, and I think she didn't want to put a real name directly on the song, so she thought it was best just to use a letter. What was on ayu's head we may never know. But the "M" is definitely related to Maria (Virgin Mary). The song lyrics were kinda written like a prayer, like she's caling for the saint to hear her problems.

well i can't agree really. I heard that she didn't know anything about Maria, and someone tells her a legend and she was improved how strong this woman was, (also with Free&Easy with Joan D'arc)
All those Christian signs are more exotic for japanese people. I read that in Japan only 1%-5% per cents of Christian

Maria is Catholic.

At least, I'm Christian and Maria isn't OMGIMPORTANT. It's more focused on Jesus & God. Yea.

Ayu believes in God but she can't be placed in one category of religion.

I always thought "M" had a double-meaning. But even if it doesn't, "M" sounds a lot more perplexing and mystical then "MARIA". Maybe it's just Ayu playing with her creativity. Like "&". I never got why she named that single that anyways...

Really? Only 1-5%?? Then which religion to most japanese people follow??

^

Buddhism.

http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2055.html

But Ayu for a fact isn't a real buddist.

And yea, only 2 mil ppl in Japan are Christian. Most believe in an afterlife without believing in a specific religion.

^
The native religion of Japan is shinto and buddhism was introduced by one of the clans competing for power waaay back brining it from the mainland.

Ayumi Hamasaki is most likely not christian, but much like other japanese and non cristians may regard the chirstian (which includes catholics) literature as legends and stories that may or may not have inspirational value, much the same way we may read folk literature of other cultures.

Actually, I just remembered we can't discuss religion on this forum so shall we leave it at that? ^^

I can't even begin to express how ignorant and actually wrong this statement is but as you said no need to get into discussion.
*Just for clarification I did not call melrose ignorant because of their religious views but the actual statement by using such things as OMGIMPORTANT and just the overall response.
Anywho i think its for a variety of reasosn one major maybe being that hitomi released Maria earlier the same year.

^Everyone's different. Leave it at that.


But anyway, hitomi did? That's actually interesting :laugh She just HAD to go and one-up hitomi by putting a special symbol lol.

Omigosh, me too. :laugh

thats probably the answer.

Still confused, but as far as i know, even Ayu isn't a christian, Ayu have super motivation words like in religion states..
Maybe she reads Bible too??

I read somewhere but I can't remember where sadly. She might also be referring to Mary Magdalene, who Ayu thought was a saint, but she was also just another woman like Ayu herself.

People usually bring this hypothesis up which is extremely unlikely. Japanese people came into contact with the christian religion most likely the first time with the portuguese (or spanish) ship travels when they were searching for spices by traveling through the continents. Thus they were exposed to catholicism (there are even some stories about shiro amakusa and whatever that tried to preach catholicism into japanese ppl and was hunted down) a few centuries ago. Ever since then, the japanese people were exposed to christianism through catholicism, and then they got to assimilate "Maria" (Mary in Portuguese) which is how most catholics all over the world call Virgin Mary. Because of that, in Japan, the name "Maria" is almost always a reference to Virgin Mary (never to Mary Magdalene as some ppl usually try to imply). Now, even those who are very religious often know who Virgin Mary is but I know a lot of people who are christian and barely know much about Mary Magdalene (and when they mention Mary Magdalene, they never call her just Mary, but they always say her full name). Now, let's just think about Japan, in which the majority aren't even Christian, if someone actually gets to know of someone named "Maria" from the bible, will they thik of Virgin Mary, the well known saint for the catholics (also well known in otgher christian religious, despite not being considered a saint), or Mary Magdalene, who happens to be one among hundreds of many other people described in the bible? Virgin Mary, imo. Also praying for saints is something catholics do. Ayu is praying for a saint in the song "M" (as can be seem in the PV since she kneels and join her hands together and close her eyes and says "Maria" or something like that, and the lyrics are quite clear). The saint most catholics pray to is "Maria", which is Virgin Mary. I've never seem a catholic praying for Mary Magdalene, ever.:shrug

Ah yeah I see where you're coming from. That makes a lot of sense. Thanks for the detailed explanation. I'll try and find where I read it. This was never confirmed by Ayu herself though right, or it was?

maybe that mysterious M was for one of her friend called m something so to keep it anonymous she didnt put the full name .

or since she have A H M maybe she was planning to do other single untill you obtain hamasaki

i highly doubt about the second possibility although it would have been funny if she did

i think it's the same as 'A' symbol that ayu use for her name...maybe ayu don't even know the exact name and if you realize,the title was using italic font (i don't know the specialize NAME) instead plain simple font

p/s:sorry,bad english

it's just supposed to be short for 'Maria', if i'm correct.

M stands for Maria (Maria is the Japanese name for Mary Magdalene, if i'm correct)

I think they often use 聖母マリア or just マリア for short, as reference to Virgin Mary.

http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/ency...me.php?id=3772

If japanese refer to Mary Magdalene they most likely often use her full name:
マグダラのマリア

I could be wrong though.

She may have chosen to title it M because it could mean a lot of different things and a lot of times with songs what the Artist writes and what we interpret are completely different things. From the PV you could say that M stood for Virgin Mary because it seemed that Ayu was praying to a saint. But by reading the lyrics you can interpret it as Mary of Magdalene because it states "Maria" There is someone I should love;
every person who has ever been hurt..." Mary of Magdalene is sometimes referred to as a prostitute and yet she was forgiven for her sin, so she should be loved like everyone else. Other say that it may be Mary of Magdalene because M is her initials and that may be why its just M and not Maria. Its been a while but I've also read somewhere that Ayu have written this after one of her friend told her about (someone they knew I think) named Maria so really all this debate about whether it was about either of the first two could have wrong.

The M could stand for Virgin Mary, or Mary of Magdalene, or someone else completely. But I don't think she chose M because she afraid of getting a bad reputation. There are a lot of artists that have song title that has to do with religion, I mean Gackt has a song called Maria and that never cause any problems and his song Jesus came out last month, acid android has a song called Jesus Christ, and in HYDE Faith Album there where a lot of hints toward Christianity(because it was based off of it).

On another note (no offense to anyone who really religious but) in Japan they see Christianity/Western Religion kind of like a fad/trend sort of thing I doubt it would affect the artist reputation there (in my opinion I don't think people are all that religious or well strictly religious in Japan that it would offend them), it may affect there reputation to some fans in other countries. But I don't think artists are going to change a song title so it doesn't offend anyone.

Hyde Faith Album really meant to be about Christianity.. not the use of a fad,
Cause he went to Europe, and felt moved by the Christian Churches, etc.

Most people in Japan do not follow religion..
Like, people say, oh Shinto and Buddhism is the state religions..
Yeah, but no one follows it.
The only times people follows religion is in birth, death, and new years.
In fact, it is only out of duty for the rituals involved, not deeper meanings of Gods or spirits.
Some people say to the Japanese lifestyle like this:

Shinto in Birth, Christian in Marriage, and Buddhism in death.

The reason why many people are not Christian in Japan is a really simple one:
In Christianity you could only be Christian, and could not be Buddhist or Shintoist.
You could only have faith in one God, but the faiths of Shinto believes in spirits and things.
And Buddhism believes in nothing.. like, not that they dont believe anything, they believe there is nothing.. that its a dream.
So It's hard.
But Christian marriages are super popular, especially going to the church and getting married in such ideal place.

It's a bit wrong to label Japan as any religious group..
Its more take and choose whatever fits into your lifestyle,
And do the duties of our families, and the rituals that are important to them, etc.
That kind of thing.

Therefore, I think it's right to say Hamasaki could believe in higher powers.
The story of Mary, whoever whichever Mary you want, could have inspired her.
But yeah, since Catholicsm is the most popular form of Christianity in Japan, and the world,
I think its best to say she is praying to the mother Mary..
Her figure is a very noble figure, and something like a mystery..
I get a really inspiring feeling about her if I read something or know something..
I dont know that whole story of Mother Mary, but I'm really feel inspired by her...
So I think it's the same way with Hamasaki~ that's all. ^^)

That would be a great thing to adopt for the world. I*d love a catholic wedding!

Just to clarify: the Virgin Mary isn't considered a saint in Catholicism. Her place in the religion is vastly different from that of saints.

Anyway, I always thought Ayu used M because it was part of her name :P A single = Ayu, H single = Hamasaki, and M because it appears in both her first name and surname. That and she's praying to Maria in the song.

Yep, I read that the original title was BLISS. It was listed as so on a few CD sites but then it was changed.

I'm not saying that Faith was a fad. I'm just saying that some aspect of Christianity can be a fad to some people in Japan, just like how people in the US would wear gothic crosses and well not all of them are religious (but because the look nice). I was trying to answer the question in the first post that said
I'm just trying to state that it would not cause a problem if it was religiously based, and I was giving reference to why it wouldn't cause any problems. But whether or not other artist have title songs that are Religiously based because they believed it them or as something the just find interesting. There have been other songs with religious reference and it hasn't cause them any huge trouble that I know of. So...

I didn't mean offend you or anyone by implying that HYDE Faith Album was a fad maybe I should use line breaks more? So that it doesn't seem like I'm implying those songs were a fad. I tend to get my thoughts mixed up, and ramble sometimes :innocent or rather I switch to a different topic without really giving any notice (does that make sense?). Sorry if I confused anyone.:thud


But I suppose to clearly answer the first post. We may never really know why it was named M but her decision to name it M has noting to do with the reason that it could hurt her reputation if she named it Maria because...


1.It wouldn't matter because Maria can just be a name (if anything you can make up a reason why its named that way to avoid controversy)

2.They don't have anything against Christianity in Japan (there was a time when they did shun it but that was a long time ago I can't really remember when sorry), from what I seen religious isn't really as important as some of the traditions and honor. I think most Japanese practice and not many are purely any religion since most practice some from of Shinto because after time some of it is blended into traditions they practice.

3.Other artist have songs that are religiously based and titled.

I really hoped that cleared up what I said earlier...

That's interesting I didn't know that, though I can't really imagine it being called Bliss, if it was between that and M well I'm glad she pick M it sounds much nicer and its kinda mysterious too if you know what I mean, after all we can only speculate what it means.

For all we know it could be a reference to her own mother. Isn't her name Mariko? Or Makiko? Or something?

I know my interpretation may be ridiculous...but ayu's titles always have some kind of aesthetic concerns......

What's more, "M" makes you think of more, not just Maria.

Actually, I'd just like to point out that Mary Magdalene IS a saint. :)

it's a Myth