Yoko Ono (born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist who is also known for her work in performance art and filmmaking. She performs in both English and Japanese. She is known for being the second wife and widow of singer-songwriter John Lennon of the Beatles. Ono grew up in Tokyo and also spent several formative years in New York City.

Ono was born on February 18, 1933, in Tokyo, Japan, to Isoko Ono (Xiao Ye  Ji Zi , Ono Isoko) and Eisuke Ono (Xiao Ye  Ying Fu , Ono Eisuke), a wealthy banker and former classical pianist. Isoko's father was ennobled in 1915. Isoko's maternal grandfather Zenjiro Yasuda (An Tian  Shan Ci Lang , Yasuda Zenjiro) was an affiliate of the Yasuda clan and zaibatsu. Eisuke came from a long line of samurai warrior-scholars. The kanji translation of Yoko (Yang Zi ) means "ocean child." Two weeks before Ono's birth, Eisuke was transferred to San Francisco by his employer, the Yokohama Specie Bank. The rest of the family followed soon after, with Ono meeting her father when she was two. Her younger brother Keisuke was born in December 1936. Ono was enrolled in piano lessons from the age of 4. In 1937, the family was transferred back to Japan and Ono enrolled at Tokyo's elite Gakushuin (also known as the Peers School), one of the most exclusive schools in Japan. The family moved to New York City in 1940. The next year, Eisuke was transferred from New York City to Hanoi, and the family returned to Japan. Ono was enrolled in Keimei Gakuen, an exclusive Christian primary school run by the Mitsui family. She remained in Tokyo throughout World War II and the great fire-bombing of March 9, 1945, during which she was sheltered with other family members in a special bunker in Tokyo's Azabu district, far from the heavy bombing. Ono later went to the Karuizawa mountain resort with members of her family. Starvation was rampant in the destruction that followed the Tokyo bombings; the Ono family were forced to beg for food while pulling their belongings with them in a wheelchair. Ono said it was during this period in her life that she developed her "aggressive" attitude and understanding of "outsider" status when children--who were once well-to-do--taunted her and her brother. Other stories tell of her mother bringing a large number of goods with them to the countryside, where they were bartered for food. In one anecdote, her mother traded a German-made sewing machine for 60 kilograms (130 lb) of rice to feed the family. During this time, Ono's father, who had been in Hanoi, was believed to be in a prisoner of war camp in China. However, unbeknownst the them, he remained in the city. Ono told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now on October 16, 2007, that "He was in French Indochina, which is Vietnam actually.... in Saigon. He was in a concentration camp." By April 1946, Gakushuin was reopened and Ono re-enrolled. The school, located near the Tokyo Imperial Palace, had not been damaged by the war, and Ono found herself a classmate of Prince Akihito, the future emperor of Japan. She graduated in 1951 and was accepted into the philosophy program of Gakushuin University as the first woman to enter the department. However, she left the school after two semesters. During the last two years that the Beatles performed, Lennon and Ono created and attended their own public protests against the Vietnam War. On March 20, 1969, they were married at the registry office in Gibraltar and spent their honeymoon in Amsterdam, campaigning with a week-long Bed-In for Peace. They planned another Bed-In in the US, but were denied entry to the country. They held one instead at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal, where they recorded "Give Peace a Chance". Lennon later stated his regrets about feeling "guilty enough to give McCartney credit as co-writer on my first independent single instead of giving it to Yoko, who had actually written it with me." The famous couple often combined advocacy with performance art, such as in "bagism", first introduced during a Vienna press conference, where they satirised prejudice and stereotyping by wearing a bag over their entire bodies. Lennon detailed this period in the Beatles' song "The Ballad of John and Yoko". Lennon changed his name by deed poll on April 22, 1969, switching out Winston for Ono as a middle name. Although he used the name John Ono Lennon thereafter, official documents referred to him as John Winston Ono Lennon, since he was not permitted to revoke a name given at birth. The couple settled at Tittenhurst Park at Sunninghill, Berkshire, in southeast England. When Ono was injured in a car accident, Lennon arranged for a king-sized bed to be brought to the recording studio as he worked on the Beatles' last recorded album, Abbey Road. The two artists collaborated on many albums, beginning in 1968 when Lennon was still a Beatle, with Unfinished Music No.1: Two Virgins, an album of experimental musique concrete. The same year, the couple contributed an experimental piece to The White Album called "Revolution 9". Also on The White Album, Ono contributed backing vocals on "Birthday", and one line of lead vocals on "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill." The latter marked the only occasion in a Beatles recording in which a woman sings lead vocals. Ono released her first solo album, Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band, in 1970 as a companion piece to Lennon's better-known John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band. The two albums also had companion covers: Ono's featured a photo of her leaning on Lennon, and Lennon's a photo of him leaning on Ono. Her album included raw, harsh vocals, which bore a similarity with sounds in nature (especially those made by animals) and free jazz techniques used by wind and brass players. Performers included Ornette Coleman, other renowned free jazz performers, and Ringo Starr. Some songs on the album consisted of wordless vocalizations, in a style that would influence Meredith Monk and other musical artists who have used screams and vocal noise in lieu of words. The album reached No. 182 on the US charts. When Lennon was invited to play with Frank Zappa at the Fillmore (then the Filmore West) on June 5, 1971, Ono joined them. Later that year, she released Fly, a double album. In it, she explored slightly more conventional psychedelic rock with tracks including "Midsummer New York" and "Mind Train", in addition to a number of Fluxus experiments. She also received minor airplay with the ballad "Mrs. Lennon". The track "Don't Worry, Kyoko (Mummy's Only Looking for Her Hand in the Snow)" was an ode to Ono's missing daughter, and featured Eric Clapton on guitar. In the late 1960s, while studying with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Majorca, Spain, Ono's ex-husband Anthony Cox accused Ono of abducting their daughter Kyoko from his hotel. Accusations flew between the two, as well as the matter of custody. Cox eventually moved away with Kyoko; Ono would not see her daughter until 1998. It was during this time that she wrote "Don't Worry Kyoko", which also appears on Lennon and Ono's album Live Peace in Toronto 1969, in addition to Fly. Kyoko is also referenced in the first line of "Happy Christmas (War Is Over)" when Yoko whispers "Happy Christmas, Kyoko", followed by Lennon whispering, "Happy Christmas, Julian." The song reached No. 4 in the UK, where its release was delayed until 1972, and has periodically reemerged on the UK Singles Chart. Originally a protest song about the Vietnam War, "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)" has since become a Christmas standard. That August the couple appeared together at a benefit in Madison Square Garden with Roberta Flack, Stevie Wonder, and Sha Na Na for mentally handicapped children organized by WABC-TV's Geraldo Rivera. In a 2018 issue of Portland Magazine, editor Colin W. Sargent writes of interviewing Yoko while she was visiting Portland, Maine in 2005. She spoke of driving along the coast with Lennon and dreamed of buying a house in Maine. "We talked excitedly in the car. We were looking for a house on the water... We did examine the place! We kept driving north along the water until I don't really remember the name of the town. We went quite a ways up, actually, because it was so beautiful." CANNOTANSWER

Ask a question about this article.

Was there a single from that album?