Kōbō Abe
Yumi Arai was born in 1954 in Hachiōji, Tokyo. She had three brothers and one sister, and her family ran a draper shop called Arai Gofukuten, established in 1912. When she was a junior high school student, she used to go to an Italian restaurant called Chianti, started in 1960. In those days, many celebrities went to the restaurant; Akira Kurosawa, Yukio Mishima, Kōbō Abe, Seiji Ozawa, Ryu Murakami, Taro Okamoto, Kishin Shinoyama, and Hiroshi "Monsieur" Kamayatsu, who eventually became her first record producer. Alfa Music, the publishing company to which she belonged early her in career (later to become a full-fledged record label in 1977), was founded by people who were regular customers at Chianti.