All About Maki Goto

Maki Goto is a Japanese singer best known for her time spent in the girl group Morning Musume. She was the only third generation member of the group when the auditions were successful. Maki is a native of Tokyo, Japan and she was born on September 28, 1985. She is very short, standing at only five feet and three inches tall. She has the O blood type. She would join Morning Musume in 1999 as a 13 year-old but her stay with the group would be only a few years. Goto decided to graduate from the group in 2002. But in addition to being a professional singer, who really is Maki Goto?

Interesting facts about Maki Goto

• When she is not singing or touring, Maki enjoys cooking and watching movies.
• Goto’s favorite flowers are baby’s breaths.
• Her favorite colors are deep blue, gray, yellow, white, and pale pink.
• Maki Goto enjoys eating Mont blanc, ice cream, and rice.
• The foods that she does not like are liver, sea urchin, avocados, and the papaya fruit.
• She has a younger brother named Yuki Goto.
• Maki has been named as the sexiest member of Hello! Project. With so many beautiful artists in that big label it would be very tough to pick just one though.

Maki Goto has achieved considerable success in her native Japan. But her life has not been without tragedy however. In 1996, her father passed away due to a fall while he was climbing mountains. In 2005, her grandmother passed away. In addition to this, her younger brother and two others aged 18 and 19 broke into a construction site and stole 80 reels of electric cables with an estimated value of 1 million yen. He was obviously arrested and not much has been heard from him since. However, Goto’s biggest personal loss was when early in 2010, her mother Makiko Goto fell from the third story of their house and she had been under the influence of alcohol. Maki found her mother late that night at 11 PM on the 23^rd of January and Makiko passed away on the 24^th. 

But success seems to have happened to Goto almost instantly when she joined Morning Musume in 1999. She established herself as a singer and dancer, helping the group catapult itself to super stardom with the single called Love Machine.

Note: source of all images unless otherwise noted: hello-online picture board

In November 1999, she was selected to be a part of the group called Petitmoni with second generation members Sayaka Ichii and Kei Yasuda. In March 2001, Goto started her solo career and even saw success with that! She released her first single called Ai no Bakayarou and that one reached #1 on the Oricon music charts. In July 2001, Goto became part of the group called 7nin Matsuri and they released one single called Summer Reggae Rainbow. It was in 2002 that Maki Goto left Morning Musume for good to continue her solo career. She is one of those members that was not forced to leave due to a scandal.

She also formed a group called Gomattou with Hello! Project solo singers Aya Matsuura and Miki Fujimoto. Fujimoto and Matsuura to this day remain best friends and went on a vacation together when they visited Chicago and Orlando in 2011. In 2003, she starred in her first movie role as Hitomi Koguren in the movie called Seishun Bakachin Ryorijuku. And of course in her usual successful fashion, she became part of another group called Nochiura Natsumi with Aya Matsuura and first generation member Natsumi Abe. To this day, it is estimated that Maki Goto’s CD & DVD sales exceed 2 million copies in Japan alone.  

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It was in 2008 that Maki would briefly stay in the city of Los Angeles and she studied several different types of song and dance including jazz, R & B and hip-hop. In June of that year, it was reported that Maki had been signed to Rhythm Zone under Avex. She would take part in that company’s shareholders meetings and sang a cover of the late Whitney Houston’s song Saving All My Love for You. In 2009, Maki Goto would take part in the SWEET BLACK project. This is a musical collaboration between the labels Avex, J-WAVE, and Mixi. It was Goto who chose the logo and the name. It is meant to reflect both the positive and negative sides of today’s women. In January 2009, Goto would release her first digital single with Avex called Fly Away. On February 25, 2009, she would release her second digital single called Lady-Rise while collaborating with manga author Erika Sakurazawa. It was on March 7, 2009 that Maki Goto would begin her modeling career while being a model at the Tokyo Girls Collection.

It would be on July 28, 2010 that Goto would release a mini album called ONE and this one has five news songs and it is under the name Goto Maki. However, she would go into a hiatus period starting in January 2012 stating that she is looking at her life differently since the death of her mother. She did attend the graduation of Ai Takahashi (Abe) in September 2011. Maki Goto is now a part of the large group Dream Morning Musume which has the former members that were forced to leave due to scandal or the ones that just graduated from the group. In March 2012, the group would hold a concert at the famous venue Nippon Budokan and Goto would make a surprise guest appearance here. On February 21, 2013, Goto would make her first appearance in public and she would promote Monster Hunter for the company Capcom. Capcom is the company famous for the Mega Man video games. On April 28, 2014, she opened a new blog site. This is very common among Japanese idols.

On July 22, 2014, Goto said that she is now married. Her husband who was 25 at the time that I first wrote about Maki Goto is a company employee from her hometown. Goto described him as someone that she can relax with. She credits him for giving her the love, support, and motivation to restart her career in show business. Goto goes by several nicknames including Gomaki. It was reported that in April 2020, Maki Goto started 2 channels on YouTube. One of them focuses on gaming while the other one focuses on beauty.

However, perhaps the biggest event in Goto’s life for which she has come under the most controversy is the fact that she was involved in a relationship with another man in 2019 in what is obviously being called an extramarital affair. According to the weekly tabloid Shukan Bunshun, Goto’s husband was seeking an amount of 3.3 million yen in compensation from her former boyfriend for her actions. Goto admitted her transgression in her blog, calling her actions “inexcusable.” Goto had been in a relationship with the man in the past and they reunited via the Internet in 2018. Goto’s former boyfriend asserted that her husband had committed domestic violence against her and that their marriage had already collapsed and so, he justified his affair with her.

In much more positive and recent developments, Maki will be taking part in what is called a Christmas LIVE event with DJ Ami Suzuki on December 25, 2022 at Cerulean Tower Tokyu Hotel in Tokyo. This will be the first time that Goto and Suzuki will collaborate on a LIVE concert. Suzuki commented saying that she and Goto were both active during the same time period and there are things that they each understand without saying a word. Suzuki also said that (she) Goto is younger than her but that she is reliable like an older sister. She feels relieved when she is with Goto. The concept of this concert will be a gorgeous and mature Christmas party. It will feature both solo performances and duets. There will also be a talk session.