(born February 22, 1984) is a Japanese female singer. She is a former member of

Melon Kinenbi were an all-girl Japanese pop group within Hello! Project. They were formed after they successfully passed the 2nd Morning Musume & Michiyo Heike Imotobun Audition. Melon Kinenbi is the oldest group in the history of Hello! Project not to have ...

, an all-girl

J-pop J-pop ( ja, ジェイポップ, ''jeipoppu''; often stylized as J-POP; an abbreviated form of "Japanese popular music"), natively also known simply as , is the name for a form of popular music that entered the musical mainstream of Japan in the 1 ...

group which is part of the

Hello! Project is a Japanese musical collective consisting of all female recording artists and groups under Up-Front Promotion, a subsidiary of Up-Front Group. The name was initially used as Michiyo Heike and Morning Musume's fan club name in 1999, but has s ...

. She joined the group

Tanpopo was a sub-group of the Japanese idol girl group Morning Musume and associated with Hello! Project. It was formed by Up-Front Promotion in November 1998 as Morning Musume's first sub-group. While the main group Morning Musume features predominan ...

with

Morning Musume , formerly simply and colloquially referred to as , are a Japanese girl group, holding the second highest overall single sales (of a female group) on the Oricon charts as of February 2012, with the Oricon record of most top ten singles with an ...

members

Asami Konno , known by her birth name is a Japanese television presenter and former singer and actress. She debuted in August 2001 with the girl group Morning Musume and participated in musical projects within Hello! Project. After leaving the group on Ma ...

and

Risa Niigaki is a Japanese actress and singer. She was a fifth-generation member of the Japanese pop group Morning Musume. She joined Morning Musume in 2001 along with 3 others- Ai Takahashi, Asami Konno and Makoto Ogawa. She grew up in Yokohama after movin ...

in 2002 until the group went into an indefinite hiatus after releasing one single. Shibata has been an active member of Hello! Project since 2000, participating in Hello! Project's

futsal Futsal is a football-based game played on a hardcourt, hard court smaller than a football pitch, and mainly indoors. It has similarities to five-a-side football and Indoor soccer, indoor football. Futsal is played between two teams of five players ...

club

Gatas Brilhantes H.P. was a futsal team representing Hello! Project. The team was founded on September 9, 2003 and was later disbanded on March 7, 2015. History On April 23, 2007, nine new members from Mix Gatas were added to the team mainly from Berryz Kobo an ...

, many shuffle groups, concerts, and special events. After Melon Kinenbi disbanded in 2011, Shibata announced she was starting her own solo career, and she later released her first solo single, "believe", in November 2011. She later released her first solo album in 2014, "Kick start", which was largely a cover album. In 2016, Shibata announced she was marrying baseball pitcher Masaki Minami, and announced her retirement shortly afterwards as well.

Photobooks

Solo

* Ayumi * Ayumi 2 (September 30, 2003, photographer Chukyo Ozawa)

Group

Photo Album – Taiyō to Kajitsu * Melon Kinenbi in Hello! Project 2004 Summer * Hello! Project Town! Hello! Project 2005 Summer

Discography

External links

Universal Music Website
* * 1984 births Living people People from Kawasaki, Kanagawa Tanpopo members 11Water members Elegies (group) members Japanese idols Japanese women pop singers Universal Music Japan artists Melon Kinenbi members Musicians from Kanagawa Prefecture {{Japan-singer-stub