Mama Sawayama

Noriko Sawayama is Rina Sawayama's mother and an interior designer. She's the creative director of NSDA (Noriko Sawayama Design & Associates Ltd), a professional design practice based in London (est. 2000) providing comprehensive Interior Design and consulting services for commercial (Hotel, Restaurant, Spa) and residential projects world-wide. In 2016, she was honored with the Merit Award by the British Institute of Interior Design (BIID).

Raised by her, Rina talked about her mother several times during interviews, stating that they "didn't have a great relationship growing up." Rina often refers to her as Mama Sawayama.

History with Rina

Rina Sawayama's parents decided to move to London, when she was five years old, for her father's job at Japan Airlines. A few years later, her parents went through a separation, and Rina shared a single room with her mother until she was 15. Rina says she spent her teens "acting out", due to anger after her parents separated. During an interview with Pitchfork, Sawayama said that during her early teens, she would go out and her mother would "hack" into her MSN to ask her friends her whereabouts, a moment that Rina remembers in "Paradisin'"—track from her 2020 album, Sawayama:

One time I lied to her and said I was going to a sleepover but I was actually going to an after-party with this band I was a groupie of. I think I was 15. My mum somehow found out which hotel the band was staying in, called the hotel, and demanded to speak to the manager of the band. Then the manager had to call the band and be like, “What the fuck are you doing? That girl is 15, I’m on the phone with her mum right now.” They shoved me into a taxi, and my mum did not speak to me for a week.

Rina stated that her mother always "threatened" to send her to boarding school, but they "could never afford it." Rina was also "embarrassed" about her mother's because she could barely speak English, and she had a thick accent and she would always prepare her Japanese food for lunch. "Even though we literally lived in the same room, we lived very different lives. She represented something that was stopping me from assimilating into my class at school. So yeah, we fought a lot."

Songs

As a singer-songwriter, Rina Sawayama has written songs inspired by her relationship with her mother.

Sawayama (2020)

• "Paradisin'" was written about Sawayama's "wild" teenage years when she and her mom had the "worst" relationship. In the song, Sawayama recalls the moment where her mother hacked into her MSN; and when she threatened her to send her to boarding school.
• "Snakeskin" samples Beethoven's "Sonata Pathétique", a song that Noriko used to play on the family piano. The track closes with a recording of Noriko answering Rina's question "What do you want to do now that you have turned 60?". She responds in Japanese, "I've realized that now I want to see who I want to see, do what I want to do, be who I want to be."

Hold the Girl (2022)

• "Catch Me in the Air" was written inspired by the relationship of Rina and Noriko. "I just wanted to write the fact that we have caught each other when we're falling," she stated.

Gallery

via Twitter (4 Sep 2016)

via Twitter (18 Oct 2019)