Hikaru Utada -- Distance/Final Distance

After giving Hikaru Utada's（宇多田ヒカル）debut album, "First Love" some heavy play on my stereo over the months, she finally released that 2nd album, "Distance" in March 2001. Of course, there were her big singles such as "Wait and See", "Addicted to Love" and "Can You Keep a Secret?" But the one that I really liked was the title track itself. It had that mellow mid-tempo AOR melody paired with Utada's now-familiar vocal style, and it made for a nice contrast with some of the other songs on the album. Of course, Utada was responsible for the writing and composition of all of the tracks.

One of the things I've always said about Japan was that it has been one of the safest places on Earth....but what relatively little crime there is there can be shockingly horrific at times. Over the last decade that I was living in the country, there were bursts of sudden violence in which very disturbed people would go on indiscriminate stabbing sprees in various public places. The Akihabara Massacre in 2008 is one example. However, there was another one years earlier in June 2001 when a deranged former janitor stabbed 8 children and injured 13 other children and 2 teachers at Ikeda Elementary School in Osaka Prefecture. One of the slain students, Rena Yamashita（山下玲奈）, had once told about her respect and love through an essay for Hikaru Utada, and her desire to become like her idol.

"Distance" had been slated to be released as a single from the album, but when Utada heard about the mass murder at the school and about Ms. Yamashita, she decided to re-arrange the song into an elegiac ballad in tribute to her. The song was now titled "Final Distance" and was released in July 2001 as her 8th single. It peaked at No. 2 on the Oricon weeklies and eventually became the 24th-ranked song of the year. With this release, Utada broke the 10-million mark of career single sales; to have done this in the 2 years and 8 months since her debut made her the singer to have reached this mark in the shortest period of time....a record that is still unbroken.

"Final Distance" even became a track on Utada's next album, "Deep River" which came out in June 2002.