Funeral held for Miyu Uehara in Kagoshima

So her mother was 56 years old, when Miyu Uehara was born. Quite impressive.

Peaceful World are created by all human kinds. We have to respect others' wills.

so sad, I dont think the father couldve helped her even if he cheered her up on the phone. But still if your daughter says she wants to be in heaven with mom,...HUGE WARNING sign.... But ill miss her. Admired her along Yuji where they had to spent least money as possible.

I still don't think the facts of this story add up to a suicide. Any news in the J press on police theories?

She said she wanted to be beside her mom in heaven.

That's what I said in my previous comment. It's not because her "love life" wasn't going well, like everyone else said.

as electric2004 said, that means she was born when her mother was 55- she must have been quite a surprise for them. I don't think I've heard of anyone having a baby naturally at that age before, the oldest mother I know was 48 when her daughter was born.

Sorry, 56, not 55.

I was a bit sceptical so I checked and Wikipedia says that her mother was 43 when she was born, which makes more sense- the age given in the article must be a mistake.

I feel for her Dad - unfortunately he will always feel as though he could have prevented what happened. Suicide does not solve problems, it just trasfers them to those left alive. He will never recover from it.

I feel for her father and her brothers and sisters.

Electric2004 - Why are you calculating back from her father's age anyway? There is nothing in the article to figure out how old her mother was when Miyu was born. Thank you Apsara for clarifying this. Sad thing, she really needed counselling from her friends but no one picked it up that it was this bad. So sad... may she rest peacefully in heaven with her mother..

It clearly says her mum dies last year aged 65, so she would be 66 this year. Miyu was 24 when she died so her mother was 42 or 43 when she was born.

So she made money by being portrayed as the "poverty idol" but didn't do anything to help those less fortunate, which are in great supply recently. While I with Mittsu that the facts don't really add up to suicide, This is Japan, Suicide without a clear reason isn't rare.

The article originally said Miyu's mother was 79 when she passed away, which would have put her in her mid-fifties when Miyu was born, hence the comments about the mother's age. It has since been corrected but the moderator didn't add a note.

After all the deaths from the earthquake and tsunami I wondered why I felt especially sad about this death. I believe it is because it was self-inflected by a beautiful and good young woman who had every reason to live. At the end of Mrs Daloway Virginia Woolf says something about everyone possessing the right to throw one's life away. My beef with that is that invariably wrong people chose to go that way. The tragedy of suicide it that it cause grief to not only loved ones but unknown others with not "rights" to grieve. I think of the poem by Theodore Roethke called "Elegy to Jane: My Student Thrown by a Horse," which ends:

Over this damp grave I speak the words of my love; I with no rights in this matter, Neither father nor lover.

The lines from Theodore Roe

Opps, wrong button! Pardon the surprise lack of lines breaks and the ghost at the end.

Poor girl, her mother's death must've affected her a lot too. All alone in a big family and a, big city.

This death should be on the conscience of the loser guy who hurt her feelings and made her cry. He devastated her life and now is hiding becuase he has no honour and dignity to face the truth.

: “I wanted her to make something of herself and then to give back to the community from which she came. I apologize to everyone on her behalf that she didn’t do so.” What a disgusting comment from her 'loving' father.

The family was very poor with a ton of kids. When they were talking to the dad on the telli, he looked so sad. The ceiling in the room he was sitting in was peeling.

so sad.

I don't really care for idols and their ilk, but for some reason I liked this girl, her suicide was such a shock. I was really rooting for her to succeed, and it seemed like she was just starting to get regular appearances on television here and there before she killed herself. Her whole reason for working was so that she could save up enough money to build a brand new, barrier free house for her mom and dad to live the rest of their days in in Kagoshima. So so sad.

In Tokyo there are so many people but it's common to feel lonely and isolated.People have such tiny hearts and I always wonder why. She had reasons to commit suicide, after all maybe she looked around and couldn't find any person real and true to her as a friend and supporter. Life ain't always about money like many people think, nor success. IT's more than that. something non material. May her soul rest in peace.

This woman was really small-time during her career, absolutely small potato.

Just one week after her demise, she's been totally forgotten. No one cares. No more tabloid write-ups on her. The virulent showbiz rat race goes on with one less competition and maybe one less burden with the management.

Miyu may not be totally forgotten. Her images will live on in the internet and other periodicals for years to come. As I write this, her videos are multiplying on Youtube and her blog site is still revcieving thousands of hits everyday.