Toyoko Nakazato

Toyoko Nakazato (中里 豊子, Nakazato Toyoko) is a Japanese opera singer. In the 1990s to the early 2000s Nakazato had been active primarily in Mainland China, especially in Inner Mongolia.[1] She received the nickname of "Swan of Songs" in that country.[2]

In 1992 she first visited China.[2] Shortly afterward she began doing voice training in that country.[1] She became a professor emeritus at Inner Mongolia Art College and a visiting professor at Beijing Central Folk University, becoming the first non-Chinese to receive this status at the former and the first person ever to get this status at the latter. She moved to Chengdu, Sichuan in 1996, working at a talent research institution, Sichuan University, and Sichuan Music College. That November she created the Hiroshima International Music and Art Association (RIMA), known until 1998 as the Hiroshima Japan-China Exchange Association for Art and Music.[2] Nakazato was the main "Green Ambassador" of a 2003 Japan Association for Cultural Exchange effort to plant 1,000 cherry trees in Beijing.[1]