Noriyuki Makihara

Makihara writes lyrics that shouldn't work. Laid flat on a page, lines like his are almost embarrassingly earnest — no irony, no armor, just a person saying the obvious kind thing out loud. Set them to his melodies and they land somewhere under your ribs instead. That is a much rarer skill than people admit. He's from Takatsuki in Osaka, his fans have called him Mackey for decades, and the strangest measure of his reach is that his most famous song isn't really his to sing: he wrote 'Sekai ni Hitotsu Dake no Hana' for SMAP, and it became something close to a national anthem for a generation of Japanese schoolchildren. Nobody plans a song like that. His life has also included serious, very public stumbles, and he has gone back to the music every time. How much weight you give that is a personal decision. What isn't in dispute is the number of ordinary bad days those songs have quietly carried people through.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Name (English)

Noriyuki Makihara

Name (Japanese)

槇原敬之

Reading

まきはら のりゆき

Born

May 18, 1969 (age 57)

Origin

Takatsuki, Osaka Prefecture, Japan

Height

176 cm

Occupation

singer-songwriter / composer / lyricist / recording artist

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Taurus / Rooster

Agency

WORDS & MUSIC Co., Ltd.

Active years

2021 -

University

Aoyama Gakuin University

Works summary

Works

79

By year (titles with a known year)

1990: 1, 1991: 2, 1992: 1, 1993: 3, 1994: 3, 1996: 1, 1997: 1, 1999: 1, 2001: 1, 2007: 2, 2008: 3, 2010: 1, 2011: 2, 2012: 3, 2013: 2, 2014: 1, 2015: 4, 2016: 3, 2017: 2, 2019: 1, 2023: 1, year unknown: 40

Filmography / notable works

• Official sitehttps://www.makiharanoriyuki.com/
• Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/buppulabel/
• Xhttps://x.com/Daviechan
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noriyuki%20Makihara
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%A7%87%E5%8E%9F%E6%95%AC%E4%B9%8B
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q847386

Tags

• Osaka Prefecture
• singer-songwriter
• composer
• lyricist

Last updated

November 2, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. Works and profile fields sourced from Wikipedia reflect content as of 2026-08-26. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.