is a Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese musician and singer-songwriter

Singer-songwriter

Singer-songwriters are musicians who write, compose and sing their own musical material including lyrics and melodies. As opposed to contemporary popular music singers who write their own songs, the term singer-songwriter describes a distinct form of artistry, closely associated with the...

 from Tokyo

Tokyo

, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...

. Though he uses katakana

Katakana

is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet . The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Each kana represents one mora...

 for his recording name, the kanji

Kanji

Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...

 for his name are 菅 止戈男, but the romanization is the same. Suga is his family name and Shikao is his given name.

After graduating from Tokyo Keizai University

Tokyo Keizai University

is a private university in Tokyo, Japan. It has campuses at the cities of Kokubunji and Musashimurayama. The predecessor of the school was founded in 1900, and it was chartered as a university in 1949.-External links:*...

, he worked as a "salaryman

Salaryman

refers to someone whose income is salary based; particularly those working for corporations. Its frequent use by Japanese corporations, and its prevalence in Japanese manga and anime has gradually led to its acceptance in English-speaking countries as a noun for a Japanese white-collar...

" for four years in the advertisement industry. Debuting with a major label EP

Extended play

An EP is a musical recording which contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as a full album or LP. The term EP originally referred only to specific types of vinyl records other than 78 rpm standard play records and LP records, but it is now applied to mid-length Compact...

 album release in 1997, his J-Pop

J-pop

, an abbreviation for Japanese pop, is a musical genre that entered the musical mainstream of Japan in the 1990s. Modern J-pop has its roots in 1960s music, such as The Beatles, and replaced kayōkyoku in the Japanese music scene...

 music has jazz, funk and soul influence.

Several of his songs have been used in the TV anime

Anime

is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....

 show Honey and Clover

Honey and Clover

is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Chika Umino. It is also known as and H&C. It is published by Shueisha, initially serialized from June 2000 to July 2006 in the magazines CUTiEcomic, Young YOU, and Chorus, and collected in ten bound volumes...

, including Hachigatsu no Serenade, Tsuki to Knife and Yubikiri. Yozora no Mukō, the song he wrote the lyrics to, and sung by Smap

SMAP

SMAP is a Japanese boy band formed by Johnny & Associates. While originally consisting of six members, the current group members are Masahiro Nakai, Takuya Kimura, Goro Inagaki, Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, and Shingo Katori...

, has appeared in several Japanese music textbooks. He also did the theme song to the movie xxxHOLiC: Manatsu no Yoru no Yume , Sanagi ~theme from xxxHOLiC the movie~ and the theme song to the xxxHOLiC TV series called Jūkyū-sai. Manatsu no Yoru no Yume has appeared in the recent Death Note

Death Note

is a manga created by writer Tsugumi Ohba and manga artist Takeshi Obata. The main character is Light Yagami, a high school student who discovers a supernatural notebook, the "Death Note", dropped on Earth by a god of death, or a shinigami, named Ryuk...

 live action movie as an insert song. Also, his song Yūdachi was used as the closing theme for the movie Boogiepop and Others

Boogiepop and Others

is a light novel and manga authored by Kouhei Kadono and illustrated by Kouji Ogata, and a live-action movie directed by Ryu Kaneda. The light novel, the first in the Boogiepop series, was released in 1998 by MediaWorks and won the fourth Dengeki Game Novel Contest.The story takes place in an...

, the opening theme for the 2000 anime

Anime

is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....

 series Boogiepop Phantom

Boogiepop Phantom

is a twelve episode anime television series produced by Madhouse Studios, based on the Boogiepop light novel series by Kouhei Kadono, particularly that of Boogiepop and Others and Boogiepop At Dawn...

 and Nobody Knows was used as the opening theme of the second season of the xxxHOLiC TV series, xxxHOLiC Kei. More recently, Hajimari no Hi was used as the first opening theme to Letter Bee. After a year and three months, he released the second opening of the sequel, Yakusoku. Sofa was another song used in xxxHOLiC: Shunmuki in February 17,2009.

From October 3, 2005, until March 27, 2006, he was hosting a radio program called Night Stories Monday on J-Wave

J-Wave

J-Wave is a commercial radio station based in Tokyo, Japan, broadcasting on 81.3 FM from the Tokyo Tower to the Tokyo area. J-Wave airs mostly music covering a wide range of formats. The station is considered the most popular among FM broadcasts in Tokyo, and has surprised the radio broadcast...

 radio station which was downloadable as a podcast

Podcast

A podcast is a series of digital media files that are released episodically and often downloaded through web syndication...

.

He is involved in the poster campaign for Chica Umino

Chica Umino

is the pen name of an anonymous Japanese female manga artist, designer and illustrator.Umino is noted for being the author and creator of the Honey and Clover series, for which she received the Kodansha Manga Award in 2003, and which has been adapted into an anime series, produced by...

's seinen manga series, March Comes in Like a Lion

March Comes in Like a Lion

is an ongoing manga series by Chica Umino, best known for Honey and Clover. It began serialization in Hakusensha's seinen manga magazine Young Animal from its fourteenth issue in 2007 . A television commercial announcing the series was also aired by Hakusensha on numerous Japanese television...

 with Anne Watanabe

Anne Watanabe

is a Japanese fashion model, actress and singer. She is the daughter of film actor Ken Watanabe. In her modeling work, she is known by the mononym Anne....

.

Collaborations

He has been a member of Fukumimi, a band formed by artists from the same label Office Augusta; it consisted of Shikao Suga, Chitose Hajime

Chitose Hajime

is a singer from Japan. She is from Amami Ōshima and sings in a style particular to that region, with distinctive falsetto effects.-Early life:Chitose Hajime began learning shamisen under her mother's encouragement from a young age...

, Masayoshi Yamazaki

Masayoshi Yamazaki

is a Japanese singer-songwriter who plays guitar-driven blues, rock, and pop music, though he has also recorded piano ballads. Though he primarily plays the guitar, he also has played the drums, piano, percussion, saxophone, and glockenspiel on some albums....

, Kyoko (杏子), COIL, Araki Yuko (mi-gu), and Sukima Switch. He has provided work to other artists:

• Kyoko: Ijimete Mitai (music, lyrics), Happy Birthday (music, lyrics)
• SMAP
  SMAP
  SMAP is a Japanese boy band formed by Johnny & Associates. While originally consisting of six members, the current group members are Masahiro Nakai, Takuya Kimura, Goro Inagaki, Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, and Shingo Katori...
  
  : Koko ni Iru Koto (music, lyrics, arrangement), Yozora no Mukō (lyrics), Ringo Juice (lyrics)
• Chisato Moritaka: Tanpopo no Tane (music, arrangement), Mahiru no Hoshi (music)
• KAT-TUN
  KAT-TUN
  KAT-TUN is a Japanese boy band formed by Johnny & Associates in 2001. The group's name is an acronym based on the first letter of each member's family name until the departure of Jin Akanishi in 2010. As of 2010, KAT-TUN stands for Kazuya KAmenashi, Junnosuke Taguchi, Koki Tanaka, Tatsuya Ueda,...
  
  : Real Face (lyrics)
• Arashi
  Arashi
  is a Japanese boy band formed under the Japanese talent agency Johnny & Associates, which announced the formation of the group on November 3, 1999 in Honolulu, Hawaii...
  
  : Aozora Pedal (music, lyrics)

Singles

1. Hit Chart o Kakenukero (ヒットチャートをかけぬけろ Break Through the Hit Charts) (February 26, 1997)
2. Ōgon no Tsuki (黄金の月 The Golden Moon) (May 28, 1997)
3. Dokidoki Shichau (ドキドキしちゃう My Heart Starts Pounding) (July 30, 1997)
4. Ai ni Tsuite (愛について About Love) (November 21, 1997)
5. Story (ストーリー) (May 27, 1998)
6. Bokutachi no Hibi (ぼくたちの日々 Our Days) (November 18, 1998)
7. Yoake Mae (夜明けまえ Before Dawn) (June 23, 1999)
8. Amai Kajitsu (あまい果実 Sweet Fruit) (August 18, 1999)
9. Spirit (SPIRIT) (August 2, 2000)
10. Affair (AFFAIR) (October 12, 2000)
11. Hachigatsu no Serenade (8月のセレナーデ August Serenade) (August 1, 2001)
12. Aozora/Cloudy (青空／Cloudy Blue Sky/Cloudy) (January 17, 2002)
13. Asymmetry (アシンメトリー Asymmetry) (May 29, 2002)
14. Sayonara/Kimagure (サヨナラ/気まぐれ Goodbye/Capriciousness) (February 26, 2003)
15. Himitsu (秘密 Secret) (May 12, 2004)
16. Climax (クライマックス Climax) (August 25, 2004)
17. Hikari no Kawa (光の川 River of Light) (October 27, 2004)
18. Kiseki/Natsukage/Sanagi (奇跡/夏陰/サナギ Miracle/Summer Shade/Chrysalis) (August 10, 2005)
19. Jūkyū-sai (19才 At 19) (April 26, 2006)
20. Manatsu no Yoru no Yume (真夏の夜のユメ A Midsummer Night's Dream) (June 21, 2006)
21. Gogo no Parade (午後のパレード Afternoon Parade) (September 6, 2006)
22. Phonoscope (フォノスコープ Phonoscope) (June 13, 2007)
23. Nobody Knows (NOBODY KNOWS) (May 14, 2008)
24. Kono Yubi Tomare (コノユビトマレ Come With Me) (September 3, 2008)
25. Party People (July 15, 2009) #7 . 1st week sales - 14,639 . Total sales - 17,326
26. Hajimari no Hi feat. Mummy-D (はじまりの日 feat. Mummy-D Day of Beginnings) (November 25, 2009)
27. Sayonara Homerun (サヨナラホームラン Farewell Homerun) (April 28, 2010)
28. Yakusoku (約束 Promise) (February 23, 2011)

Studio albums

1. Clover (September 7, 1997)
2. Family (June 24, 1998)
3. Sweet (September 8, 1999)
4. 4Flusher (October 25, 2000)
5. Smile (May 7, 2003)
6. Time (November 17, 2004)
7. Parade (September 6, 2006)
8. FUNKAHOLiC (September 10, 2008)
9. FUNKASTiC (May 12, 2010)

Live, compilation & other albums

1. Sugarless (October 3, 2001)
2. The Best Hits of Live Recordings -Thank You- (November 5, 2003)
3. All Singles Best (January 24, 2007)
4. All Lives Best (October 10, 2007)
5. Sugarless II (August 10, 2011)

DVDs

1. +731 (February 26, 2002)
2. 1095 (February 26, 2002)
3. 20 Music Clips of Suga Shikao (May 12, 2004)
4. The Best Music Clips of Suga Shikao 2004-2011 (August 10, 2011)

External links

• Shikao Suga official website (Office Augusta)
• Shikao Suga official website (Universal Music)
• Shikao Suga official website (BMG Japan)
• Sugar - A Suga Shikao Fansite