Japanese Singer Ryuchell Found Dead In Agent's Office at 27, Police Suspect Suicide

Japanese singer, model and activist Ryuji Higa or popularly known from her stage name Ryuchell has died at the age of 27. Ryuchell was reportedly found unresponsive by their manager at their agency office in Tokyo and was declared dead shortly after. The police is investigating the cause of death and not ruling out the possibility of death by suicide. Ryuchell was a prominent LGBTQIA+ face in Japan whose genderless fashion was a phenomenon across the island nation.

According to a report by the Japan Times, Ryuchell was found dead at an agency in Shibuya, Tokyo on Wednesday evening. Ryuchell was born in Okinawa Prefecture in 1995, following which they shifted to Tokyo after completing High School. They went on to work at several clothing stores at Harajuku neighborhood and was parallely amassing a huge popularity on social media as a social media influencer.

Ryuchell’s demise comes only a day after their divorced wife Tetsuko Okuhira, also known as Peco, shared a picture of their son celebrating his fifth birthday with a large cake.

The duo met when they were 18, got married in 2016 and two years later had their son. However, it was in August last year, when they had officially announced that they were taking a divorce since Ryuchell had revealed that they no longer identified as a male, something that led to a major outrage online. In their joint statement, the couple had clarified that they were seperating so they could start a ‘new kind of family’ that’ll help them raise their kid together.

Ryuchell had said in an interview with Japanese Women’s magazine Very, “Being able to fall in love with a woman allowed me to imagine a life completely different from the one I thought I would have and taught me joys I never knew existed. Somewhere along the way, I began to struggle with the concept of being the “ideal man” and the “ideal husband” and who I really was.”

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