飯田圭織

Kaori Iida (飯田圭織: Iida Kaori) (Born August 8, 1981, Hokkaido, Japan) is a Japanese pop singer and actress, associated with Hello! Project and best known as a founding member of the girl band

Kaori Iida (飯田圭織: Iida Kaori) (Born August 8, 1981, Hokkaido, Japan) is a Japanese pop singer and actress, associated with Hello! Project and best known as a founding member of the girl band Morning Musume. She has also recorded with the Morning Musume side project band Tanpopo and is currently a solo artist.

Kaori was one of five runners-up in a 1997 talent contest for a new Japanese rock idol. After the contest, musician and producer Tsunku offered Kaori and the 4 other runners-up (Natsumi Abe, Yuko Nakazawa, Aya Ishiguro, and Asuka Fukuda) the chance to be taken under his wing on one condition: that they sell 50,000 CDs of their song "Ai no Tane" in 5 days. The quintet accomplished that task in 4 and, thus, the birth of Morning Musume in 1997 (and their first official single "Morning Coffee" released in 1998). The group has since been increasingly popular in Japan and with cult-sized audiences in the Western world, and is infamous for its fluctuation of memberships, with members "graduating" and joining frequently.