In 1994, Mina, aka Minakumari, debuted as a guitarist who was responsible for most of the lyrics and songs of the girls' band Catch-up, which released three historic albums. She graduated from the Indian Languages department of the Asia-Africa Linguistic Institute of Tokyo. She started to learn the sitar in 2003 under the distinctive sitar player Moniral Nag in Calcutta, India, while studying psychology at christ college in Bangalore, India. Then in 2005, she graduated from the Calcutta Tea School, India. Since returning to her hometown, Tokyo, she has played active roles in Cold Sugar, to which Japanese pop icons Chara and Akino Arai belong, in addition to Chara's solo live performances and Arai's studio recordings.On April 16, 2008, she successfully released her first solo album “Rasa” (DDCA-5048) and then gave consecutive performances in France, playing at four Paris venues in April 2009. Then in June of the same year, she played sitar in a recording of a new album by Rip Slyme, a commercially successful Japanese pop quintet. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.