Rina Sawayama’s Sexuality: The Pansexual Singer Keeps Her Dating Life Private

Though she leaves some elements of her music oblique, Rina Sawayama’s sexuality is explicitly stated – she is pansexual. Rina Sawayama’s partner never gets more than a passing mention from the discrete singer.

Rina Sawayama became a pop star late by the standards of an industry obsessed with youth, landing her record contract at 29. Her genre-defying music has got her noticed by critics and a loyal fandom who call themselves Pixels.

She made her big-screen debut in the fourth installment of “John Wick.” The singer-songwriter’s openness about her sexuality makes her the representation for thousands of queer kids she did not have growing up.

Sawayama has looked to artists like Hayley Kiyoko and Troye Sivan as signs of how as a “collective force, it’s possible to infiltrate the mainstream with queerness, rather than just be buried deep underground.”

The lack of representation of queen Asians she experienced as a child, which is still an issue, has motivated her to speak up about her sexual orientation. Her track “Cherry” encapsulated her feelings of being pansexual while dating a cis-man; she explained:

“It’s the truth for a lot of bi and pan people—they don’t feel authentically queer when they’re in heterosexual relationships, and that is what the song is about.”

The female lead in Keanu Reeves‘ “John Wick 4” was raised by a single mother, a Japanese immigrant in Britain who shared a room with her until she was 15.

Some of the “shame moments” regarding her sexuality that has stuck with her were when he mother pulled her away when she was kissing a girl at around nine.

“We never discussed it, ever,” she said. Her mom also preferred not to hear about her dating women as she grew older, but she would ask after her male suitors.

As for becoming a parent herself one day, Sawayama is undecided.

She wrote “Frankenstein” about putting pressure on a relationship by expecting her partner will put her back together. The “This Hell” singer realized she could pay someone to help her heal, which is how she got into therapy and learned to re-parent.

Re-parenting oneself involves nurturing one’s inner child and giving oneself what one didn’t have as a child. Part of the process is splitting oneself and speaking to one’s younger self. Sawayama confided in a music magazine:

“Once I got to that part of re-parenting myself and treating myself as a ‘we’ and being like, ‘Do you need to do this?’ And if it’s a no, then it’s a no.”

As for becoming a parent herself one day, Sawayama is undecided. But she knew she was unprepared for motherhood during the pandemic when everyone around her got hitched and pregnant.

“The one thing that I’m really grateful for is that my mum never pushes me to have kids or get married,” the Brit-nominated Japanese-British performer says. For now, she is the mother of a puppy.