Japanese fans get emotional about Bowie's death at Tokyo store

Japanese fans of visionary British rock star David Bowie looked at tribute stands set up at a music shop in downtown Tokyo on Tuesday (January 12), where they were also seen buying his latest album "Blackstar."

Bowie died on Monday at age 69 from cancer, just two days after releasing what appears to be the parting gift of a new album.

Handwritten messages crafted by the Tower Records Shibuya store employees, such as "David Bowie R.I.P." were displayed along with pictures, magazines, albums, and other Bowie merchandise.

"I still can't believe it, that he really went to heaven because of his fight with cancer. I'm happy he is in a better place now. His last work, his last message, is a great message so I want to take that to heart," Anri Kitazawa said, who also said she worked on a film set with Bowie in the past, when he appeared in the film "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence."

One Bowie fan says he didn't have the courage to leave his house after he heard the news yesterday. He was finally able to pay a visit to the CD store today.

"I can't help but cry since yesterday when I listen to his music or watch his videos. I always stop in the middle because I can't handle it. I finally got the courage to go out today," said hairdresser, Akio Sato.

"I'm extremely shocked. Just shocked," said another fan, Shintaro Fukumoto.

By the time Reuters finished the interviews, a CD shelf stacked with Bowie's album was empty.

A pioneering chameleon of performance imagery, Bowie straddled the worlds of hedonistic rock, fashion, art and drama for five decades, pushing the boundaries of music and his own sanity to produce some of the most innovative songs of his generation.

A spokesman for Bowie said he died on Sunday but declined to say where he died or from what type of cancer. Bowie had kept a low profile after having emergency heart surgery in 2004 and it was not publicly known that he had cancer.

Bowie died two days after releasing "Blackstar", which won some of the best critical reviews of his career. A music video for the first single, "Lazarus," showed him lying in a hospital bed with bandages across his eyes, and singing lyrics that after his death, took on added poignancy.

Born David Jones in south London on January 8, 1947, he took up the saxophone at 13 before changing his name to David Bowie to avoid confusion with the Monkees' Davy Jones, according to Rolling Stone.

He shot to fame in Britain in 1969 with "Space Oddity," whose words he said were inspired by watching Stanley Kubrick's film "2001: A Space Odyssey" while stoned.

Bowie's haunting lyrics summed up the loneliness of the Cold War space race between the United States and the Soviet Union and coincided with the Apollo spacecraft landing on the moon.

Bowie married the Somali-American supermodel Iman in 1992 with whom he had a daughter, Alexandria Zahra Jones, born in 2000. — REUTERS