Yamashita Tomohisa

Yamashita Tomohisa (山下 智久) is a member of the J-pop group NewS from Johnny's Entertainment, Inc. He entered Johnny's Entertainment (JE) and became a member of Johnny’s Juniors when he was 11 years old.

He is affectionately called Yamapi (short for Yamashita and pink) by his friends, which is a nickname given to him by Hideaki Takizawa (Tackey & Tsubasa). His closest friends call him Pi, which was first used by Jin Akanishi (KAT-TUN).

Since joining JE, he has been a member of Jr. groups B.I.G., Four Tops, and most recently NewS. Yamashita began to appear in television dramas soon after he joined JE. In 2000, at age 15, his performance in Ikebukuro West Gate Park earned him an award for "Best Supporting Actor". That same year, he was voted first place in the Annual Junior Awards for "Best Boyfriend", "Most Beautiful", etc. for the first time.

NewS
In September 2003, nine people from Johnny's Juniors were chosen to form the group NewS with Yamashita as the leader. Yamashita later revealed that at the time, aside from Ryo Nishikido, he had barely talked to any of the other group members.

Dramas
In October 2005, Yamashita and Kazuya Kamenashi from KAT-TUN formed the temporary unit, Shuuji to Akira, to promote their television show Nobuta wo Produce. (Shuuji and Akira are the characters they portray in the drama.) They also released a single, Seishun Amigo, under the name Shuuji to Akira, which sold over one million copies in four weeks. Seishun Amigo is the number one best selling single on the Oricon Yearly Single Rankings for 2005.

In spring 2006, Yamashita recorded "Kurosagi: The Black Swindler" クロサギ drama based on the manga of the same name. Kurosagi is basically about the art of swindling. For this purpose, Yamashita recorded his single "Daite Señorita" which was #1 in the Oricon ranking. Kurosagi is now on the top of the Japanese Dramas Ranking as well.Such sucess have resulted in the movie special which as expected was a hit and become the best rated movie of 2008.

Yamashita, along with KAT-TUN's Koki Tanaka and Kis-my-ft2's Taisuke Fujigaya, starred in the drama special, Byakkotai, which aired in January 2007.

Kitty GYM
In the latter half of 2006, Yamashita joined a Thai duo called Golf-Mike, who are brothers, to form a temporary unit called Kitty GYM formed by Kitayama Hiromitsu (Kis-my-ft2), Inoo Kei (J.J. Express), Totsuka Shota (A.B.C.), Yaotome Hikaru (Ya-Ya-Yah). The name of the group is "Kitayama Inoo Totsuka Yaotome Golf Yamashita Mike". This unit was made to cheer on the Japan Women's Volleyball team and they released a single in August called "Fever and Future" under the name "GYM" which stands for Golf, Yamashita and Mike, respectively.

Aoki Tomohisa was his old name but he changed it to Yamashita Tomohisa when his dad left the family.