Martha Miyake (マーサ三宅, born Mitsuko Miyake, 三宅光子) was born on 13 May 1933 in Siping, in what was then the Japanese-controlled state of Manchukuo, and she spent her working life in Tokyo. She graduated from the Nippon Music School and turned professional in May 1953, singing for American troops at U.S. military camps, the training ground for a whole generation of postwar Japanese jazz musicians. In 1954 she became the regular vocalist with Raymond Conde's Gay Septet, a job she held for about two years, and her first record, a single for Mercury, followed in 1955. Her first LP, Tokyo Canaries (King Records, 1958), paired her with the singer Kiyoko Maruyama. She also sings on the score of Ishiro Honda's 1958 film The H-Man, credited as solo vocalist on the full soundtrack set Toho Music issued in 2012.

She married the critic and broadcaster Kyoichi Ohashi in 1956; they divorced in 1967. Their daughter Mika Ohashi became a jazz singer too, and the two made the album Home together in 2016.

Her records from the late 1960s show a singer working across the popular market. In 1966 and 1967 she cut Japanese-language singles for Crown, and in 1969 an LP of Japanese hits for the same label. From 1970 the discography turns firmly to jazz. My Favorite Songs (London, 1970) was a ten-song standards album with Yuji Ohno on piano and arrangements, Akira Miyazawa on tenor saxophone and alto flute, Kiyoshi Sugimoto on guitar and Masahiko Ozu among the drummers. The same year she is listed as a member of the Swing Session group on Live at the Junk (Trio Records), a six-track live set with Eiji Kitamura on clarinet and Kazuo Yashiro on piano. In 1971 she sang on All Night Swing, a two-LP set led by the clarinetist Shoji Suzuki, with Fumio Nanri on trumpet and Hidehiko Matsumoto on tenor saxophone.

In 1972 she founded the Martha Miyake Vocal House in Tokyo, which trained working singers and amateurs alike until it closed in 2018. Pupils included Junko Ohashi, Yoko Kon and Yoko Seri, and the Jazz Vocal House school that carries on its work says all of its instructors were trained there. She also kept recording. Nice 'N' Easy (Denon, 1972) was cut with the Kazuo Yashiro Trio, followed by Martha in Person (Trio, 1973) with the same pianist, C'est Magnifique (Columbia, 1974) and, in 1975, a place on the two-LP concert record Let's Swing Now beside Kitamura's All Stars. A Song for You (Columbia, 1976) paired her with Norio Maeda's trio, with Takeshi Inomata on drums. Maeda was her piano partner again on This Is Martha (King, 1978) and on Portrait, a voice and piano album recorded in July 1977 and issued in 1981. The record from this decade that went furthest afield is My Heart Belongs to Teddy (Catalyst, 1977), an American release billed with Teddy Wilson.

She also took on a handful of projects outside straight jazz. What Is This Thing Called Life (Bellwood, 1976) was a joint concert album with Yoshiko Goto, recorded at ABC Kaikan Hall in Tokyo on 9 June 1976. Together with Jun (Toshiba, 1977) was a fusion record with the keyboardist Jun Fukamachi, with Kiyoshi Sugimoto on electric guitar. The Kaleidoscope of Love (Express, 1979) was a Japanese-language pop album, and she followed it with three Philips LPs in 1981: Misty with Masahiko Satoh's trio and Motohiko Hino on drums, My Funny Valentine with the Yuzuru Sera Trio, and Satin Doll with the big band Sharps and Flats.

Remember (Three Blind Mice, 1982) marked thirty years as a singer. It was recorded on 9 May and 4 July 1982 at Tamco Studio in Tokyo with the American musicians Don Abney on piano, Red Mitchell on bass and Mike Reznikoff on drums, a twelve-song set of standards. The recital that celebrated the same anniversary was released as Memories 30th (Polydor, 1983), with Kitamura, Satoh, Hino, Yuzuru Sera, Jimmy Takeuchi and Nobuyoshi Ino credited as performers. In 1993 she recorded Sophisticated Lady (King) in Los Angeles with the pianist Lou Levy, the tenor saxophonist Bob Cooper and the trumpeter Conte Candoli. A farewell album, Softly As I Leave You, appeared in 2009, and she kept teaching until 2018.

The honours came steadily. She received the 13th Nanri Fumio Prize in 1988, the jazz prize named for the trumpeter Fumio Nanri, and was the first female vocalist to win it. In 1990 she took the grand prize at the 6th Japan Jazz Vocal Award, and in 1994 an Arts Festival award for her 1993 work, as the first female jazz singer to receive it. She was awarded the Medal with Purple Ribbon in 2000 and the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Rays, in 2006.

Martha Miyake passed away on 14 May 2025 in Tokyo, of old age, at 92. A funeral was held in Tokyo on 21 May.

Miyake sang standards in the swing and mainstream tradition, and the critic-run jazz press treated her as a straight jazz vocalist rather than a pop singer who sometimes visited jazz: a Shogakukan jazz vocal anthology profile calls her a born-and-bred jazz vocalist with an orthodox style, and German Wikipedia places her in traditional pop, swing and mainstream jazz. Tom Lord's The Jazz Discography documents 37 of her recording sessions between 1958 and 2011.

Her repertoire leaned on the American songbook and the great vocal jazz catalogue: "Don't Explain" and "Goody Goody" on My Favorite Songs, "Joy Spring" and "Angel Eyes" on Nice 'N' Easy, the 1920s and 1930s standards of the Billie Holiday and Tony Bennett repertoire on Remember, and the Teddy Wilson standards "Ain't Misbehavin'" and "What a Little Moonlight Can Do". She worked with small piano trios by preference, but the catalogue also takes in a swing concert (Live at the Junk), a big band (Satin Doll with Sharps and Flats), a soft fusion record (Together with Jun) and Latin-tinged continental songs (愛の哀しみを歌う, 1971).

She also recorded Japanese pop. Her 1966 and 1967 Crown singles and the 1969 LP 夜明けのスキャット are kayokyoku material, and The Kaleidoscope of Love (1979) is a disco and ballad pop record. Against more than twenty albums of standards, a jazz vocal school and the jazz profession's own prizes, this is the secondary strand.