Yoshi Ikuzō(吉幾三)

Yoshi Ikuzō(吉幾三)'s father is the Japanese folk music singer Kamata Inaichi(鎌田稲一). Ikuzō is the youngest of nine children.

He has three children, and his second daughter is the actress Kotobuki Mimi(寿三美).

He made his debut in 1973 using the stage name Yamaoka Eiji(山岡英二) singing a song used in a commercial for Yanmar Co., Ltd., called "You're the Only One I Love(恋人は君ひとり Koibitowa Kimi Hitori)."

In 1977, he changed his stage name to Yoshi Ikuzō(吉幾三), and the self-composed song "No Matter What I Am! Presley(俺はぜったい!プレスリー Orewa Zetta! Presley)" became a hit song.

Though his popularity waned the next few years, in 1984, "I'm going to Tokyo(俺ら東京さ行ぐだ Ora Tokyo Sa Iguda)" became a big hit.

In 1986, another self-composed song, this time an enka song called "Snow Country(雪國 Yukiguni)" reached the top of the Oricon charts, and he switched to singing enka songs full time.

Many of his songs include Tsugaru(津軽), the area where he was raised.

He is known for drinking heavily, and though he can drink quite a bit, he has run into problems because of this.

In 2008, the song "I'm going to Tokyo(俺ら東京さ行ぐだ Ora Tokyo Sa Iguda)" experienced a revival as people made music videos splicing this song with various other songs and posting them on Niconico and YouTube. Ikuzō was pleasantly surprised at this development, and he supported this movement.

This blog post translates information from the Wikipedia article 吉幾三 which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.