Hikawa Kiyoshi(氷川きよし) made his debut in 2000 with the single Hakone Eight Ri's Hanjiro(箱根八里の半次郎 Hakone Hachiri No Hanjirō).
In 2001, he became the first ever male enka singer (third enka singer overall) to appear on the cover of the Oricon magazine called Oricon Week The First (オリコン ウィーク The Ichiban) at the time.
Since he released "Ōi Chasing Otojirō(大井追っかけ音次郎 Ōi Okkake Otojirō)" in 2001, every new single he released has started out in the top ten of the Oricon Enka Famous Song Collection chart and the Oricon Singles Chart. He is the only enka singer to achieve this feat.
In most of his performances, he usually wears western clothing instead of traditional Japanese clothes.
Although he includes a choreography in his performances, they are always kept simple so that even small children and older fans can imitate his movements.
Since making his debut on the Kōhaku Utagassen in 2000, he has appeared in all subsequent festivals (2014 at the time when this was written). He sung in the ōtori(大トリ) position in 2008 and in the torimae(トリ前) position in 2003 and 2010.
This blog post translates information from the Wikipedia article 氷川きよし which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.
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