Hiroshi Itsuki

show This article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in Japanese. (September 2014) Click [show] for important translation instructions. View a machine-translated version of the Japanese article. Machine translation like DeepL or Google Translate is a useful starting point for translations, but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate, rather than simply copy-pasting machine-translated text into the English Wikipedia. Consider adding a topic to this template: there are already 2,614 articles in the main category, and specifying|topic= will aid in categorization. Do not translate text that appears unreliable or low-quality. If possible, verify the text with references provided in the foreign-language article. You must provide copyright attribution in the edit summary accompanying your translation by providing an interlanguage link to the source of your translation. A model attribution edit summary Content in this edit is translated from the existing Japanese Wikipedia article at [[:ja:五木ひろし]]; see its history for attribution. You should also add the template {{Translated|ja|五木ひろし}} to the talk page. For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation.

Hiroshi Itsuki (五木ひろし, Itsuki Hiroshi, born March 14, 1948) is a Japanese singer and composer. As of 1987, he had sold 20 million singles and 4 million LP albums.^[1]

Itsuki is usually regarded as an enka singer, but he has also released a cover version of Southern All Stars' J-pop song "Tsunami".^[2]

Career[]

In 1965, Itsuki debuted under the stage name "Masaru Matsuyama," but did not initially achieve commercial success. Although he changed his stage name to "Eiichi Ichijō" in 1967, and then to "Ken Mitani" in 1969, there was no improvement in his music's commercial sales. In 1971, he changed his name to "Hiroshi Itsuki" and was given the song "Yokohama Tasogare" (よこはま・たそがれ) by Masaaki Hirao. Written by lyricist Yoko Yamaguchi, "Yokohama Tasogare" reached the top of the Oricon weekly single chart.^[3]

His 2006 single "Takasebune" debuted at number 9 on the Oricon charts, becoming his first Top 10 single in 22 years, since his 1984 single "Nagaragawa Enka".^[4] In 2008, he was featured in Morning Musume's Cover You album. He sang "Izakaya" with Ai Takahashi. Also in 2008, he collaborated with the girl group Cute, letting them record the song "Edo no Temari Uta", he himself was planning to include in his end-of-year album. Cute's producer Tsunku liked the song and thought that if performed by girls the enka lyrics will sound like "a modern fairytale".^[5] In what was called a collaboration by Tsunku^[6] and a rivalry between two performers by Sankei Sports,^[5] they both released the song as CD singles, Cute on July 30, and Itsuki as his 132nd single on October 22. Cute's version, entitled "Edo no Temari Uta II", was nominated for the main Japan Record Award of 2008, which also meant receiving a Gold Award from the Japan Composer's Association.^[7][8][9]

Discography[]

Top 10 singles[]

Honours[]

Japan Record Awards

• Grand Prize: 2 times
• Best Singing Award: 3 times
• Singing Award: 5 times
• Gold award: 10 times
• Composition Award: 1 time
• Best Album Award: 1 time
• Planning Award: 2 times
• Special prize: 2 times
• Masao Koga Memorial Award: Once
• Misora Hibari Memorial Award: Once

Other Awards

• Medal with Purple Ribbon (2007)
• Order of the Rising Sun, 4th Class, Gold Rays with Rosette (2018)

References[]

External links[]

• Hiroshi Itsuki at IMDb
• Official Website (in Japanese)

This article about a Japanese singer is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by .

• v
• t