Kikusuimaru Kawachiya

Kawachiya Kikusuimaru is a Japanese musician and singer born February 14, 1963 in Yao, Osaka Prefecture, Japan. He is a singer of Kawachi ondo folk music.

He started studying Kawachi ondo with his father, Kawachiya Kikusui, at the age of nine. He came to national attention in 1991 with his reggae-style song "Kakin Ondo" which was featured in a television commercial for recruitment magazine "From A".

Kawachiya is known for performing in a wide variety of countries, from Hawaii in 1983 to Baghdad in 1990 (at the Iraq for peace festival) and Pyongyang in 1995.

He is also a writer and newspaper contributor. One of his published works is Kikusuimaru's Scrapbook, a collection of his articles for the Osaka Shimbun newspaper.

(Source: Wikipedia)