Aka: “The Northern Tavern.”
Teresa Teng’s cover of this enka classic, originally sung by Takashi Hosokawa, pleasantly suprised me. I also like the more rock-oriented cover done by visual kei artist Tsukasa Mogamigawa. As in Western music, many enka singers cover other artists’ songs. It all led me down a rabbit hole full of awesome Japanese music without a single idol in sight.
The original by Takashi Hosokawa follows. Be sure to look for the original live performance captured for posterity from late-70s NHK television by an early VCR owner in Japan.
The incomparable Teresa Teng’s take:
The much more modern version by Tsukasa Mogamigawa:
Tangentially related: Jero’s scintillating (LIVE!) cover of the Japanese version of 愛人, the Teresa Teng classic (and an awesome live recording by the goddess herself):
There’s a nice live performance of 北の漁場, the Saburo Kitajima classic, by Aya Shimizu:
I really feel like 北の漁場 is more of a man’s song given what it’s about (and because it was originally written for a man, it really works better musically with male vocals; you can tell that the song was scored with Kitajima’s baritone in mind), but Shimizu has the pipes to pull off a good cover. Her cover of なみだ船 (link), another Kitajima standard, is worth a listen as well.
The world of enka is so much more readily available in the West than it was even ten years ago, and we have services like YouTube and Apple Music to thank for it. Anyone with even a casual interest in Japanese culture should give the genre a chance. I can’t promise much, but I will say that it can be hugely rewarding to explore traditional Japanese pop that draws from the broader canon of traditional Japanese music.