Saburo Kitajima -- Honoo no Otoko（炎の男）

I was always more of a "Mito Komon"（水戸黄門）guy myself, but I had heard about the long-running historical hero series "Abarenbo Shogun"（暴れん坊将軍...The Unfettered Shogun）from time to time due to the famous theme song and scenes that I would come across now and then on TV. From what I've read about the show on Wikipedia, the premise for "Abarenbo Shogun" is similar to that of "Mito Komon": shogun Yoshimune Tokugawa (as played by Ken Matsudaira/松平健) roams around the capital in disguise as he protects the vulnerable and defeats the guilty.

The TV series had many seasons starting from 1978 and going all the way to 2002 after which specials were televised up to 2008. For the first two seasons (that apparently spanned from 1978 all the way to 1987), the ending theme was "Honoo no Otoko" (Man of Fire), and it's a mighty proud theme for the shogun, and who better to create and sing it than Saburo Kitajima（北島三郎）, the king of epic enka? Although "Honoo no Otoko" was used as the ending theme since the show's beginnings, apparently the single version of the song wasn't released until January 1982 according to J-Wiki.

Written and composed by Kitajima under his nom de plume Joji Hara（原譲二）, that timpani right from the start and then the brass pretty much serve as the entrance music for the heroic shogun himself. However, I think that Yoshimune would have probably been somewhat mortified in terms of his modesty at the thought of such grandeur in a theme song about him.

On hearing this, I still miss Sabu-chan now that he's retired from the Kohaku Utagassen.