Keisuke Yamauchi -- Zanshou（残照）

A couple of weeks ago, enka singer Keisuke Yamauchi（山内惠介）made one of his fairly frequent appearances on NHK's "Uta Kon"（うたコン）, and I found out that the fellow was celebrating his 20th anniversary in show business! Like, when did he debut? Was he just entering senior kindergarten?!

Well, actually, he was probably going through high school since Yamauchi is now 36 years old. The lad is truly a bidanshi. Anyways, to commemorate that anniversary, his latest single came out a mere few weeks ago. Titled "Zanshou" (Afterglow), it seems to be a yearning for that special someone to not go away, and it was created by the same duo behind a Yamauchi single from the previous year, "Kuchibiru Scarlet"（唇スカーレット）, Goro Matsui and Hideo Mizumori（松井五郎・水森英夫）.

"Zanshou" has got plenty of emotion-on-sleeve-brio with guitar and cutting strings. In fact, because it sounds somewhat similar to "Yukiguni"（雪国）, my old karaoke favourite, I had assumed that it was made by Ikuzo Yoshi（吉幾三）himself. But I gather that Yoshi hasn't cornered the market for bay-at-the-moon enka/Mood Kayo. I wouldn't be surprised if Yamauchi performs this one at this year's Kohaku Utagassen.