Another one of those singers whose information is sparse at best, but Seiichi Neda（根田成一）is a folk singer-songwriter who had entered the Yamaha Popular Song Contest in 1976 along with many other acts and artists including Tatsushi Umegaki（梅垣達志）, Off-Course（オフコース）and Junko Yagami（八神純子）.
The song that he contributed at PopCon was "Kanashimi no Ballad" (Sad Ballad) which became a single for him (I even couldn't find out how many of those he released). Written and composed by Neda, it's indeed a sad and poignant ballad with perhaps even some bitterness as a couple of friends part, perhaps forever. According to the lyrics, one of the buddies may be heading back home north while the other remains in the city.
The melody by Neda in the beginning reminds me slightly of Bobby Vinton's "Mr. Lonely", and that harmonica also there along with the emerging strings makes "Kanashimi no Ballad" the quintessential Japanese folk ballad. Hopefully, the song wasn't autobiographical.
As near as I can tell, he only released three singles: this one in 1976 and two more in 1977 ("Yugure Bus dore" and "Kanashimi iro no asa"). Mind you, this is solely based on an (incomplete) Aardvark label discography; it's highly possible he recorded other material for other labels later on and I just don't know about it.
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Thanks very much, Mike, for the added information. Hard to track some of these singers down, and hopefully, I will follow up with one of those other singles you've just mentioned.
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