Rui Tachihara -- Kita no Daichi（北の大地）

 

via Wikipedia

As far as I know (and if I'm wrong, please correct me), the two main air routes to Japan from Toronto via Air Canada are the ones going to Tokyo and Osaka. I don't know whether there are flights coming and going to the northern island of Hokkaido but certainly I wouldn't mind getting there directly someday. My one and only time to Sapporo was a good one, and I wish that I can actually attend the annual Snow Festival there along with visiting some of the other areas such as Hakodate, Furano and Otaru.

Hokkaido was the place that I imagined as I listened to singer-songwriter Rui Tachihara's（立原累）"Kita no Daichi" (Great Land of the North). When my ANA flight landed at Shin-Chitose Airport close to Sapporo, I noted how similar the land seemed to my impression of my home country of Canada, and thanks to my favourite sketch comedy show "SCTV", we are known as The Great White North, after all. 

I never heard of Tachihara before and there's very little written about him on J-Wiki; in fact, it doesn't even say where he comes from. But the way that he sings "Kita no Daichi" which was a 1974 single, his resonant vocals show a good amount of personal passionate investment in that big land of the north. He was behind the folksy music while Keisuke Aso（麻生啓介）provided the lyrics relating the land's changes throughout the four seasons.

"Kita no Daichi" may be Tachihara's debut single and since then, he's released a number of other singles and albums at least as far ahead as 1979 and most likely into the early 1980s. I see that he also has some representation on YouTube so I'll have to give some of his other creations a look-see.