Kiyoshi Hikawa
Japanese singer
Kiyoshi Hikawa (氷川 きよし, Hikawa Kiyoshi) is a Japanese enka singer who was born on September 6, 1977, in Minami-ku, Fukuoka, Japan. His real name is Kiyoshi Yamada (山田 清志, Yamada Kiyoshi) and he is known as "The Prince of Enka" (演歌界の貴公子, Enkakai no Kikōshi) due to his young age and popularity. When he is marketing non-enka music, he goes by the name KIYOSHI, using capitalized letters of the Roman alphabet, instead of kanji or hiragana.
His record company is Columbia Music Entertainment, and his agency is Nagara Productions. He was given his stage name by Takeshi Kitano, who initially supported his career. Today, Hikawa makes frequent appearances on NHK Kayō Concert (NHK歌謡コンサート), as well as NHK's annual Kōhaku Uta Gassen.
History
Hikawa was born on September 6, 1977, in Minami-ku, Fukuoka, Japan. As a high school student, Hikawa was a member of the school's performing arts club (芸能部, geinō-bu) and trained to be a singer after graduation from high school in 1995, Hikawa travelled to Tokyo, where he became an apprentice under the supervision of Hideo Mizumori. He served under Mizumori for three years.
In 2000, Hikawa made his professional debut with his single "Hakone Hachiri no Hanjirō."
Hikawa released the single "Hatsukoi Ressha" on February 9, 2005.
The public source identifies “Kiyoshi Hikawa” as japanese singer. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Kiyoshi, Hikawa and Japanese.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1141827. VIAF identifies the subject as 251548226. 3 of 5 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1977, 1995, 2000 and 2005.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kiyoshi Hikawa” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.