The Tempters were part of

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

Group Sounds , often abbreviated as GS, is a genre of Japanese rock music which became popular in the mid to late 1960s and initiated the fusion of Japanese ''kayōkyoku'' music and Western rock music. Their music production techniques were regarded as playin ...

pop music Pop music is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form during the mid-1950s in the United States and the United Kingdom.S. Frith, W. Straw, and J. Street, eds, ''iarchive:cambridgecompani00frit, The Cambridge Companion to Pop ...

era in the 1960s. Featuring lead

vocalist Singing is the art of creating music with the voice. It is the oldest form of musical expression, and the human voice can be considered the first musical instrument. The definition of singing varies across sources. Some sources define singi ...

Kenichi Hagiwara was a Japanese singer and actor. Music career Also known as Sho-Ken, he was the lead singer of The Tempters, which was a blues-rock band connected to the Group Sounds scene, and gained big hits in the late 1960s. Hagiwara was known for his goo ...

, who was also known by the nickname of Shoken, they rivaled The Tigers for the top spot in the Japan

rock Rock most often refers to: * Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids * Rock music, a genre of popular music Rock or Rocks may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wale ...

scene hierarchy. The band also featured

drummer A drummer is a percussionist who creates music using drums. Most contemporary western music ensemble, bands that play Rock music, rock, Pop music, pop, jazz, or Contemporary R&B, R&B music include a drummer for purposes including timekeepi ...

Hiroshi Oguchi was born in Kawaguchi, Japan, on November 28, 1950. He died on January 25, 2009, in Tokyo, Japan, of cancer. A Tokyo-based conceptual artist, musician and scene maker, Hiroshi Oguchi had for decades been influential in the changing attitudes of J ...

, who later formed the

glam rock Glam rock is a style of rock music that developed in the United Kingdom in the early 1970s and was primarily defined by the flamboyant clothing, makeup, and hairstyles of its musicians, particularly platform shoes and glitter. Glam artists d ...

band Vodka Collins. Band members- Keizo "Kenichi" Hagiwara (vocals, harmonica), Yoshiharu Matsuzaki (lead guitar, vocals), Toshio Tanaka (rhythm guitar, organ), Takaku Noburo (bass), Hiroshi Oguchi (drums). "Emerald - No Densetsu" ("Legend of the Emerald"), was released by the band in July 1968 and was number one for two weeks in Japan, and in the Top 10 for 13 weeks, selling over one million copies. Both Oguchi and Hagiwara would go on to become successful

actor An actor (masculine/gender-neutral), or actress (feminine), is a person who portrays a character in a production. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern media such as film, radio, and television. ...

References

External links

The Tempters
Japanese pop music groups Musical groups from Saitama Prefecture {{Japan-band-stub