Satoshō, Japan · j-pop · soul

Fujii Kaze

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A piano-led Japanese songwriter with a soul singer's phrasing, whose plainspoken records became unlikely pan-Asian standards — 'Shinunoga E-Wa' a sleeper global hit.

Fujii Kaze grew up in Satoshō, a small town in Okayama Prefecture, the youngest of four children, listening to jazz, classical, pop and enka around the house. At twelve he began posting piano-and-vocal cover videos to YouTube, building an audience of millions of views before he ever released original material. He moved to Tokyo in early 2019 to pursue music full time.

His songwriting fuses soul and R&B phrasing with pop structure, most of it built from his own piano playing. He often sings in the Okayama dialect, giving his lyrics a conversational, regional quality rare in mainstream J-pop, and he performs comfortably either alone at the piano or with a full band behind him.

Signed to Universal Sigma's Hehn Records, he released the single "Nan-Nan" in 2019, followed by his debut album Help Ever Hurt Never in 2020, which topped Billboard Japan's Hot Albums chart and went gold. The album's "Shinunoga E-Wa" later spread online well outside Japan, turning into an unexpected hit across Asia and beyond.

His second album, Love All Serve All (2022), topped both Billboard Japan and the Oricon chart and was certified platinum, driven by the single "Kirari," which went triple platinum for streaming. Standalone singles including "Workin' Hard," "Hana" and "Michiteyuku" followed in 2023 and 2024 alongside his first tours outside Japan, and in 2025 he released Prema, his first album sung in English.

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