Fumio Ishikawa

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Fumio Ishikawa is an awesome Japanese blues harmonica player. I could not find a full biography on him on the internet but he is mentioned in the interesting blog below titled: 'FIFTY LONG YEARS: A Brief Overview of Japan’s Blues Harp Scene' [Originally posted on October 29, 2012] — A few months ago, Tom asked me to write an article about the blues harmonica scene in Japan. It was such a big topic I had to sit down and think how to structure it. After spending some time doing research, I have come up with this overview: The harmonica environment here in Tokyo is quite rich in both hard and soft aspects. As you know, two of the world’s major harmonica manufacturers are Japanese: Tombo (est. 1902) and Suzuki (est. 1952). If you go to a musical instrument shop like Taniguchi Gakki in Tokyo’s famous Ochanomizu musical instrument district, you can find all kinds of harmonicas of any make and model as well as harmonica accessories. On top of the availability of hardware, luckily enough, we have a lot of Tokyo-based great harmonica players to learn from, including the godfather of the Japanese blues harp community, Ryuichiro Senoh, known as Weeping Harp Senoh, who has led the scene as a pioneer over the last 40 plus years. In Japan, the first Blues boom took place in the early 1970s after the folk movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Of course, dual hole harmonicas were introduced in Japan in the 19th century and became very popular over the 1940s. After WWII, jazz and then rockabil

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Blues Harp Diggers - ハーモニカ侍

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