Spotlight ON! Shinichi Kakiuchi

March 15, 2022 • Addison Ching • Entertainment

This month we shine the Spotlight ON! Shinichi Kakiuchi.

Shinichi and his wife Kumiko are familiar faces in the Hawaiian steel guitar community. They have been frequent guests and Open Stage performers at the Maui Steel Guitar Festival, the Hawai‘i Island Steel Guitar Festival, and Waikīkī Steel Guitar Week. Most recently they have appeared in Hawaiian Steel Guitar Showcase Open Stage presentations.

Shinichi grew up in Nagoya, Aichi, Japan. He and Kumiko currently reside in Fujimino, Saitama, Japan.

School music classes notwithstanding, Shinichi's first exposure to music, according to him, "was folk music at age 14, singing with an acoustic Dreadnought guitar."

Shinichi describes how he got started on the Hawaiian steel guitar. "I have a fragmentary memory of a band called Hiroshi Wada & Mahina Stars, and a mood song that used [the] steel guitar as an accompaniment in a Japanese song program when I was a child. That is the encounter between the pentatonic scale and the melodious sound of a steel guitar."

While Shinichi receives steel guitar training from Bobby Ingano, he also admires many other steel guitarists including Alan Akaka, Greg Sardinha, Geri Valdriz, Owana Salazar, Isaac Akuna, Jeff Au Hoy, Kapono Lopes, Dwight Tokumoto, Pomai Brown, Elmer Lim, Ed Punua, Al Nip, Konapiliahi Lau and more. He says he's always seeing them perform and is inspired by them. He states, "Furthermore, even children's performances are no exception," referring to performances by NextGen steel guitarists.

In addition to performing in festivals and showcases in Hawai‘i, he also performs in Japan and has participated in the annual Hawaiian Steel Guitar Association (HSGA) conventions. He has performed with Takeshi Shirakata and Tetsuo Fukuta at Shibuya Buckie, joined Noli Bravo's live show at Puka Puka in Fujisawa, and with Yasue Iwabuchi and Keikis hula dancers at a local festival and with Yasushi Osakabe at the Fuzzy Steel Guitar festival. Kumiko sometimes accompanies him in his performances.

The video can also be seen on YouTube.

This feature is a snapshot of the complete tribute that is posted on the Hawaiian Steel Guitar Showcase website. See the complete tribute here.