Mogamigawa Tsukasa

The music of the schlager world has aroused the interest of Yamagata originating Mogamigawa Tsukasa, better known under the name TSUKASA (ex. D'espairsRay, THE MICRO HEAD 4N'S), pretty early in his life. Before he could speak, he already sang enka songs. The love of his father for this genre spread very quickly to young Tsukasa and influenced him strongly. At the age of three his parents enabled him to enter a music programme on local television, during which he performed Kitaguni no haru, a song of famous enka singer Sen Masao.

In subsequent years Tsukasa participated in various karaoke tournaments over and over again, very often emerging as the winner. However, in elementary school, his classmates treated him as a strange boy for his interest in enka music, and in the end he started to hide his passion for the genre from the public.

Several years later in high school, the situation changed again. At a karaoke tournament during a culture festival, he sung Kyodai bune of Toba Ichirou. At the same time he also played the drums in a Metallica cover band. It was also then when he wrote his very first own enka song, which was highly praised by his friends. The respective cassette tape was given away for free to the people around him. This was followed by a performance for other local high school students, during which he was supported by the brass band club. After his graduation, he and his cover band also showed their charitable side by playing in front of a grocery store to raise funds for the reconstruction of affected areas following Great Hanshin earthquake.

Tsukasa wanted to start a professional enka career right after graduation, but this proved to be pretty hard, and in the end he found himself in the midst of famous visual kei rock band D'espairsRay. He played the drums for twelve years and wrote a few hits too. Detailed information about his time with D'espairsRay can be found in JaME's biography special (part 1, part 2 and part 3).

After the dissolution of D'espairsRay in 2011 he once again picked up his dream of being an enka singer and wrote another song, with which he wanted to express his feelings. He even tried to improve his vocal skills, but ended up getting nowhere and almost gave up on it completely. It was during this time when he was invited by ZERO and the other musicians of newly founded visual rock band THE MICRO HEAD 4N'S to join the band as drummer. He eventually agreed.

After six months in the band, he talked openly about his dream with band leader kazuya. kazuya not only encourage him to follow his dream but supported him actively as well, introducing Tsukasa to several people. And on June 8th, 2014 he finally appeared at 2014 Handa Koji Friendly Concert, where he was introduced as Japan's very first visual Enka singer.

Whenever the tour and recording schedule of THE MICRO HEAD 4N'S allowed, he dedicated his time to his solo career and held various lives, such as the TSUKASA Enka kayou Show ~Snack TSUKASA de "Poipoipoi!"~ on October 3rd at Shibuya CLUB CRAWL. With that live, the Tsukasa who was tied to his roots also promoted his first single release, Matsupoi yo / Hitohira no sakura, which was released on the same day the above mentioned live was held.

Aside from several small lives, he eagerly worked on his major debut in the background. He announced his major debut under Prime Music, a sub-label of Universal Music Japan, in April 2015. To emphasize his professional image, he changed his name from TSUKASA to Mogamigawa Tsukasa. His major debut single followed on June 10th and was titled MATSUPOIYO ("Matsupoi" is a word of north-eastern dialect and means "brilliant" or "lovely"). The releases were accompanied by a few lives, for example his performance at Universal Music Enka Festival on June 12th, and the fourth Nippon-ichi Sakuranbo Matsuri on June 20th.

We are still in the dark as to how Mogamigawa Tsukasa's solo activities will continue, but we will keep a close eye on his ambitions. However, it already is a fact that he caused some sensation in the beginning of May 2015 when he ranked first place with his song at a monthly ranking list at CANSYSTEM, beating longstanding pros into second place.