Yoshida Brothers

Yoshida Brothers
Yoshida Brothers
	Noboribetsu, Hokkaidō, Japan
Genres	Tsugaru-jamisen
Years active	1999–current
Labels	Domo
Members	Ryōichirō Yoshida; Kenichi Yoshida
Website	domomusicgroup.com/yoshidabrothers/

The Yoshida Brothers (吉田兄弟, Yoshida Kyōdai) are Japanese shamisenist musicians who have released several albums on the Domo Records label.

The two brothers are performers of the traditional Japanese music style of Tsugaru-jamisen which originated in northern Japan. They debuted in 1999 in Japan as a duo playing the shamisen. Their first album sold over 100,000 copies and made them minor celebrities in Japan, a fact that surprised the Yoshida Brothers themselves.^[1] They have since attracted an international audience.^[2]

Their music has been a fusion of the rapid and percussive

synthesizers

.

The commercials for Nintendo's Wii video game console that began airing in North America in November 2006 featured the Yoshida Brothers song "Kodo (Inside the Sun Remix)".^[3]

Members

Ryōichirō Yoshida (吉田良一郎, Yoshida Ryōichirō, born 26 July 1977) and Kenichi Yoshida (吉田健一, Yoshida Ken'ichi, born 16 December 1979) were born in

Noboribetsu in Hokkaido, Japan. The two brothers have played the shamisen since a very young age. They both began to study and play the shamisen at the age of five under Koka Adachi, learning the Minyō-shamisen style; from about 1989 they studied the Tsugaru-jamisen

style under Takashi Sasaki.