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The story
On November 13, NHK announced the lineup for the 77th NHK Kōhaku Uta Gassen, the New Year’s Eve song contest. The White Team includes artists spanning a wide range of genres — Masaharu Fukuyama, Mrs. GREEN APPLE, Vaundy, SixTONES — but not a single enka (traditional Japanese ballad) singer. Enka veteran Hiroshi Miyama, who had appeared for 11 straight years, missed the cut this time. The Red Team, by contrast, features several enka veterans, including Sayuri Ishikawa. The news that the White Team ended up with “zero enka singers” sparked a flurry of reactions on the forum thread, with some lamenting enka’s declining popularity and others pointing out that enka is actually a relatively recent genre in Kōhaku’s history.
November 13, 2026, 1:42 PM
A press conference announcing the lineup for NHK’s New Year’s Eve special “The 77th NHK Kōhaku Uta Gassen” (airing from 7:20 PM) was held on the 13th, revealing the roster of performers. Many artists who’ve been generating buzz on social media made the cut. However, enka singer Hiroshi Miyama (46) was not among the White Team names. Miyama had appeared for 11 consecutive years.
The White Team lineup includes Masaharu Fukuyama, Yuzu, Masayuki Suzuki, and Leon Niihama, alongside artists spanning a wide range of genres such as Mrs. GREEN APPLE, Vaundy, BE, and SixTONES. No enka singers made the lineup, though — a disappointing result for the enka camp that has long been a fixture of Kōhaku.
Source: sponichi.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
newer than rock, even
old-school Kōhaku didn't even have enka
Back before enka existed, a lot of Kōhaku singers were doing covers of Western songs
Bet Kiyoshi Hikawa ends up getting announced later as a late addition for the White Team's enka slot
If your youth was the 70s or 80s, I guess you'd grow into appreciating enka.
I'm in my 50s — in elementary school it was 'Best Ten,' in middle school it was TM Network and Rebecca, or Johnny's idols depending on who you ask.
The heaviest Western-music listeners are actually people now in their 40s to 70s.
Was there ever really a generation that was truly 'enka's own'?
He's in the Kinashi/Tokoro George slot (the comedian novelty-guest slot)
British rock band Oasis visited South Korea for the first time in 18 years, and apparently there's an Oasis boom among South Korea's MZ generation (Millennials/Gen Z) who never experienced them live back in the day
Snow Man does their own livestream every year instead
Enka's actually got a surprisingly short history as a genre — for a while after Kōhaku started, 'enka' as such didn't even exist yet
The first Kōhaku had Toshiro Omi's 'Yu no Machi Elegy,' but whether that counts as enka is debatable…
There are a few young ones, but they do other genres instead of singing enka.
Still, if even Hiroshi Miyama got cut, nobody else stands a chance
If they do, it's usually just a dedicated one-song enka segment set aside in advance.
In the Kanto area, Radio Nippon still keeps it going with 'Yutaka Natsuki's Hot Kayōkyoku,' weekdays 3:00-5:50 PM. Been running since 1999
nobody's listening to enka anymore
Right. Like I keep saying,
almost nobody in their 60s today listens to enka
Guess the NHK brass figures groups make for a livelier, more exciting show?
'The screen has to look busy and loud' is such a kid-brained way of thinking about it
They dragged Tokoro and Kinashi back out, so Niihama's probably locked into like a 5-year contract behind the scenes
It's only ever had influence over a tiny slice of postwar entertainment history
Kind of like how Japanese-style painting (Nihonga) turns out to have a surprisingly short history too, huh (´・ω・｀)
Back before enka existed, Kōhaku had a lot of singers doing Western-style covers — pop, chanson, jazz.
If it wasn't covers, it was min'yō (folk songs) or rōkyoku (narrative ballads)
The Red Team picked four of them lol
The enka generation today is 80s and up
People in their 70s are the folk-music generation
That 'Get Wh-something' song is apparently blowing up among young people right now
That was like 2 years ago, wasn't it?
They did a self-cover after the City Hunter Netflix movie
Sure, the 'whatever-it's-called' thing is buzzing, but Get Wild is a song us old guys know way better anyway
More than half of this lineup doesn't ring a bell for me anymore
I've reached the age where TV Tokyo feels like a better fit
Background and Key Points of This Topic
Kōhaku Uta Gassen is Japan’s national New Year’s Eve music program, and each year it has traditionally reserved an “enka slot” on both the men’s (White) and women’s (Red) teams. Hiroshi Miyama, a respected enka singer, had appeared for 11 consecutive years. This time no enka singer was picked for the White Team, and Miyama himself missed the cut — a development that sparked considerable discussion. Opinion in the thread split over whether enka is really as core a Kōhaku tradition as people assume. Several commenters pointed out that enka actually has a shorter history than rock, hadn’t yet taken shape when Kōhaku began in the early 1950s, and that singers back then mostly performed Western-style covers, jazz, folk songs (min’yō), or narrative ballads (rōkyoku). One easy point of confusion for readers: the Red Team still features several enka singers, including Sayuri Ishikawa — so it isn’t that enka itself has disappeared, only that the White Team’s enka slot is gone, a distinction that’s easy to overlook. There’s also debate over who enka’s core audience actually is: with few listeners even in their 60s, the demographic skews more toward people 80 and older, complicating the simple “young people like J-pop, older people like enka” narrative.
*This article is compiled and summarized from the 5ch (Geisoku Sokuho+) thread “[Kōhaku] Shock… White Team has ZERO enka singers — 11-year veteran Hiroshi Miyama shockingly cut — Red Team keeps veterans like Sayuri Ishikawa [Ailuropoda melanoleuca★].”
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