Osharaku is a traditional Japanese form of musical entertainment, featuring mainly voice, shamisen and percussion, with a repertoire of folk and popular songs, performed by farmers and fishermen for local audiences. This compilation, compiled by Riyo Mountains, is the fourth release in the EM Records / Riyo Mountains Japanese folk series. These recordings feature legendary Osharaku masters, recorded in their homes, brilliantly capturing the casual warmth and vitality characteristic of the style. Osharaku is unique in its use of shamisen, originally an “uptown” urban instrument, in a “downtown” non-urban setting. These joyous tracks, all recorded in the 1960s and 70s, are available as a 2CD set or LP, with English translations and rare photos. Cover art by Shinsuke Takagi. Riyo Mountains are a Japanese folk song research team formed by Mood Yama and Takumi Saito. They are resident DJs at the renowned party "Soi48" at Be-Wave, Tokyo, featuring music from all over the world. They produced the Japanese folk song mix-CD series entitled Riyo Mountains Mix and also direct the reissue series of Japanese folk music on EM Records, including the releases Yumi-kagura, Sakai Ishinage Odori, and Kizaki Ondo. Riyo Mountains have appeared as DJs at many events / programs including NTS (London) and Japanese Bon-Odori traditional dance festivals. Their articles about Japanese folk music are now published serially in the Japanese web magazine "Boid".