From Delhi to Tokyo: How Sarbjit Singh Chadha Became Japan’s First Punjabi Enka Singer

Our feeds are full of Korean exchange students speaking in fluent Bihari, Nigerians rapping in Punjabi songs, & French kids dancing to Tamil beats. And we can't enough of these. As entertaining and moving as this cross-cultural osmosis is, it also flips our assumptions on culture and language, positioning it as a gesture of affection, a form of belonging. And with the hateful and ignorant stance America has taken lately on immigration, a narrative like this feels particularly powerful; a rather hopeful sign of the times.

But in the 1970s, something like this was practically non-existent, especially in Japan. A largely homogeneous society with tightly held cultural codes, it was an island where very few spoke English. Yet in that time and space emerged a turbaned Sikh man singing enka — a genre considered quintessentially Japanese. This is the story of Sarbjit Singh Chadha.

In 1968, as a 15-year-old boy from New Delhi, Sarbjit landed in Fukuoka under a training programme in orange farming. Far from home and struggling with the language, he initially found solace in music. He started learning Japanese by listening to songs on the radio and singing at parties. It wasn’t long before his friends pushed him to consider music more seriously.

Sarbjit likened enka to Indian ghazals — full of longing, nostalgia, heartbreak, and restrained emotion. “I love any song that expresses emotions such as love, affection, and separation,” he told the Hindustan Times. In enka, he found echoes of the songs from his childhood. Guided by the genre’s legend Saburō Kitajima, he trained rigorously, eventually releasing his first single 'Omokage no Hito' in 1975. It was a breakout hit, selling over 180,000 records and catapulting him into national fame.

But his rise wasn’t without friction. As a turban-wearing Sikh man, Sarbjit was an anomaly on Japanese television. Before becoming a singer, he was asked to appear on a national comedy show every Friday at 10 pm, partly to get audiences used to his presence. He took it in stride and and his voice became a part of the country's cultural fabric.

Visa issues, however, cut his first stint short. Japan’s strict rules at the time forced him to leave and reapply every six months. The instability led him back to India, where he returned to his family business. But the music had taken root. “People in Japan don’t like those who do too many things at a time,” he once told The Score Magazine. So, when he returned to Japan in 1980, he came back with clarity — this time not as a businessman dabbling in music, but as a singer devoted to enka.

Over the years, Sarbjit's performances have become symbols of cultural fusion. His music never strayed from the soul of enka. He even translated some of his favorite enka ballads into Hindi, and performed in cities like Delhi and Chennai, hoping to bring the genre closer to Indian audiences.

In 2008, more than three decades after his first release, he stood on a Tokyo stage once again. The applause, he said, felt just as warm. And today, having handed over his family business to his wife Kyoko, whom he met in Japan, the artist told Oricon, a Japanese media company: “Now I’m just singing. I’ll sing until I die.”

A Sikh man singing a traditional Japanese ballad may be what made Sarbjiit stand out, but he built a relationship with the genre that ran much deeper. He didn’t dilute enka to fit himself into it, nor did he exoticise his difference. He studied it, trained under its masters, and treated it with the etiquette any traditional crafts call for. And in doing so, he dismantled the myth of cultural 'purity'. In fact, in his comparison of enka to ghazals, his legacy unearthed the invisible thread of human expression that runs across cultures, albeit in different avatars. Though his place in the country as a resident was shaped by the uncertainty, its music very much ended up belonging to him.

Watch one of his performances below:

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