Bringing together the two family names of its members, Kentarō Kobuchi (born on
March 13, 1977) and Shunsuke Kuroda (born on March 18, 1977), Kobukuro formed in
Osaka, Japan in 1998 and embraced a folk-rock-adjacent sound that earned them
commercial and critical success. The duo started out with a trio of indie albums
– Saturday 8:PM (1999), ANSWER (2000), and Root of My Mind (2001) – before
flying onto the radar of Warner Music Japan in 2001 and making their major-label
debut with the single, "Yell," which reached number 4 on Japan's Oricon Charts.
They were crowned New Artist o...