The success of the award-winning 9 minutes and 52 seconds-long song, “Toilet no Kamisama“, simply doesn’t want to end, not even in 2011.

On New Year’s Eve, singer-songwriter Uemura Kana had the honor of performing an 8-minute version of her hit song at the “61st NHK Kouhaku Uta Gassen“, the longest ever performance of a single song in the music festival. While there were many music fans in Japan who knew the song and were eagerly anticipating its performance, there still many others who were introduced to the song for the very first time.

Unsurprisingly, the music fans who were exposed to the song for the very first time must have been overwhelmed by its touching lyrics, and flocked to download portals to purchase it digitally. Consequently “Toilet no Kamisama” has once again reached first place on major download portals for the daily chart of January 3rd, 6 months after its actual release. The industry has labelled this jump in interest as the “Kouhaku Effect“.

Today, Uemura turned 28 and held a special birthday concert in her hometown. At the event she expressed her gratitude towards her new fans. “Thank you for downloading such a long song,” she said. She also described her recent experiences in relation to the ‘Kouhaku effect’: “People call out my name on the street or take pictures in front of my home. All because of Kouhaku. I was really surprised.”

As a homage to her song, Uemura has been sincerely cleaning her toilet and visited her grandmother’s grave on New Year’s. “This year I want to go to a lot of places and let everyone in the country listen to the live version of the song,” she added enthusiastically.

Check out her performance from the Kouhaku Uta Gassen:




source : tokyohive