"Shogun of the blues"
- Clint Eastwood
at Kennedy Center Honors

"Shun Kikuta, an impressive young Japanese guitarist"
- Living Blues (U.S.A)

"Shun Kikuta channels the crying vibrato of B.B.King one minute and the piercing attack of Albert Collins the next"
- Chicago Tribune (U.S.A)

"Shun Kikuta, a fine Japanese guitarist who has the absorbed the classic Chicago sounds and play them with the feel and confidence"
- Blues & Rhythm (UK)

"Shun is a world blues ambassador"
- Blues Asia Network
(Philippines)

*From Birth to the Utsunomiya Years

Shun was born at 11:30 a.m. on September 8, 1966, in Utsunomiya City, Tochigi Prefecture, Japan. He was a large baby, weighing 3,750 grams.

Because his father was a man of many interests who enjoyed playing classical guitar and organ, his awakening to music came early. When he was in the second grade, he was deeply moved after hearing Mozart’s Turkish March in music class, and begged his parents to buy him his very first record. He began playing his father’s classical guitar in the fourth grade. By imitating what he saw, he memorized the positions of the notes and practiced simple études on his own. By the sixth grade, he was able to play the classical masterpiece Romance (Forbidden Games).

”Back then, my right-hand finger movements were slow at first because I had just learned them, but after sleeping one night, I was suddenly able to play smoothly and much faster the next day―it surprised even me. Now I really realize how amazing it is to be young.”

After entering Miyanohara Junior High School, Shun became deeply absorbed in folk music alongside classical music. In the latter half of junior high, he got into fusion, and upon entering high school, he leaned heavily toward hard rock and began playing electric guitar. His first electric guitar was a Greco Stratocaster-type model, which he bought for 37,000 yen, roughly US$150. He was strongly influenced by Eddie Van Halen, Gary Moore, Michael Schenker, Steve Lukather, Randy Rhoads, Masayoshi Takanaka, and Larry Carlton. 

“I was a high school baseball player, so I’d come home from practice, eat dinner, take a bath, go straight to bed, then wake up around 4 a.m. and practice guitar until it was time to go to school. That was my high school life.”

Shun decided to become a professional musician sometime between his first and second years of high school. 

“One day in my senior year of high school, during a career counseling session with my homeroom teacher, Mr. Akihiko Kuroko, I worked up the courage to tell him that I wanted to become a musician. He looked quite surprised, but he listened seriously as I explained how committed I was to pursuing music and how much I loved American music. After thinking for a while, he said―on the condition that my parents would agree―that it might be best for me to go to America and study music there. He told me that was probably the best way to learn the real thing. Until then, I had only vaguely thought about what I would do after graduation, but after that conversation, I began seriously exploring the idea of going to the United States. My mother was opposed at first, but my father, who understood me from the beginning, eventually persuaded her, and my study abroad in America became a reality.”