The song “Sen no Kaze ni Natte” has made opera tenor Akikawa Masafumi (39) a household name. And now it has finally made him Japan’s first classical artist to have a million-selling release, according to sales data from Oricon. The song is based on an English poem by an unknown author called “Do not Stand at my Grave and Weep” and Akikawa’s version was released in May 2006, with the Japanese translation and melody by Arai Man. But after he sang it on NHK’s “Kohaku Utagassen” popular song concert last New Year’s Eve, sales started to really pick up and Akikawa started popping up all over the place on TV. It became the first classical recording to reach No.1 on Oricon’s singles chart and was named the best-selling single for the first half of 2007. The song was most recently used as the closing theme for a two-night Fuji TV special adaptation of “Hadashi no Gen”, the famous anti-war manga based on the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. With the ongoing decline in CD sales, million-selling hits are becoming fewer and further between, with only one a year in the last four years, compared to 14 in 2000 and five in 2001.