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It's in a few songs from this era. When performers would sing traditionally shakuhachi songs, because the shakuhachi was unaccompanied, so would their vocals be. The solemn subject matter of the lyrics probably demanded a reverent acapella. It works really well in my opinion.

@@kopshi This isn't the case. The singing form is called Shigin (詩吟), and while it is sometimes accompanied by the shakuhachi, it is usually sung unaccompanied. Shigin has strange grammar and rare characters because it is basically a Japanese reading of a Chinese poem. (If it were a Japanese poem, it would have verses of 7 and 5 morae, like the rest of the song does.) The poem sung here is an excerpt from a longer Shigin, called "Byakkotai." Here is the excerpt in its original Chinese: 南望鶴城砲煙颺 痛哭飲涙且彷徨 宗社亡兮我事畢 十有六人屠腹僵 In the original Chinese, the poem rhymed: (there are metrical breaks between groups of 4 and 3) Nán wàng hèchéng / pào yān yáng tòngkū yǐn lèi / qiě fǎnghuáng zōngshè wáng xī / wǒ shì bì shí yǒu liù rén / túfù jiāng Read in Japanese as: Minami tsurugajou wo nozomeba / houen agaru tsuukoku-namida wo nonde / katsu houkousu sousha horobinu / waga koto owaru jyuuyuuroku nin / tofuku shite taoru Shigin poems are read in Japanese using the Kanbun method, which involves conjugating verbs (in classical Japanese) and adding Japanese particles. Usually, the Japanese reading is somewhat stilted since the languages aren't fully compatible, and some Chinese verbs don't have a Japanese kanji reading (ex. the Chinese verb 颺 meaning "to float upwards" becomes あがる (but written in kanji as 颺る) meaning simply "to go up.") "Horobinu" is not a negative verb conjugation, but rather the perfect tense form in Classical Japanese. This is because this conjugation is present in the original Chinese grammar (亡兮). I also feel like the 16 vs 19 confusion can be explained this way: the character 有 is listed as "(of age) old" on Wiktionary. I'm not too good at literary Chinese, but I feel like this is referring to the age of the boys (who were indeed around sixteen.) It's definitely not Ichiro's singing mistake, since 十有六人 is present in some old sources. There is a Wikipedia article on Shigin for a better explanation.

​@@kopshi Nevermind, I think it actually is a mistake by Ichiro, because the "old sources" are actually sourced from this song. The official Shigin website has 十有九人. As for the term 有, 十有九人 seems to be an alternate form of 十又九人 (pronounced the same). The difference between 十九 and 十又九 is basically "nineteen" vs. "nine and ten" (the more archaic form.)