Chieko Baisho -- Kaasan no Uta (かあさんの歌）

Being Mother's Day and all, my family took Mom out for dinner last night and then I took her and Dad out this morning for breakfast. And my contribution here is to put up what has been selected as one of the "Nihon no Uta Hyakusen" （日本の歌百選...The Collection of 100 Japanese Songs), a set of the most beloved Japanese songs and children's songs chosen in a 2006 poll and announced the following year.

"Kaasan no Uta" (Mother's Song) was written and composed by Satoshi Kubota（窪田聡） in 1956 when he was in his early twenties, and the lyrics speak of his memories of packages from his mother and the time that he and his family were evacuated to his father's hometown from Tokyo in Nagano Prefecture during the war. Listening to the melody, it doesn't have to be Mother's Day to have lumps in throats developing all of a sudden.

According to J-Wiki, the first singer behind "Kaasan no Uta" was the late jazz/kayo kyoku singer Peggy Hayama（ペギ葉山）, but being such a famous song, it's probably been covered by dozens of singers over the last 50 odd years or so. I tried and failed to find Hiromi Iwasaki's heartrending version, but I did find Chieko Baisho's（倍賞千恵子） just-as-wonderful cover although I don't know when her single was released. And when I think of Baisho's famous role as Sakura in the "Tora-san" movie series, she sounds like one of the ideal people to sing it.

If memory serves, I think my graduating class from Japanese Language School had to sing "Kaasan no Uta" among other tunes for some of the people who took care of us during our 1981 trip through Japan. I can't really say whether we did a good job with it but I hope our benefactors were as generous in spirit accepting our musical gift as the mother in the song had been.