Rie Takahashi -- Donguri Korokoro（どんぐりころころ）/Neko Funjatta（猫踏んじゃった）

From clipart-library.com

 

Last night, when I wrote about the venerable children's song "Te no Hira wo Taiyou ni"（手のひらを太陽に）from 1962, I first sent a shoutout to an even older kids' tune that the character of Tomo from "Tomo-chan wa Onna no Ko!"（トモちゃんは女の子！...Tomo-chan is a Girl!）sang at karaoke, much to the mirth of the guy she loves and to her utter embarrassment. Yep, I do feel her pain.

Now, "Donguri Korokoro" (An Acorn Rolled Down) is a children's song that is apparently now part of the public domain so I gather that to mean that no one really has ownership (for you legal eagles, if I've made an error here, please correct me). I'm only using seiyuu Rie Takahashi's（高橋李依）name here because her character Tomo's awesome depiction of the song is so different from the many songs her other popular character Takagi-san did in "Karakai Jouzu na Takagi-san"（からかい上手の高木さん...Skilled Teaser Takagi-san） that I just had to give her the mike, so to speak.

The century-old "Donguri Korokoro" was released in either 1921 or 1922 (for argument's sake, I'll go with the latter year), and it was written by novelist and Japanese literature expert Nagayoshi Aoki（青木存義）and composed by educator Tadashi Yanada（梁田貞）. Soon after the end of World War II, the song was placed into school music textbooks. This tale of errant acorns and loaches was a song that I also often heard here and there over the decades.

I might as well kill two birds (or a cat) with one stone here and also include Tomo-chan's take on another classic "Neko Funjatta" (I Stepped on a Cat). This time, though, I'm not talking about a made-in-Japan kids' song but one whose origins are German and is a song that has been known worldwide, since its probable creation in 1890 by Ferdinand Alfred Gustav Loh according to LS Piano Music. The original title is "Flohwalzer" (The Flea Waltz) although it isn't a waltz, and in Japanese, there are no fleas...just an unlucky cat with back/tail issues. Once again, I used to hear this all the time by folks in band class and other venues when someone just wanted to play around on the 88 keys.

According to J-Wiki, the Japanese version of "Flohwalzer" under the title of "Neko Funjatta" was used in NHK's "Minna no Uta"（みんなのうた）TV vignette series with lyrics by Hiroo Sakata（阪田寛夫）. However in 1954, Toshio Oka（丘灯至夫）placed his own lyrics onto Loh's original music. Going over to English Wikipedia, the song has different titles depending on the nation such as "La Chocolatera" in Spain and "Szamárinduló" (Donkey March) in Hungary.

Personally, I will be looking forward to any more contributions by the Queen of Children's Songs.

Antonin Dvořák -- Symphony No. 9, Largo/William Arms Fisher -- Goin' Home

 

Happy Monday! The shot above is one from the balcony of my old Ichikawa apartment in Chiba Prefecture over a decade ago since I did catch sight of a rainbow...as faint as it is. Those were quite rare but there was something that I always heard every day without fail.

Play this at 5 pm if you can. This is what I heard every day at that time if I were at home on a regular day off or if it was on a holiday. And it emanated from Ichikawa City Hall. Super homey and natsukashii!😯 Usually that was the signal for me to get the fixins ready for dinner.

Last week, when I was watching the popular NHK information variety program "Chiko-chan ni Shikarareru!"（チコちゃんに叱られる!...Don't Sleep Through Life）, one of the segments involved the local government disaster prevention radio alarm system. Basically every village, town and city in the nation have tested the system daily by playing a particular song on their loudspeakers promptly at 5 pm. The songs differed from municipality to municipality although groups of them shared the same song. Well, that got me to thinking...what was the song being played for Ichikawa?

And thus begins one of the more unusual KKP articles in its history since the music here doesn't have any origins or connection with Japan or Japanese songwriters. Yet, the recording of that organ sweetly playing it has had me getting all homesick for my old home-away-from-home of Fukuei 3-chome in Ichikawa some ten minutes away on foot from Minami-Gyotoku Station on the Tozai Line.

I found out pretty quickly thanks to the explanation underneath that YouTube video of the Ichikawa system that it was called "Ieji"（家路）in Japanese (not to be confused at all with Hiromi Iwasaki's early 80s pop hit). Then, one search on J-Wiki informed me that the title was the translation of the 1922 "Goin' Home" by American composer and music historian William Arms Fisher. But then, the story takes me back even further on discovering that Fisher had been a protégé of the one-and-only Czech composer Antonín Dvořák, and "Goin' Home" had been adapted from the latter's "Symphony No. 9", 2nd movement "Largo" as you can hear above and first presented in 1893, joining another entry on KKP from that year. "Goin' Home" can be heard below as performed movingly by the BYU Choir.

I would think that "Goin' Home" is the perfect title for that Ichikawa system considering that it's played at 5 pm, but no one actually goes home from work at 5 pm in Japan. Plus, I think even the kids have to head off to juku so they don't hit home until later. But if you know of any exceptions, please let me know.

"Symphony No. 9" is also known as the New World Symphony, and the fourth movement "Allegro con fuoco" is arguably even more famous for those dramatic horns. Recently, I got to see and hear its hilarious use in one scene of the anime "Gekkan Shojo Nozaki-kun"（月刊少女野崎くん）.

Now, if I'm ever back in my old city again at 5 pm, I'll have to always remember Mr. Dvořák and Mr. Fisher, and pay tribute through a dinner at Tonki, my beloved tonkatsu restaurant right underneath the tracks of the Tozai.