those who have sung the songs and read the comments to explore the vast amount and variety of the world's music. Music, for the majority of us in the West, has meant only Western music. We have remained largely ignorant of the music world around us.
The piano accompaniments have been arranged simply in accord with the nature of the songs. As far as possible, when a piano is added to this type of music, the arranger has endeavored to keep a Japanese flavor. The harmonies have also been conceived along these lines.
Approximately half of the songs contained here are familiar throughout Japan, while the remaining songs are of specific locales. In going through more than a hundred songs, the attempt was made to choose representative songs, and at the same time, those which would be of melodic and textual interest for readers whose background is primarily Western.
Both the singable English texts and the romanized form of the Japanese texts have been included, as well as the original kana (syllabary) form, so that the songs may be sung in either language. The English texts have been presented so as to parallel the literal translation from the original Japanese. In some cases, because of the difficulty involved in trying to express exactly the same thought in English as in Japanese, alteration became necessary. However, an accurate literal explanation accompanies each song in the commentary.
The arranger is deeply indebted to Professor Shigeo Kishibe of Tokyo University for his help in the choice of the songs in this collection, his comments on the songs, and his help with the translations. The book, Warabe Uta (Children's Songs) by Kasho Machida, was also of great value in making the song selections. The author is indebted to Mr. Hugh Brown for his help with the pronunciation notes. Gratitude is also expressed to Professor Kenji Asano of Yamagata University for his interesting ideas on the texts of the songs, which have helped immeasurably in the preparation of the commentary.
DONALD PAUL BERGER
INTRODUCTION
FOR CENTURIES Japan was divided into many small provinces each having its own ruler, ruling class, customs, and, of course, its own songs. This isolation gave rise to a large variety of folk music. The warabe uta (children's songs) of Japan, being a part of the folk-song repertoire, accordingly differ from district to district in textual and melodic content. But at the same time there is a degree of similarity in some of the texts and many of the play songs. This points to the fact that children are really very much the same all over Japan and indeed, the world over.
The localization of certain songs began to fade to some degree with the crumbling of the feudal state and with the rapid advances in communication during the Meiji era. Since that time the songs of one district have freely flowed to another, so that today songs which were once only locally known are sung and enjoyed throughout the islands of Japan.
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