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"Sakura Sakura" (さくら さくら, "Cherry blossoms, cherry blossoms"), also known as "Sakura", is a traditional Japanese folk song depicting spring, the season of cherry blossoms. Contrary to popular belief, the song did not originate in ancient times; it was a popular, urban melody of the Edo period and was adopted as a piece for beginning koto students in the Tokyo Academy of Music Collection of Japanese Koto Music issued in 1888 (in English) by the Department of Education. The song has been popular since the Meiji period, and the lyrics in their present form were attached then. It is often sung in international settings as a song representative of Japan, and many electronic crosswalks in Japan play the melody as "guidance music".
Contents
In 2007, it was selected for Nihon no Uta Hyakusen, a collection of songs and nursery rhymes widely beloved in Japan.
In early the 2010s, Japanese singer Kiyoshi Hikawa performed the second of the two verses of "Sakura Sakura" - the first and only Enka singer to do so.
Melody
The "Sakura Sakura" melody uses a pentatonic scale known as the Japanese mode. This could also be construed as Phrygian Dominant Minor Mode in Western musical theory, using scale degrees 3, 4, 6, 7, 1, 3 (E, F, A, B, C, E or Me, Fa, La, Ti, Do, Me in solfège).
Lyrics
The original lyrics are listed as the second verse. In 1941, the Japanese Ministry of Education published an additional verse in Uta no hon (うたのほん 教師用 下), listing it first before the original verse.
Variations
The first lines of the original verse ('sakura sakura yayoi no sora wa mi-watasu kagiri') serve as a prelude to Bon Jovi's song Tokyo Road from their second album 7800° Fahrenheit (released in 1985).
Dream of the Cherry Blossoms by Keiko Abe, a virtuoso percussionist, is a five-minute piece for marimba. This piece is based on "Sakura Sakura" and has become popular in the marimba repertoire. Yukihiro Yoko, a classical guitarist, made an arrangement for his instrument, a theme with variations, in which he uses different guitar techniques to imitate the sound of the koto.
Babymetal used this melody in their song "Megitsune" in 2013.
Alfred Reed's Fifth Symphony "Sakura" is based on this folk song.
Because the melody spans a modest range, it is ideally suited to instruments that have a limited pitch range, such as the Native American flute.
In 2013 Marc Edwards recorded an album featuring 3 20 minute versions of Sakura Sakura, in a free jazz electric guitar style.