8th February – 如月

日本民謡　（Nihon-Minyou）- Japanese folk song

Songs that has been sang in the particular area in Japan. Those songs tend to have a deep relation to the local region.

Just like the other countries, Japan has its own folk songs (民謡 =Minyou) which were sang among ordinary people in the area. Nowadays, not many of them are sang by younger generations so those songs has sadly become obsolete.

Minyou contains various emotions from sadness to happiness, and songs generally include relation to the particular area. For instance, if the Minyou was born in Northern prefectures, this could contain coldness, snow or animals such as fox. Many times, particular name of the mountains or rivers, oceans come up on the songs, so if you search the name of those you can tell where the song came from.

A number of Minyou were created by regional farmers and it has dance with the song. Those songs comfort the farmers whose works were hard and tiring.

Minyou has baiscally 2 types:

• Song sang by one person: irregular beat
• Song sang sang by many people: normally the beat is two time, be able to clap with the rhythm

Furthermore, the songs can be categorized by its theme.

• 労働歌 (Roudou-ka): songs that relieve the hard works, sang by farmers
• 祝い歌 (Iwai-uta): songs for celebration, festivals
• 踊り歌(Odori-uta): songs for dancing
• 宗教歌(Shuukyou-ka): songs that contain religious components, sang in order to create strong relation toward the religion
• 子守唄(Komori-uta): songs for making the babies sleep
• 舟歌(Funa-uta): songs sang on the boat, has the perfect rhythm for paddling the boat

Here I would like to share with you some of the famous Minyou

＜東京音頭　祝い歌　～Tokyo　＞

＜はいさいおじさん　～Okinawa　＞

＜最上川舟歌　～Yamagata＞

Japanese Minyou have great history behind – Hope this traditional songs last for next generation!