was a Japanese

composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and Defi ...

credited with composing the Japanese

national anthem A national anthem is a patriotic musical composition symbolizing and evoking eulogies of the history and traditions of a country or nation. The majority of national anthems are marches or hymns in style. American, Central Asian, and European n ...

Kimigayo is the national anthem of Japan. The lyrics are from a ' poem written by an unnamed author in the Heian period (794–1185), and the current melody was chosen in 1880, replacing an unpopular melody composed by John William Fenton eleven years e ...

Life and career

He held several positions in the royal court starting in his youth. He moved to Tokyo after the Meiji Restoration and in 1875 helped carry out 1875 orders to fuse Western musical theory with Japanese theory. The final version of the anthem was first played for

Emperor Meiji , also called or , was the 122nd emperor of Japan according to the traditional order of succession. Reigning from 13 February 1867 to his death, he was the first monarch of the Empire of Japan and presided over the Meiji era. He was the figur ...

for his birthday, on 3 November 1880.Chizuko Izawa, Nobuo Ohta (2005). ''Human learning and memory: advances in theory and application : the 4th Tsukuba International Conference on Memory.'' Routledge, Sources conflict over who composed the music.Jun Hongo (July 17, 2007). Hinomaru, 'Kimigayo' express conflicts both past and future. ''

Japan Times ''The Japan Times'' is Japan's largest and oldest English-language daily newspaper. It is published by , a subsidiary of News2u Holdings, Inc.. It is headquartered in the in Kioicho, Chiyoda, Tokyo. History ''The Japan Times'' was launched by ...

'' Historian

Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney ( ja, 大貫恵美子 born 1934) is a noted anthropologist and the William F. Vilas Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She is the author of fourteen single-authored books in English and ...

writes, "The composer is nominally identified as Hayashi Hiromori, a musician at the Imperial Court, but Oku Yoshiisa, who worked under Hayashi, is believed to have composed the music, with some rearrangement by

Franz Eckert Franz Eckert (5 April 1852 – 6 August 1916) was a German composer and musician who composed the harmony for Japan's national anthem, "Kimigayo" and the national anthem of the Korean Empire, "Aegukga". Early life and education Eckert was a ...

(1852–1916)."Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney (2002). ''Kamikaze, cherry blossoms, and nationalisms: the militarization of aesthetics in Japanese history.'' University of Chicago Press, The melody that Hayashi was credited for replaced an arrangement by

John William Fenton John William Fenton (12 March 1828 – 28 April 1890) was an Irish musician of Scottish descent and the leader of a military band in Japan at the start of the Meiji period. He is considered "the first bandmaster in Japan" and "the father of band ...

, a visiting Irish military band leader, that was rejected in 1870. The Court then adopted a new melody composed by Yoshiisa Oku and Akimori Hayashi. The composer is often listed as Hiromori Hayashi, who was their supervisor and Akimori's father. Akimori was also one of Fenton's pupils. The German musician

applied the melody with Western style harmony.

References

1831 births 1896 deaths 19th-century Japanese composers 19th-century Japanese male musicians 19th-century Japanese people Japanese composers Japanese male composers National anthem writers {{Japan-composer-stub