"Takeda Lullaby" ( ja, 竹田の子守唄 or Takeda no komoriuta) is a popular Japanese cradle song. It originated in Takeda, Fushimi, Kyoto.

Background

The song has long been sung by the people in the ''

burakumin is a name for a low-status social group in Japan. It is a term for ethnic Japanese people with occupations considered as being associated with , such as executioners, undertakers, slaughterhouse workers, butchers, or tanners. During Japan's ...

'' areas of Kyoto and

Osaka is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of 2. ...

in a slightly different form. During the 1960s, it was picked up as a theme song by the

Buraku Liberation League is a burakumin's rights group in Japan. Buraku are ethnic Japanese and descended from outcast communities of the Japanese feudal era. History Pre-World War II period The origin of the Buraku Liberation League is the , founded in 1922. However ...

, particularly its branch at Takeda. ''Burakumin'' ("hamlet people") were an outcast community at the bottom of the Japanese social order that had historically been the victims of severe discrimination and ostracism. These communities were often made up of those with occupations considered impure or tainted by death (e.g., executioners, undertakers, workers in slaughterhouses, butchers, or tanners). Professions such as these had severe social stigmas of ''kegare'', or "defilement", attached to them. A ''burakumin'' neighborhood within metropolitan Tokyo was the last to be served by streetcar and is the site of butcher and leather shops to this day. In this lullaby, a young girl comforts herself by singing about her miserable situation. One day, she is forcibly sent away to work for a rich family at a village across the mountain. Every day as she works with a baby on her back, she is reminded of her family, looking at the silhouette of the mountains in the direction of her homeland.

Recordings

In 1969, the folk singing group () made this song popular, and their

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, recorded in 1971, became a bestseller. The song has also an additional history in that

NHK , also known as NHK, is a Japanese public broadcaster. NHK, which has always been known by this romanized initialism in Japanese, is a statutory corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee. NHK operates two terrestri ...

and other major Japanese broadcasting networks refrained from playing it because it is related to ''burakumin'' activities, but this ban was stopped during the 1990s. The song has been translated into

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...

by the

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

ese lyricist Weng Bingrong () with the name "''qidao''" (). The meaning of the lyrics has been changed to being about taking care of everyone instead of the complaints of a babysitter of the Takeda hamlet in the original version. It also became famous in China and Taiwan since it was performed by

Dave Wang Dave Wang (; born 20 October 1962) is a Hong Kong-Taiwanese singer, songwriter and actor. His popular hits in the late 1980s,early 1990s and 2000s include "一場遊戲一場夢" (A Game A Dream) and "幾分傷心幾分痴" (Bits of Sadness, ...

(Wang Jie) and Wang Yunchan () in 1993 as well as in recordings by Li Pi-hua (李碧華) and Liu Wen-cheng (劉文正). In this rendition, it was presented as a Japanese classic (). In 2001, singer Eri Sugai included a version of the song on her album ''Mai''. In 2017, the folk supergroup Bendith included a

Welsh language Welsh ( or ) is a Celtic language family, Celtic language of the Brittonic languages, Brittonic subgroup that is native to the Welsh people. Welsh is spoken natively in Wales, by some in England, and in Y Wladfa (the Welsh colony in Chubut P ...

Background

Recordings

Lyrics

Japanese

Romanized Japanese

English translation

See also

References

External links