Children's Songs Transcend Time

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of "Akai Tori" (Red Bird), Japan's first children's literary magazine which produced many masterpiece fairy tales and children's songs. As it is also the 100th anniversary of the birth of the modern children's song (doyo), various events are being held.

Mr. Kataoka, you have written the lyrics for numerous children's songs over the years. How did you first encounter children's songs yourself?

It was exactly through "Akai Tori." My father was a businessman at a trading company, so as a child, I lived in Dalian in the former Manchukuo.

My parents played the guitar and mandolin and had many records. Among them was an "Akai Tori" record album. I don't remember the title, but there was a song about rumors regarding a child who overslept, with lyrics like "Did you hear? Did you hear? The sparrows' whispering." That was my first encounter with children's songs.

My mother also used to sing "warabe-uta" (traditional nursery rhymes). She also sang European songs like "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." I think I grew up in an environment with a lot of Western-style music.

I returned to Japan in my first year of junior high school, and that was the first time I encountered Japanese folk songs and warabe-uta. Because of that, I became interested in them, thinking I had to understand them as the roots of Japanese children's songs and music.

I joined TBS because I wanted to create children's television programs. However, TBS had only just begun experimental broadcasting and didn't need many television staff, so I was assigned to the radio department.

There, I was put in charge of programs for children. For a children's song program, I commissioned a large number of arrangements from people like Toru Takemitsu and Joji Yuasa, who would later become leading figures in contemporary music.

What was the catalyst for you to start creating children's songs yourself?

While working with Mr. Yuasa and Shuntaro Tanikawa to create musicals for children, I thought I would try writing them myself and started writing poetry.

When I was at TBS, I didn't set my own poems to music. About three years after I went freelance, there was a segment called "Uta no Ehon" (Song Picture Book) within the NHK program "Okaasan to Issho" (With Mother). A director there asked me, "Would you like to create a song?" and the first one I made was "Tondetta Banana" (The Banana That Flew Away). The composer was Jun Sakurai, who was in the same year as me and a graduate of the Faculty of Economics.

It's a nonsense song where a banana flies away, runs away desperately to avoid being eaten, and finally flies into the open mouth of a captain who was napping on a ship and gets eaten (laughs).

It is still a popular song among children today.

When I made this song, my own child was about three years old. Listening to the children's song programs being broadcast at the time, I felt that Japanese songs were perhaps too serious and well-behaved compared to Western songs.

So, I intentionally made it a long, nonsense song like a ballad. Three to four verses were standard for children's songs, but this one has six.

Then, the person in charge of NHK's early childhood programs told me that it was cruel for the protagonist to be eaten at the end, so they asked me to please make it a happy ending (laughs).

I didn't think any child would find eating a banana cruel. I consulted with the director in charge, Mimi Komori (the wife of composer Akihiro Komori, a graduate of the Juku), and we decided to "go with it as is." When it was broadcast, it was very well received. After that, they never said anything to me again (laughs).

If asked what kind of experiences I had with children's songs as a child, I can't think of one specific thing. But there are things that have been imprinted on me. For example, if asked what children's songs I like, I like "Tsuki no Sabaku" (Desert under the Moon) or "Amefuri Otsukisan" (The Moon in the Rain). This isn't because I heard them as a child, but because I felt they were good songs while encountering various children's songs through my work.

Previously, when I was at TV Asahi, I was in charge of a program called the "National Children's Song Singing Contest," which was held annually by the Association of Children's Song Writers in Japan, where Mr. Wakamatsu's father (Shoji) was. I listened to many children's songs and did interviews.

Since the title changed to the "Children's Song Contest" two years ago, I have also been serving as the coordinator for the judges.

My father was also a composer and arranger. In the 1960s and 70s when I was born, there were so many music programs on TV, and I think there was about 100 times more recording work for major record companies than there is now.

When I turned on the TV, I would sometimes see my father conducting songs he had arranged. I grew up watching those programs and listening to various genres of music he composed and arranged.

Especially during elementary school, my father often did recordings at NHK or record companies on Saturdays and Sundays, and he usually took me along.

I was allowed into the space where studio musicians played with a sense of tension. Whether it was a recording at NHK Hall or a public filming, I was allowed to sit in great positions, like next to the concertmaster or behind the conductor. It was a luxurious environment. So, I think music classes in elementary and junior high school only had about a 1% influence on me. 99% of my growth was in the music and sounds of the actual workplace in my private life.

That is an enviable environment (laughs).

It's embarrassing to praise my own family, but my father really did wonderful arrangements. Especially with string arrangements, I still think my father is the best in Japan. Having that close by since I was a child, I naturally came to think what wonderful works they were, including famous children's songs, school songs, and lyrical songs.

However, in a common pattern, when I reached junior high school, my interest in rock and pop grew stronger than in children's songs. In the end, I was somewhat distanced from children's songs until I graduated from university.

I worked as a salaryman for about six years after graduating, then quit to become a self-proclaimed composer. While steadily getting various arrangement jobs, I started receiving work for children's songs.

When I actually tried it, I could do it smoothly. When I was starting out, I did a lot of work arranging trendy J-pop songs for choruses, but with those, my pen would come to a dead stop (laughs).

I gradually remembered, "This is it, after all." I wanted to make children's songs my life's work in my own way. Rather than writing new children's songs, I am active because I want teachers in educational music settings and children to know the famous masterpiece children's songs once again.

Mr. Kataoka, what have you kept in mind while creating children's songs until now?

There is a thick book called "From Two to Five" written by the Russian literary scholar Kornei Chukovsky. In it, there is a chapter where he observes his grandchildren playing and extracts about ten elements that make children like songs. When I read it, I realized that all the elements that made "Tondetta Banana" appeal to children applied.

What he says is that, first, regarding the poetry, the words used must be things that instantly pop into a child's head as an image the moment they hear them. And if that scene remains the same, the child will quickly get bored. It needs to develop and change rapidly.

The words themselves should follow the child's developmental stage; nouns are best at first. Children start with single-word nouns like "Papa" or "Mama," right? Next come verbs like "eat" or "run." He says that adjectives and adjectival verbs come last in the developmental stages.

I see.

In my song, if I say "There was one banana" at the beginning, a banana pops into their head. Then, "Under the blue southern sky." The banana disappears, and now it's a scene of the blue sky. When I say "Two children," children appear. The point is that the scenes develop one after another, and because they aren't complex, the scenery can be drawn even with a child's imagination.

He wrote that the way these scenes develop like a story, and that unpredictability, is also very attractive to children. Even if the development is as expected, children are happy that their prediction was right, and even if it isn't, they find the surprise interesting. He also says they like repetitions within the progression of the story.

Children understand these things intuitively rather than logically, and that's how songs they like are born.

What is the role of the melody?

Of course, the melody is also very important. There is the term "hook"—whether it's a melody that catches people's hearts and stays in their memory.

In "Tondetta Banana," I think this was the first time Mr. Sakurai brought Latin rhythms into a children's song. Chukovsky also mentions that a bouncing rhythm is one reason children enjoy a song.

So, I think it wasn't just the lyrics, but the combination of the bouncing rhythm, the easy-to-remember melody, and the memorable repetition of "Bananan Bananan Ba-na-na" that made it popular with children.

It really comes down to good lyrics and melody. What I feel after doing chorus work and composition for a long time is that if either is lacking, it will never have a long run. Children are that sensitive and see through it.

Regarding words, I think they won't last unless there is depth, not just being "pretty" or "fun." Even with senryu poetry, it's not interesting if it's just 5-7-5 syllables without something being said beyond what is written. I think children's songs have that quality of being simple yet deep.

As for melodies, I think most children's songs are basically simple. Easy to sing, easy to remember. But that alone isn't enough; it needs that "hook."

Mr. Yoshinao Nakada's songs, in particular, have a lot of stepwise motion (moving to adjacent notes on the scale). Because they go up and down one note at a time, they are easy to sing and remember, but there is always a clever device. That's why I think they continue to be sung often even among modern works.

For example, even in "Akai Tori," there are many children's poems that don't have melodies. Mr. Kataoka, when you write a poem, do you write it assuming a melody will be attached?

Basically, I write while saying it out loud in my own way. However, if I do that, it inevitably becomes a poem with a fixed-form rhythm.

I once created a serialized puppet show at a Nagoya TV station with Takeo Yamashita, a graduate of the Juku and a composer known for the theme song of the program "Shichinin no Keiji" (Seven Detectives).

We had people from Theatre Echo, like Kazuo Kumakura, perform. At that time, I didn't write fixed-form poetry, but wrote the lyrics in actual spoken language.

Mr. Yamashita attached a very skillful melody to it—one that children like. At that time, I discovered that things written without thinking about rhyme or intonation could become a song like that.

When I feel, "Ah, this poem is amazing," there is always something like a challenge included in the poem. It feels like I'm being asked to try and cook this up, and I think, "Alright, let's do it" (laughs). So, poems that don't fit into a mold are a joy for a composer.

The poems of Hakushu and others are very beautiful and flowing, but the song I introduced earlier, "Did you hear? Did you hear? The sparrows' whispering," also had rhythm as words, and the melody fit perfectly. So, it comes down to the fact that anything with charm is charming, regardless of the type of song.

That analysis is difficult, isn't it? If you ask if there are laws, there isn't one specific way that always works.

Even among poets, there are those who create poetry where the melody is visible. I suppose it's the choice of words and the flow.

Currently, I am planning and producing a concert series called "Let's Play with Geidai" (Tokyo University of the Arts), and recently we held a concert called "Let's Play with Geidai in Hokutopia."

We create a story and fit various existing pieces of music into it. Of course, we could just let them listen to the music, but small children get bored if they just sit and listen for a long time. So, I think of a stage structure where children can participate, and I always include children's songs or doyo.

Recently, I included "Osaru no Kagoya" (The Monkey's Palanquin). It's a pre-war song, and of course, I wasn't born yet when it was made, but I know it. However, none of the children in the Kita City chorus who performed then knew "Osaru no Kagoya." I intentionally choose to perform and feature songs born around the time of "Akai Tori" rather than just new songs.

That's because I believe we should increase opportunities for them to encounter such things as much as possible.

How is the children's reaction?

I don't feel like they have the sense that it's an "old song." For children, almost everything is something they are encountering for the first time. I think it's arrogant of adults to think that children equal a certain image and that we should just give them this kind of music. Children have very rich sensibilities, and their expressions are direct.

That's why Mr. Nakada says "don't pander to children," and I also keep that in mind when I create concerts.

That's a wonderful thing. There are many teachers in the field who cherish children's songs, but among them, some don't know any children's songs other than those in textbooks.

The space in textbooks is very limited, so only a countable number of children's songs can be included. But I do think there are so many other good children's songs. These days, there are few opportunities to hear children's songs outside of school.

TV Asahi doing the children's song singing contest also has that kind of meaning.

I think it's a truly precious program.

Another thing I think is that while words and melodies are important, children really like having their emotions stirred. One of my favorite children's songs is "Amefuri Kuma no Ko" (The Bear Cub in the Rain)...

Ah, the one by Akira Yuyama.

The world of that song has a faint sadness, doesn't it? A bear waiting forever for a fish to eat. Children like energetic and exciting songs, but they also like things that make them feel a bit moved like that.

So, children have various sensibilities just like adults, and they want their hearts to be moved by various things. Children's songs tend to fall into a single pattern, but I always think there could be more songs that stimulate children's undeveloped sensibilities.

My song "Green Green" has a theme of parting with a father through death, which is, so to speak, a taboo theme for a children's song.

It's not a happy one.

However, there are many children who like that song. I still get letters asking, "What happened to the father?" (laughs). I just received one from a high school student the other day.

I can only say that there is no fixed interpretation, and that the recipient should interpret it freely and put their own feelings into it. Actually, that was a song made for a 30-minute NHK program called "Uta no Merry-go-round" (Song Merry-Go-Round), for which Naozumi Yamamoto wrote the theme song.

こういうものだと決まった解釈はなくて、受け取る人が自由に解釈して、自分の気持ちをそこに乗せてくださいとしか言えないんです。ただあれは、実は山本直純さんがテーマソングを書いた『歌のメリーゴーランド』というＮＨＫの30分番組でつくった歌だったんです。

たしか水曜日が音録りで、前の日の火曜日の夜に詩を書きました。

Oh, so it was the day before?

I wrote it in the middle of the night (laughs). I was drawn to the melody of "Green Green" and decided to write lyrics for it. The original song was sung by the American folk group The New Christy Minstrels, and it's a song about a hippie leaving their parents to go on a journey.

Since "Uta no Merry-go-round" was a children's program, I felt that a literal translation wouldn't appeal to the audience, and I was stuck. At that moment, my three-year-old daughter sleeping in bed caught my eye, and I suddenly thought, "If I were to die and leave this child behind, what would I think?" That's how it came together so quickly.

Another thing is that while mothers appear in many Japanese children's songs, fathers don't appear very often. So, I also wanted to create a song about a father.

I was getting a bit teary-eyed myself while creating it. Then, as soon as it was broadcast, I got a call from a director at Victor saying they wanted to make it into a record. At that moment, I felt that a song that doesn't move your own heart cannot move the hearts of listeners.

In a sense, creation is a very calm and intellectual endeavor, but I learned through experience that you cannot move people's hearts just by thinking.

It's not about saying "here is a message for children" through logic; it's about having the image of a child with a specific name and face in your head and writing for that child while asking yourself what you want to convey to them. Behind that one child, there are many other children.

If you create by perceiving children as an abstraction, it inevitably becomes something manufactured in your head. When I write a school song, I always go to the site and talk to the students before writing.

When it comes to creating nursery rhymes, some people say they write poetry by returning to their childhood heart because they are songs for children. However, for example, Yoshinao Nakada didn't think much about children when creating nursery rhymes (laughs). That's how he composed his music, right?

It means creating for a single human being, rather than for a "child," doesn't it?

There are nursery rhymes that both children and adults can listen to, and I think they are the same in the sense that they are music that nurtures the heart.

I'm not sure if NHK's "Minna no Uta" (Songs for Everyone) can be called nursery rhymes, but it's a treasure trove of children's songs. Sumio Gotoda, the director who launched it, always had a desire to convey the "real thing." I translated and wrote lyrics for many songs, such as Scottish folk songs, because the program had a strict philosophy.

Initially, the directors in charge would clash and refine ideas in planning meetings to create something everyone was satisfied with. However, that changed with the times, and it became more like leaving it to production companies—choosing the best ones from tapes sent in. The nature of the planning meetings changed as well.

Watching from the sidelines, I feel like it has gone as far as it can go. Children can only encounter songs through the media, so their likes and dislikes emerge in the form of reacting to songs that come out of the media. Therefore, children's options are very limited now. To be blunt, there are songs in "Minna no Uta" where you think, "Is this song really okay?"

Effectively, the policy changed significantly about 12 or 13 years ago.

Even the required pieces for choral competitions have started to rely on the popularity of pop artists.

In the NHK Choral Competition, a work written by Yasushi Akimoto and performed by AKB48 became the required piece for junior high schools, which caused a bit of a stir. The conductor Hirokazu Takubo spoke out, saying it was strange to make a pop song a required piece given the purpose of the choral competition, and I went to the Ministry of Education with him.

I knew for a long time that such songs would eventually become required pieces. Elementary and junior high school choral music has been a relatively protected sanctuary; if you write a good work, there's a high possibility it will be sung by students. However, since the influence of television and media on children's environments is significant, those things inevitably enter school music.

Since there is a trend in the media to accept this, it is very painful to have to provide good music within that context.

Nowadays, not only TV and the internet but also nurseries and kindergartens are, in a sense, media. Songs are created targeting childcare settings, such as pieces used for sports days. In other words, it's music aimed solely at utility, practicality, and child appeal. While it might be useful, I have doubts about whether it remains in the heart as music.

It's a battle against those kinds of things.

Ultimately, the listeners decide. If the audience realizes that good things are good, I expect that nursery rhymes will regain their power.

Currently, music hours in schools are being reduced more and more. Now it's probably about half of what it was when I was in elementary and junior high school. Even so, nursery rhymes have survived. I want this to be kept alive and made into a solid pillar of children's music education. I feel that now is the time.

The songs children want to sing and the songs adults want children to sing are different, aren't they? I think we need to think about how to bridge that gap.

There was a mention that "there could be more new things in the lyrics of children's songs," and the same might be true for the music side. For example, I think it's necessary to increase the taste of Western music or pop.

It might be an element that wasn't in old nursery rhymes, but maybe even tension chords should be included. I think it's necessary for nursery rhyme creators to never forget the spirit of learning and to incorporate new things.

The other day, there was a music festival for private elementary schools in Tokyo, and I went to listen because my grandchild was performing. There were AKB48 songs, but they also featured early music pieces in the recorder ensemble.

Even in childcare settings, the ensemble "Roba no Ongakuza" (Donkey Music Ensemble), which uses period instruments, is very popular now. Children play their songs themselves on recorders, transverse flutes, and flutes. When children feel something in their hearts, they want to reproduce it themselves without being forced. In some elementary schools, they sing and dance to many folk songs from Okinawa and the Ainu.

Children are not only interested in current trendy music; they have the capacity to accept diverse music. So, it's about how the adults around them provide those opportunities.

Exactly. It's about how to make them notice.

For example, there is "Kotoba Asobi Uta" (Word Play Songs) written by Tanikawa. Those aren't necessarily set to a melody, but children love to recite them in groups.

In the field of music, there is a tendency for rhythm to become the focus when good melodies become scarce. I think this is a very bad thing. There are people working hard to stop it, and I think it's somehow being maintained.

While I'm at it, the Ministry of Education has now made dance compulsory. I'm against that. Of course, if there were unlimited time, I think they should do it. However, since there is no time to begin with, we must increase opportunities to touch upon more lyrical things.

Of course, doing it itself isn't bad. I myself played rock and pop in a band when I was a high school student and was looked down upon by teachers, but I think that's just right for an extracurricular activity. It seems strange to have it as an educational policy like "you must do this."

Anyway, it's better to firmly do nursery rhymes in the lower grades and classic choral pieces in the upper grades.

Because there are so many good songs.

Exactly. It's very regrettable that there isn't a structure to learn them properly. It's a waste not to be able to utilize such excellent culture and assets. Therefore, I think it would be good if music universities could more actively teach Japanese music, nursery rhymes, and lyrical songs.

In Tatsuno City, Hyogo Prefecture, and Hirono Town, Fukushima Prefecture, new nursery rhymes are still being created, aren't they?

Tatsuno City is the birthplace of Rofu Miki, and they hold poetry competitions.

I've been involved a little bit, but it's very difficult to create a masterpiece that will truly last for 100 years. The poetry is difficult, after all.

I like pre-war nursery rhymes. From the Meiji to Taisho and Showa eras, the times were poor in many ways, but that's exactly why various expressions blossomed richly. Now is not that kind of era; in a sense, it's saturated and at a standstill. Writing good poetry in such a context is a Herculean task.

There's the quality of the music, of course, but I think the social structure itself has become one where it's difficult for hit songs to be born, especially in nursery rhymes.

I think that in any genre, if you don't create new things, it will die out. So I want them to be created, but they don't come out easily.

That's exactly why I feel strongly that we must pass them on. For example, when you go to a nursing home now, the songs everyone sings are nursery rhymes. At that age, nursery rhymes become something important.

There is a theory that the etymology of "uta" (song) comes from "utsu" (to strike/move) the heart. I think a song a child wants to sing is a song they want to put their feelings into. If the thing they are supposed to put their feelings into is very formal, it's hard for a child to feel it as their own.

In that regard, if there are "elements that make children want to put their feelings into them" within pop music, we should learn from that.

I truly hope that songs children want to sing will continue to be born in the future.