Aogeba Tōtoshi

The story

"Aogeba Tōtoshi" is a song sung at graduation ceremonies in Japan, usually in the key of D or E-flat major, in 6/8 time. Its first known appearance was in 1884, when the Meiji-era educator Isawa Shūji (1851–1917) added it to the Ministry of Education's published collection of songs for primary-school pupils. Who wrote it has long been uncertain. Some insist that Isawa wrote both the words and the music; the words are also said to have been written together by Ōtsuki Fumihiko (1847–1928), Satomi Tadashi (1824–1886) and Kabe Iwao. The melody was often said to come from a traditional Scottish folk song of uncertain origin, as "Hotaru no Hikari" borrowed the tune of "Auld Lang Syne".

In January 2011 Masato Sakurai, professor emeritus of Hitotsubashi University, announced that he believed he had found the song's origin in an English-language school music book, The Song Echo, published in the United States in 1871. Its "Song for the Close of School", with words by T. H. Brosnan and music by "H. N. D.", is, according to Sakurai, exactly the same as "Aogeba Tōtoshi". The American song is no longer known in the United States.

After the Second World War, some felt that the song's worshipful attitude towards teachers did not suit a democracy. Opposition to it became part of a wider reaction against the old order during the student protests of the 1960s, and schools hesitated to play it at graduations for fear of protest. When the protests died down, older notions continued to fade, and the song, whose grammar and vocabulary were archaic even in the 1880s, was largely dropped by public schools, especially primary schools, in favour of newer songs such as "Tabidachi no Hi ni", Kaientai's "Okuru Kotoba" and Naotarō Moriyama's "Sakura". Schools that kept it often left out the second stanza, whose call to rise in the world and make a name for oneself seemed out of step with a changing society. After the war the children's author Tamao Fujita published a version with modernised words, but parents did not take to it, because it did not bring tears the way the original did.

In 2007 the Agency for Cultural Affairs and the National Congress of Parents and Teachers Associations of Japan chose "Aogeba Tōtoshi" for the Nihon no Uta Hyakusen, a selection of 100 songs of Japan. As the list is ordered by the Japanese syllabary, it stands first.

What it says

A farewell of pupils to their teachers on the day they leave school. The singers look up with reverence to the kindness of their teachers and marvel at how fast the years of schooling have gone; they ask their schoolfellows not to forget one another after they part, urge themselves to rise in the world and make a name, and remember the window where they studied morning and evening by the light of fireflies and of snow, an old image of hard study. Every stanza closes on the moment of parting and farewell. The mood is solemn and tearful.

The words