Shimabara Lullaby ( or Shimabara no komoriuta) is a

folk song Folk music is a music genre that includes #Traditional folk music, traditional folk music and the Contemporary folk music, contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be ca ...

-like

lullaby A lullaby (), or a cradle song, is a soothing song or piece of music that is usually played for (or sung to) children (for adults see music and sleep). The purposes of lullabies vary. In some societies, they are used to pass down cultural knowl ...

by Kohei Miyazaki of Shimabara,

Nagasaki Prefecture is a Prefectures of Japan, prefecture of Japan, mainly located on the island of Kyūshū, although it also includes a number of islands off Kyūshū's northwest coast - including Tsushima and Iki. Nagasaki Prefecture has a population of 1,246,4 ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

General

Shimabara Lullaby was written in the early 1950s by Kohei Miyazaki (1917-1980). It is related to the

Karayuki-san Karayuki-san (唐行きさん) was the name given to Japanese girls and women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries who were trafficked from poverty-stricken agricultural prefectures in Japan to destinations in East Asia, Southeast Asia, Sibe ...

, the poor Japanese girls sold to work overseas as prostitutes, in Southern China and the Pacific island areas, such as

Sandakan Sandakan () formerly known at various times as Elopura, is the capital of the Sandakan District in Sabah, Malaysia. It is the second largest city in Sabah after Kota Kinabalu. It is located on the Sandakan Peninsula and east coast of the sta ...

Borneo Borneo () is the List of islands by area, third-largest island in the world, with an area of , and population of 23,053,723 (2020 national censuses). Situated at the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, it is one of the Greater Sunda ...

.About Shimabara Lullaby
(in Japanese) This song became famous when Chiyoko Shimakura recorded it in 1957, followed later the recordings by Peggy Hayama,

Hisaya Morishige was a Japanese actor and comedian. Born in Hirakata, Osaka, he graduated from Kitano Middle School (now Kitano High School), and attended Waseda University. He began his career as a stage actor, then became an announcer for NHK, working in Ma ...

and others.

Lyrics

The original song had five stanzas, but is usually sung in three stanzas, the first of which starts with:

Japanese

おどみゃ島原の　おどみゃ島原の

Romanized Japanese

Odomya shimabara no, odomya shimabara no,

English translation

I was born in Shimabara, I was born in Shimabara, The lyrics cannot be fully listed for copyright reason.

References

External links

Shimabara Lullaby
(A Hundred Lullabies in Japanese, in Japan Society of Lullabies' home page) Lullabies Japanese folk songs Culture in Nagasaki Prefecture {{Song-stub