Furusato (children's song)

Furusato (Japanese: 故郷, "old home" or "hometown") is a well-known 1914 Japanese children's song, with music by Teiichi Okano and lyrics by Tatsuyuki Takano.

Furusato monument in Tottori Prefecture.

Although Takano's hometown was Nakano, Nagano, his lyrics do not seem to refer to a particular place.[1] Instead, they describe a person who is working in a distant land, expressing his feelings of nostalgia for the hills and fields of his childhood home.

The Japanese government has designated Furusato as a Japanese children's song to be taught in the Japanese public school system, and the song has also been included in the recent popular song collection known as Nihon no Uta Hyakusen.

The composer and the writer of the song were unknown until the 1970s.[2] Since 1992, however, the names of both Teiichi Okano and Tatsuyuki Takano have been printed with the song in Japanese music textbooks.[3]

At the closing ceremony of the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, the song was played, and in 2014, in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Furusato, the song was performed by children's chorus with orchestral accompaniment at the Saito Kinen Festival Matsumoto in Nagano, under the direction of Seiji Ozawa.[4]