Japanese National Anthem
One of the world's oldest national anthems, Kimigayo (The Emperor's Reign), was adopted as the National Anthem of Japan in 1888.

The lugubrious music was composed in 1880 by Hiromori Hayashi, an Imperial Court musician and was later harmonized according to the Gregorian mode by Franz Eckert, a German bandmaster.

The lyrics are a tanka (5-line, 31-syllable poem) from the Kokinshu, a 10th-century anthology of verse.

Repeated twice, the lyrics are transliterated as:

  Kimi ga yo wa / Chiyo ni yachiyo ni / Sazare ishi no /
  Iwao to nari te / Koke no musu made.

  (Verse by Ki no Tsurayuki, ca. 872-945)

English translation:

May the reign of the Emperor continue for a thousand, nay, eight thousand generations and for the eternity that it takes for small pebbles to grow into a great rock and become covered with moss.
Purchase the $3 Kimigayo MP3 ringtone.

Purchase Kimigayo

Click the button below to download a zipped file containing Kimigayo as played by a symphony orchestra.

Price: US$3.00.

After downloading the 323-KB compressed file, unzip it from the ZIP format to the MP3 format, which is playable by using QuickTime®.

To download a free copy of QuickTime, visit the QuickTime download web page.



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