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.
