In this series, we will investigate different musical cultures from all over the world. We will find that, despite their difference, many cultures can be linked with some musical aspect, making up an entire category called “music”. Today, we will take a look at the two musical cultures of traditional Japanese and English folk songs.
Folk music, as the name implies, refers to the music of the people
1
. Folk songs are passed down orally from generation to generation, becoming a part of the region’s culture. Every culture in the world has its own folk music, and each contains unique
Suppose you were told that Japanese folk music and English folk music are similar.
You may question, “How can that be?
Their folk songs cannot be similar;
England is from the west, and Japan is from the east – two opposite regions, and very distant cultures.” True, these musical characteristics. They differ in musical cultures do not sound alike, if aspects like instrumentation, rhythm, lyrics, you base it on language and and style of expression. Basically, each culture is distinct from another in its folk music. From this, you can assume that the comparison between the eastern and instrumentation. Yet, there is much more to the comparison of these two musical cultures than just how they sound, despite the culture differences. western musical cultures would have the most differences, because they are from opposite regions of the world, right?
Think again. Because what you are about to read might make you reconsider this assumption.
Before delving into what these similarities are, let’s take a look at some background information on these two musical cultures.
1 Griffin, Clive; Folk Music; p5

There is little information on former music in Japan; yet, there is evidence of the existence of musicians since around
4000BC 2 . Japanese folk music sings of various subjects, from seasons to labor to entertainment for children 3 .
English folk music has existed for hundreds of years. Many were passed down orally in rural cultures, because such folk songs were associated with work, ritual, and child-rearing. The lyrics of English folk songs were often poetic, giving the rhythm the metric structure of poetry 4 .
So what similarities do they actually share?
You will find that surprisingly, there are several aspects Japanese and English folk songs have in common. These will be discussed in the following categories:
musical form
rhythmic pattern
melodic contour
modal structure
2 http://jtrad.columbia.jp/eng/history.html
3 Fumio, Koizumi; Nihon no Oto; p128
4 http://www.history.com/encyclopedia.do?
printable=true&articleId=209488

MUSICAL FORM
Both English and Japanese folk songs consist of a stanza repeated with various lyrics, repeating the same melody.
The lyrics from Scarborough Fair , an
English folk song, represent this form.
Though each verse has different lyrics, they are sung with the same melody.
Are you going to Scarborough Fair?
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
Remember me to one who lives there
For once she was a true love of mine
Have her make me a cambric shirt
Parsley sage, rosemary and thyme
Without no seam nor fine needle work
And then she’ll be a true love of mine
Tell her to weave it in a sycamore wood lane
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme
And gather it all with a basket of flowers
And then she’ll be a true love of mine
The Japanese folk song, Itsuki no
Komoriuta , follows the same pattern. It has a variation of lyrics for each verse, but the words are sung to a repeated melody.
Odoma bongiri bongiri
Bonkara sakya oran to
Bonga hayo kurya hayo modoru
(When the summer season ends with the Obon holiday, even the young servants look forward to returning to their parents at their homeland.)
Odoma kanjin kanji
Anhitotacha yoka shi
Yoka shi yoka obi yoka kimono
(I am a beggar, a beggar. Those people are good, wealthy people. Good wealthy people have beautiful obi and kimonos.)
Odoma iyaiya
Naku ko no mori wa
Naku to iwarete nikumaruru
(A young servant cannot do anything about a baby who does not stop crying. It won’t stop crying, no matter how hard the young servant tries. The young servant gets scolded for not handling the baby well.)

Both folk songs share the same layout of the numerous verses sung to the same melody. This form of music, based on repetition of sections is called strophic form . The use of strophic form is not restricted to English and Japanese folk songs; it can be commonly seen in all folk songs.
Now that you have an overall picture of how folk songs are related, let’s take a closer look at how the Japanese and
English folk songs are connected, based on their melodic characteristics.
MELODY
Try imagining a popular folk tune. You would think of the vocal line itself, the melody of the repeated section in the strophic form. Though it may have simple harmony as an instrumental accompaniment, the melodic line is basically what makes up a folk song.
There are two main categories in the shared melodic attributes of the two folk song cultures: rhythmic pattern and melodic contour.

RHYTHMIC PATTERN
The melodies of both musical cultures use adjacent long and short notes. They are often at a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio of note length. Scarborough Fair repeats the rhythm of in each verse.
This rhythm has the ratio of 2:1.
Greensleeves , another English folk song, does the same with this rhythm: and The rhythm is a 2:1 ratio, and though has three notes put together, the first two is
3:1 ratio, and the latter is
, a
, a 1:2 ratio. The entire song consists of these two ratios.
English folk songs tend to place the longer note length before the shorter note length. Why is that? It could be that this is due to the accents which the
English language has on syllables.

Since the longer note length often comes first, the first syllable seems to be stressed in the song. Also, as we’ve mentioned before, English folk songs follow the structure of poetry. It is essential for poetry to have a certain rhythm; this is why English folk songs commonly use the rhythm of iambic feet, the pattern of a longer, stronger note adjacent to a shorter, weaker note 5 . No wonder English folk songs can maintain the rhythmic drive of their poetic lyrics throughout the verses!
But then, those of you familiar with
Japanese might be thinking, the Japanese language doesn’t have identifiable
“accents” to their syllables, other than accents resulting from dialects. How can Japanese folk music also follow the same rhythmic pattern of long and short notes if their lyrics aren’t based on a poetic meter?
Believe it or not, they do share this same rhythmic pattern as English folk songs.
Going back to the idea of the ratio of adjacent note lengths, the 2:1 ratio is applicable to the Soran-bushi . In the first 5 measures, this rhythm is repeated:
An eighth note follows after a quarter; it is a 2:1 ratio. Even in
5 http://www.history.com/encyclopedia.do?
printable=true&articleId=209488 slower songs like Itsuki no Komoriuta , you can find a repetitive rhythmic pattern.
One example can be seen in measures 2 and 3: shows a 3:1 ratio between the dotted quarter and eighth notes. So, the 2:1 and 3:1 ratio is visible in Japanese folk songs as well.
Measures 2 and 3 of Itsuki no Komoriuta
Yet, these rhythmic patterns aren’t due to the accented language like English.
Japanese folk songs originally consisted of much rubato , which is the feature of flexible lengthening and shortening of a note length to give expressiveness to the music, without altering the overall flow.
Rubato was essential when Japanese folk music originated because most of the songs were for voice only, without any instrumental accompaniment 6 . For this rubato effect, some Japanese folk songs did not have an identifiable beat. Thus, it was necessary for songs like Itsuki no
Komoriuta to be written in mixed meter when using western musical notation.
There are still some Japanese folk songs that do include accented beats, like the
Soran-bushi . However, the accents aren’t of a poetic meter; though much of the accents can be felt on the first beat of each measure, there are some measures
6 Fumio, Koizumi; Nihon no Oto; p

that have accents on both beats like measure 7 (when there are cries), and when the second beat is accented, like measure 17.
Measure 7 of Soran-bushi
Measure 17 of Soran-bushi
Though Japanese folk songs do not use similar meters and accents as English folk songs, they still share the rhythm of adjacent long and short notes.
 MELODIC CONTOUR
The melodic movement of English and
Japanese folk songs is similar in the ascending and descending of notes. In each phrase, there is a smooth curve in the note progressions, with the notes rising gradually in the beginning and falling after its peak.
Let’s look at the melody in Itsuki no
Komoriuta . The notes gradually climb to an E5 in the 2nd measure, returning in the 3 rd
and rising further to the F5 in the following measure. The notes exceed to the G5 in the beginning of the 2 nd
phrase
(measure 6), but then gradually descends the scale. The song ends with a small rise to an A4. As you can tell, the song gradually rises in the first half, but descends in the latter.
Itsuki no Komoriuta is not the only
Japanese folk song that does this.
Soran-bushi also has a set of rising and falling notes. Though the note progressions seem more gradual than
Itsuki no Komoriuta , this may be due to the number of measures present. In
Soran-bushi , there are several upward movements that are sustained for longer durations at higher notes in the second phrase, such as through measures 8 to 11.
The downward flow of notes begins in the final phrase at measure 19, once again ending with a small rise to F4.
For English folk songs, this melodic contour is clearly apparent in
Greensleeves.
The first and second

four-bar phrases of Greensleeves show the melody experiencing a rise and fall.
The second phrase (measures 5 to 8) ends on the tonic note, D4, which is a higher note than the landing note of the first phrase, which is A3. This shows how the notes are progressing upward through each phrase.
Even Scarborough Fair demonstrates an evident upward movement of the melodic line through its four-bar phrases. In both of the first two phrases, the starting note elevates in a perfect interval: D4 to
A4 (perfect fifth) in the first phrase, A4 to
D5 (perfect fourth) in the second phrase.
You can see that the second phrase begins on A4, a higher note than the first phrase’s first note, which is a D4. This shows that the notes are definitely moving up as the melody proceeds.
The third phrases in both Greensleeves and Scarborough Fair are strikingly similar; they begin on the highest note of the song, and descend from there. So, the third phrase marks the beginning of the downward movement of the melodies.
And, surprisingly, they end on the tonic note after a final slight rise in the melody, just like the Japanese folk songs.
Third phrase of Greensleeves:
Third phrase of Scarborough Fair:

MODAL STRUCTURE
Perhaps the most unique trait that both
English folk music and Japanese folk music share is their use of a specific modal structure.
Often, if you listen to an English or
Japanese folk song, you’ll find that they are in this note progression commonly seen in western minor scales: whole half whole whole half whole whole. Yet, you may realize that the notes do not fit into the major or minor scales we often use today. In fact, they use a traditional mode.
Scarborough Fair and Greensleeves use the same mode. If you list all the notes being used, you’ll find that they form a seven tone scale,in this note progression: whole half whole whole whole half whole.
Both songs begin with a D, so the tonic note of the seven tone scale is a D.
This is the Dorian mode , one of the seven church modes used in the Medieval period.
How about Japanese folk songs? Take a look at Itsuki no Komoriuta and
Soran-bushi : they both consist of these five notes:
Unlike the English medieval modes,
Japanese folk songs use pentatonic scales.
In Japanese, the notes in a scale are labeled with the following names.
Interestingly enough, you may notice that this minor scale used in traditional
Japanese music is identical to the medieval Aeolian mode. This pentatonic scale is called “yo-na-nuki minor scale”, because it is missing the
“yo” and “na” notes from this minor scale, forming the pentatonic scale that is commonly found in folk songs. As you can see, though they use different types of scales, both musical cultures are linked by the use of a modal scale.

FOLK SONGS: EAST MEETS WEST
Strophic form, rhythmic pattern, melodic contour, modal structure – Such characteristics can be easily missed, since our ears tend to focus more on instrumentation and language. Yet, even seemingly distinct cultures like English and Japanese share many of these musical traits, which can be revealed with careful observation.
Hence, the wonder of music! This is one of the many comparisons of musical cultures that we will discuss in this series.
Perhaps, with detailed attention, you may reveal even more musical links between various cultures, regardless of how different they sound. Remember: no matter what culture, there can always be a musical link.