Sakura Sakura

"Sakura Sakura" (さくら さくら^?, "Cherry blossoms, cherry blossoms"), also known as "Sakura", is a traditional Japanese folk song depicting spring, the season of cherry blossoms. Contrary to popular belief, the song did not originate in ancient times; it was a popular, urban melody of the Edo period and was adopted as a piece for beginning koto students in the Tokyo Academy of Music Collection of Japanese Koto Music issued in 1888 (in English) by the Department of Education. The song has been popular since the Meiji period, and the lyrics in their present form were attached then. It is often sung in international settings as a song representative of Japan, and many electronic crosswalks in Japan play the melody as "guidance music".

In 2007, it was selected for Nihon no Uta Hyakusen, a collection of songs and nursery rhymes widely beloved in Japan.

In early the 2010s, Japanese singer Kiyoshi Hikawa performed the second of the two verses of "Sakura Sakura" - the first and only Enka singer to do so.

The "Sakura Sakura" melody uses a pentatonic scale known as the Japanese mode. This could also be construed as Phrygian Dominant Minor Mode in Western musical theory, using scale degrees 3, 4, 6, 7, 1, 3 (E, F, A, B, C, E or Me, Fa, La, Ti, Do, Me in solfège).

The original lyrics are listed as the second verse. In 1941, the Japanese Ministry of Education published an additional verse in Uta no hon (うたのほん 教師用 下), listing it first before the original verse.

桜　桜
野山も里も
見渡す限り
霞か雲か
朝日に匂う
桜　桜
花ざかり

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