Takeda Lullaby

"Takeda Lullaby" is a popular Japanese cradle song. It originated in Takeda, Fushimi, Kyoto.

Background

The song has long been sung by the people in the burakumin areas of Kyoto and Osaka in a slightly different form. During the 1960s, it was picked up as a theme song by the Buraku Liberation League, particularly its branch at Takeda.
Burakumin were an outcast community at the bottom of the Japanese social order that had historically been the victims of severe discrimination and ostracism. These communities were often made up of those with occupations considered impure or tainted by death. Professions such as these had severe social stigmas of kegare, or "defilement", attached to them. A burakumin neighborhood within metropolitan Tokyo was the last to be served by streetcar and is the site of butcher and leather shops to this day.
In this lullaby, a young girl comforts herself by singing about her miserable situation. One day, she is forcibly sent away to work for a rich family at a village across the mountain. Every day as she works with a baby on her back, she is reminded of her family, looking at the silhouette of the mountains in the direction of her homeland.

Recordings

In 1969, the folk singing group made this song popular, and their single, recorded in 1971, became a bestseller. The song has also an additional history in that NHK and other major Japanese broadcasting networks refrained from playing it because it is related to burakumin activities, but this ban was stopped during the 1990s.
The song was popularised in Taiwan through a 1975 adaptation sung by Judy Ongg, with Chinese lyrics written by her father, Ongg Ping-tang. Compared to the original, the Taiwanese version had nothing to do with discrimination but was titled "qidao" and focused on hope. This version is often taught in primary schools.
In 2001, singer Eri Sugai included a version of the song on her album Mai.
In 2017, the folk supergroup Bendith included a Welsh-language version on their self-titled EP.