Hotaru no Hikari

by Kohei Watanabe
(Tokyo)

You know the song "Hotaru no Hikari," don't you?

It is sung commonly in Japanese graduation ceremonies. It's a very famous song.

But do you know that this song is a Scottish folk song originally?

The song is called "Auld Lang Syne" in Scotland. It means "old long since" in English. The melody's composer is unknown, and the lyrics were written by Robert Burns, the most famous Scottish poet.

In Japan, Chikai Inagaki wrote the Japanese lyrics with the melody named "Hotaru no Hikari" in the Meiji era. It was printed in the first Japanese textbook of music for elementary school students.