One of the world's oldest national anthems, Kimigayo (The Emperor's Reign), was adopted as the National Anthem of Japan in 1888.
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.
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WilliamEap2001 6 months ago