A school project about Shinano no Kuni

When I was a high school student, I belonged to a broadcasting committee. We participated in the broadcasting competitions outside of the school.

There were two competitions for high school students every year and the bigger one was NHK broadcasting competition. If we win at local convention, we can go to the national convention.

When I was the third year, my team made a radio program and won in Nagano’s convention. The title was “The Greatest Hits of Nagano”. We dealt with “Shinano no kuni” that was the song of Nagano prefecture. The song was born one hundred years ago at that time. It was popular in Nagano and elementary and junior high school students sang a lot in the schools. I believed that the other prefectures had also their own prefecture songs, but we found that there were few prefectures that had their own songs or the songs were known and sung by people.

 Nagano prefectural symbol  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

We interviewed the experts to research the reason. There were two main reasons. The one was the melody was rhythmical and approachable. The other one was that the people weren't forced to sing, but sang to solve the conflict between north and south of Nagano old days.

For your information, the program was No. 1 in the national convention in 2000!!

posted for Chinasa