Art got the following message forwarded to him by a high school classmate. I was pretty astonished to hear Shirley Temple singing in Japanese when she was 9 years old. I had my mother listen to it and she was delighted. I remember hearing my mother sing these songs to me many times when I was a child.
This is a very rare 'novelty' recording; most people have never heard of this recording before. Shirley Temple, the all-time great child actress, sings two famous Japanese nursery rhymes, "Yuyake Koyake (夕焼け小焼け)", and "Kutsu ga naru (靴が鳴る)", in Japanese. Recorded on March 11th, 1937, at Japan Polydor Studio at Tokyo, Japan. Temple was briefly visiting Japan for promoting her film "Dimples". Despite the fact she learned the lyrics phonetically, there's basically no errors on pronunciations; and it is pretty astonishing for a 9 year-old girl.
I found this translation for Yuyake Koyake on the web:
This is a very rare 'novelty' recording; most people have never heard of this recording before. Shirley Temple, the all-time great child actress, sings two famous Japanese nursery rhymes, "Yuyake Koyake (夕焼け小焼け)", and "Kutsu ga naru (靴が鳴る)", in Japanese. Recorded on March 11th, 1937, at Japan Polydor Studio at Tokyo, Japan. Temple was briefly visiting Japan for promoting her film "Dimples". Despite the fact she learned the lyrics phonetically, there's basically no errors on pronunciations; and it is pretty astonishing for a 9 year-old girl.
I found this translation for Yuyake Koyake on the web:
The day ends with a fiery sunset
The mountain temple's bell rings
Let everyone go home, hand in hand
The crows go home together too.
After the children returned home
Appeared the big, round moon.
While the baby birds dream,
In the sky the golden stars twinkle.
There are also a bunch of translations to Kutsu ga naru at this site.