Ogawa Mimei’s Songs for Children (DOYO)

Abstract

Ogawa Mimei (1882-1961) was an author of children's literature who created a lot of literary works. During a hard time of war, he lost 2 of his children when they were very little. He was driven to write the stories that “absolutely for children”. His stories are beautiful, warm-hearted and concealed the deep meanings. They are important to the Children Literature field till present time. Some of his works claimed to Anti-war sentiment, but were written with poetic composition. Not only short story and novel, He also wrote many songs for children, called “DOYO”.

This paper is the study of Ogawa Mimei’s 21 songs for children appeared in “Teihon Ogawa Mimei Douwa Zenshuu 3, 1977”. It was found that his writing were created with beautiful words, but full of sorrow. They represented the ideas of loving the family, thinking of a hometown, and the poverty and sadness of people. He use the colors in his songs to appeal the meaning of living.  These ideas appeared because the writer was affected by the changing society in Taisho-Showa period.