do japanese songs not rhyme?

Question

it seems, with my very limited knowledge of the subject, that japanese songs - it's mostly pop songs/anime themes i've heard - do not rhyme, as american and british songs tend to. am i missing something, or is this just a different evolution? how long has this been going on (if it's been going on, at all)?

Answer 1

There is a completely different poetical system in Japan- the rhymes, so important in the "western" poetry & literature, are not mandatory in Japanese. However, the count & rhythm of the strophes is important. Check out "haiku" (the rhythm pattern 5-7-5)- it is well explained on the web (type it in Google).

Answer 2

What songs have you been listening to?
It is true as others have stated, that their traditional poetry doesn't follow the rhyme and reason of the West, and perhaps some of the Enka songs don't exactly rhyme either, but their modern pop songs certainly do! They even slip in an odd (and often mismatching) English phrase into the verse just to get that rhyme ....
Their problem is a lack of variety in the end syllables; Japanese is a vowel-consonant language which makes it hard for them to accept consonant endings (thus "Goodnight" becomes "Gudonighto" and "Skirt" becomes "Sukerto")
With all those "O" "Ai" and "U" word endings, rhyming would get a bit boring.
They manage it in various ways, because they are surprisingly adaptable. Even if the phrase makes no sense in the end.
They place great value on what looks balanced and on what sounds balanced, even if it comes out as an embarrassment.

Answer 3

There is no rhyme as such in Japanese. There are a limited number of sounds that a word can end in as Japanese syllables end in a, i, u, e, o or n. Each of these count as a full measure so that a combination of vowels (dipthongs, triphthongs) such as ai or au, etc. count as two measures. Otherwise a vowel combines with a consonant to form a syllable: ka ki ku ke ko and so on.
So rhyming would be boring in Japanese. They relie on rhythms natural to their speech in stings of syllables of alternating lengths of five-seven-five (a haiku); five-seven-five-seven-seven (tanka )...
Everyone knows the old pond haiku:
furu ikeya/ kawazu tobikomu/ mizu no oto. And, here is another:
samazama no / omoidasu mono/ sakura kana. "Many things are brought to mind by cherry blossoms."
My friend in Japan sent me a video of the original artist, Sayuri Ishikawa, for this song about a young woman leaving a relationship:
sayounara anata/ watashi kaerimasu./ kaze no oto ha mune wo utsuru naki to bakari ni /a a a a /tsugaru kaikyou/ fuyugei shiki. I think I have these lyrics right. Japanese always seem to go north when they are hurt. She is moving that way and must cross the straights of Tsugaru by boat along with many tourists there to see the winter setting (fuyugei shiki). A ghost of her former self she turns away from them and feels only the crying sound of the wind in her breast. She sees nothing but seems to be viewing the beauty of nature along with eveyone else.
This is a popular song type or style called an enka. I will bet that many of these songs fall close to the five-seven-five pattern. I can see where it comes close in this song and others I have scaned in my head. But, they don't have any rhyme.
Haiku has a seasonal association; it must have one! That being the rule that defines it. It is trying to acheive a feeling like a yearning desire to be in the seasonal scene it creates to be as one with the poet for a fleeting moment in time and a very definite time: a spring or a winter; a summer or a fall. Haiku have four seasons. But they have no rhyme.

Answer 4

Japenese poetry doesn't rhyme, but it does have rules on the beat such as haiku. Since songs are basically poems set to song, I imagine that's how the Japanese do their lyrics.

Answer 5

they do no longer rhyme in jap by way of fact of how that's prepare. that's prepare in a distinctive way once you hear it here in English. it incredibly is the reason it would not rhyme in jap.

Answer 6

rhyming is thought to be too spineless to be real yakuza. this has been going on since the emergence of the yakuza in the late Edo period.

Answer 7

Good question.