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MLA: Parshall, Ardis E. ""O, My Father": Japanese." Keepapitchin.org, 12 May 2016, https://keepapitchinin.org/2016/05/12/o-my-father-japanese/.

APA: Parshall, A. (2016, May 12). "O, My Father": Japanese. Keepapitchinin.org. https://keepapitchinin.org/2016/05/12/o-my-father-japanese/

HTML: <a target="_new" href="https://keepapitchinin.org/2016/05/12/o-my-father-japanese/">"O, My Father": Japanese</a>

13 thoughts on ““O, My Father”: Japanese”

  2. Where did you read it, loyd? I’m not familiar with any story, just thought I’d inaugurate a short series of images of this hymn in various language hymnbooks with this one. Would love to know more.

  3. Any idea where this melody came from? It says it was composed by Horace S. Ensign. Do you know anything about this composer?

  4. I just did a Google search on “matsu jitsu seito sanbika” (latter day saint hymnal) and turned up Reid Neilson’s dissertation, which has a brief discussion of the early missionaries’ efforts at translating the hymns, but nothing specific on “O My Father.”

  5. It looks like Horace Ensign was one of the first missionaries in Japan. I wonder if this tune was used anywhere outside of the Japanese hymnal.

  6. OK, I just found the answers to my questions. This original hymnal was complied by Alma O. Taylor and Horace Ensign, who also wrote all of the original melodies for the hymns. He did this to accommodate the syllables of the Japanese translations since Japanese language generally requires more syllables than English. For the next edition it was decided to return to the familiar melodies and retranslate the Japanese to match the meter.

  7. Good research, Mark — thanks for collecting all those bits and reporting back here.

  9. “In the prewar period, the Mormon Church published two hymnbooks. The first one, Batsujitsu Seito Sanbika (English title: Psalmody of the Japan Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), was compiled by Frederick A. Caine and Horace S. Ensign and was published in June 1905. A smaller booklet by the same title but containing the words only was published a month later, in July. The hymnbook includes sixty-six songs taken from various English LDS hymnbooks, including the L.D.S. Hymnbook, the Sunday School Song Book, and the Children’s Friend. The verses were translated from late 1903 to early 1905 in several installments, and were used in church services as they were made available in Japanese and the accompanying melodies were composed by Ensign, an accomplished musician who had been a soloist and assistant conductor (under Evan Stephens) with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. As the English verses were faithfully translated, a new melody needed to be composed for each song. Mr. Y. Iwano, a friend of the mission, arranged most of the songs into Japanese verse. Kosaburo (or Suimei) Kawai (1874–1965), a noted poet, arranged ten hymns, while Takeki Owada (1857–1910), another noted poet and Japanese literature scholar, arranged three. Hajime Nakazawa, the first Mormon convert in Japan, arranged one. “

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