The Jewish folk song everyone in Japan knows

September 6, 2021 3:20 PM

Noah Oskow discusses the complicated international history of the folk song Mayim Mayim. (SL Youtube)
posted by eotvos (8 comments total)

Ha! I grew up with this song in California…my aunt and uncle still love to go Israeli folk dancing. Had no idea about this other connection across the water, how neat.
posted by iamkimiam at 4:00 PM on September 6, 2021

You wanna know how fascinated I was by this?

When I got to the end of the video my immediate thought was "that was awesome, lemme go post this over on Metafil-- oh, hang on." I got so caught up in this I'd temporarily forgotten I was watching this link ON the blue.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:36 PM on September 6, 2021 [8 favorites]

Well that’s a nice thing for the new year.
posted by bq at 8:00 PM on September 6, 2021 [2 favorites]

A song created to unite one nation served to unite another, and not by accident at all. Beautiful.
posted by hat_eater at 6:18 AM on September 7, 2021

There was a while when a friend of mine got really into watching youtube videos of Japanese productions of Fiddler on the Roof, which apparently really resonates.
posted by Ragged Richard at 8:46 AM on September 7, 2021 [2 favorites]

This is really wonderful. Thanks for sharing it on rosh hashana.
posted by BlahLaLa at 12:16 PM on September 7, 2021

There was a while when a friend of mine got really into watching youtube videos of Japanese productions of Fiddler on the Roof, which apparently really resonates.

I was convinced that Takeshi Kaga (Iron Chef's Chairman Kaga) had famously played Tevye in Japan, but my memory did not serve me right. He was both Jean Valjean and Javert in various productions of Les Misérables, however.
posted by Ranucci at 5:02 PM on September 7, 2021 [1 favorite]

That was fascinating! I kept thinking it was going to go to a different place (this was actually an older folk song that both Jews and Japanese people in the 40's took for their own / this was a similar song that spontaneously arose and happens to sound the same), but no... it's really the same song AND dance. I love it! Especially because in my community we almost never hear it anymore - it feels very 1970s-1980's at this point. Hava Nagila lingers, but Mayim mayim mostly gets played for children, and even then pretty rarely. But maybe that's just where I live.
posted by Mchelly at 11:46 AM on September 10, 2021 [1 favorite]