Garu JP reimagines classical Japanese poetry — the Man'yōshū, the Tale of the Heike, the Iroha song — as contemporary music. Words that have lived a thousand years, reborn in today's sound.
“Of Ancient Nara” (Inishie no)Hyakunin Isshu No. 61 — Ise no TaifuSong page →
A thousand years ago, people cried through the same nights we do — longing in love, wounded by partings, anxious about tomorrow, and still rising to meet the morning. The words left in these old poems are the honest, unguarded hearts of people who lived a thousand years ago.
Those feelings were handed down from song to song, from heart to heart, until they became Japanese culture itself — the very sensibility we carry today. Without knowing it, we have all received a baton carrying a thousand years of human feeling.
The Ogura Hyakunin Isshu is Japan's most beloved poetry anthology: one hundred poems by one hundred poets, spanning some six centuries, compiled around 1235 by the poet Fujiwara no Teika. Emperors and priests, court ladies and wandering monks — each left exactly one poem. Our project is to set all one hundred of them to music, one by one, as J-POP songs.
One hundred poems, one hundred poets. Original text, romaji, English translation, and the story behind every song.
The Man'yōshū, the Tale of the Heike, the Iroha poem, Bashō's haiku — the classics beyond the Hyakunin Isshu.
Click a thumbnail to play it right here.
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▶New songs premiere on YouTube, then roll out to streaming services.
YouTube X (Twitter) TikTok Instagram ▶ Full playlist on YouTube