Garu JP breathes new life into classical Japanese poetry as J-POP — singing the hearts sealed into waka a thousand years ago, once more, in today's words and today's sound.
Garu JP is a music project that reimagines classical Japanese poetry — the Hyakunin Isshu, the Man'yōshū, the Tale of the Heike — as contemporary J-POP. For each poem we study the air of the age it was born in and the breath of the poet who wrote it, then recompose it in the genre where it comes most alive: ballad, funk, swing, bossa nova, electronica.
Every song comes with the story behind the original poem — its historical background, the poet's heart, and how we carried it into modern lyrics. The words are new, the sound is new; the feelings are a thousand years old.
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.
New songs premiere on YouTube, then roll out to streaming services.
YouTube X (Twitter) TikTok Instagram ▶ Full playlist on YouTube