The is a Japanese song, which was highly popular in early 20th century Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

. It was composed in the major pentatonic scale

Pentatonic scale

A pentatonic scale is a musical scale with five notes per octave in contrast to a heptatonic scale such as the major scale and minor scale...

 by Shinpei Nakayama

Shinpei Nakayama

was a Japanese songwriter, famous for his many children's songs and popular songs that have become deeply embedded in Japanese popular culture....

. It was sung by Matsui Sumako in a dramatization of Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy was a Russian writer who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Later in life, he also wrote plays and essays. His two most famous works, the novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina, are acknowledged as two of the greatest novels of all time and a pinnacle of realist...

's Resurrection

Resurrection (novel)

Resurrection , first published in 1899, was the last novel written by Leo Tolstoy. The book is the last of his major long fiction works published in his lifetime . Tolstoy intended the novel as an exposition of injustice of man-made laws and the hypocrisy of institutionalized church...

, put on in 1914 in Tokyo

Tokyo

, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...

. The song was a huge hit, selling a large number of records and was taken on by street corner musicians throughout the Japanese empire. It is considered by some music historians as the first example of modern Japanese popular music.