Mi-ya Sa-ma
Leslie Ayre identifies the song "Mi-Ya Sa-ma" and translates its words like this:
"Mi-ya Sa-ma," as Sullivan has composed it, is "the first verse of a marching song -- the equivalent of, say, 'Tipperary' -- sung by Japanese royalist troops in about 1870 during a revolt led by General Saige against the Mikado. To quell the rising, the Emperor dispatched a force under the command of Prince Arisugawa, to whom he gave as a mascot a small pennant which he wore suspended from his horse's bridle. The verse [in the opera] means: 'O! Prince, what is that fluttering in front of your horse?' The second verse of the [original] song, not used in the opera, goes: ... 'Don't you see -- this is the Royal banner -- entrusted to me that I may defeat the enemies of the Crown. Don't you see?'" (Ayre 243-244).
Martyn Green cites Leslie Bailey as saying that Sullivan got the words and music to this Japanese military song from a Mr. Doisy, "a well-known authority on things Japanese" (Green 433 n. 75). Green offers this translation:
Oh, my Prince, oh, my Prince,
What is that fluttering in the wind
Before your imperial charger?
Know ye not it is the imperial banner
Of silken brocade,
The signal for chastisement of the rebels?
To Act I or Act II of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado.
To the homepage of this Mikado website.
Suggestions, contributions, criticisms, questions? Email Sharon Cogdill.
This URL: http://web.stcloudstate.edu/scogdill/mikado/miyasama.html.
Last update: 16 May 1998.