Kimi-Ga-Yo composed by a Briton????

[Taro Toporific]

Yikes! This is NOT the history taught in Japanese music schools such as NHK Music College who claim the origin of the music to 1400s.
Photo credit, MulboyneBriton who gave Japan its anthem
Telegraph.co.uk JULY 30, 2005
....Kimi Ga Yo (His Majesty's Reign)...Almost completely forgotten, however, is that the origins of this contentious piece of music can be traced back to John William Fenton, bandmaster of Britain's 10th Foot Regt, 1st Bn.... arrived in Japan in 1868, the year Japanese modernisers overthrew the medieval shogunate and replaced it with a constitutional monarchy...
Fenton also convinced the Japanese that to become a modern nation state they needed a national anthem. He talked passionately to his pupils about the importance of God Save the Queen in British life and urged them to find a suitable poem in Japanese, which he would set to music.
Captain Iwao Oyama chose a 10th-century poem that prayed for the longevity of the "Lord", usually assumed to be the emperor.
The excited Japanese pressured Fenton to complete the score in less than three weeks and the band had just days to rehearse before its debut performance in front of the emperor in Tokyo in 1870.
Ten years later Japan replaced Fenton's composition with one by a Japanese composer. This version, still used today, was commissioned by one of Fenton's pupils and retains the same words.
Fenton's regiment left Japan in 1871 but he stayed for a further six years as a bandmaster with the newly formed Japanese navy and then the band of the imperial court.
His wife, Annie Maria, died in 1871 aged 40. Her grave is in Yokohama Foreigners' Cemetery. Fenton's fate is unknown.

[Socratesabroad]

[kurohinge1]

A bit more of the tale:

British soldier who wrote Japanese national anthem honoured

Relatives of the British soldier who gave Japan its national anthem have attended a ceremony in his honour at the shrine in Yokohama where he first instructed musicians in 1868 . . . more

[Behan]

You mean it wasn't passed down from Amaterasu?

[Greji]

You mean it wasn't passed down from Amaterasu?

You can't add that as a supposition unless you know which of the four seasons it was uniquely handed down....

[Catoneinutica]

Like enka, kimigayo is a real musical "haafu": the melody is comprised of the typical Asian pentatonic scale, but the accompaniment is pure 19th-century Western schlock. It sounds like an extract from "The Mikado" that has been given horse tranquilizers and turned into some weird "oriental" church hymn.

[TFG]

Interesting, I thought it was composed by a German.