King Kamehameha in song
Posted: August 6, 2010 | Author: Doug | Filed under: Family, Japanese, Language | 4 Comments »On the lighter side of things, this video is maybe something only a parent can appreciate, but I really enjoyed watching this with my wife recently. This is of a Japanese children’s song about King Kamehameha I of Hawaii, and my daughter knows this song too because she goes to a Japanese pre-school here in Seattle (she’s half-Japanese).
This particular video is cute, because the little girl gets some of the lyrics wrong. The song is supposed to say 南のお島の大王は (minami no oshima no daiō wa) meaning “Great King of the Southern Island(s)”, but instead the little girl says raion (ライオン), not daiō (大王). The word “raion” is the Japanese pronunciation of English “lion”, hence the lion animation. So it sounds like she’s singing “Great Lion of the Southern Island(s)”.
My little girl is learning this song right now too, because it’s summer and her preschool has a Hawaii-theme right now. It comes with a little hula-style dance, and they make lei necklaces too.
Lots of fun. 
Hello, this blog is about my life as a father, Buddhist and Japanophile. Any useful information I can pass along will hopefully make the 
I’m curious how much of what she is saying in the video? I basically could only pick out the Kamehameha bits, even with the subtitles. Not that understanding little kids speaking English is much easier. I mostly know Kamehahmeha from the Dragonball anime series, but was also aware of King Kamehameha.
Hi Kendall,
All the text of the song is in the subtitles above, so it should be readable if you can read Hiragana (don’t’ be afraid to pause the video…I’ve done it before
), and grammar and words can be looked up on excellent online dictionaries like jisho.org. For what it’s worth, that children’s song is very cute and the little girl does a good job overall, despite one small but cute mistake. My little one knows it too.
Good luck!
Looks like I should have better proof-read what I wrote. I was trying to ask you how much of the video could you make out aurally, if you could hear her pronunciations? I know you’ve mentioned in the past that you still need practice interpreting spoken Japanese, so I was curious how much harder this was.
Ha ha ha, sorry I misread your comment too. I’d say I picked up maybe half at most, not as much as I would’ve liked. :p