My Penis
This song is sung in a sort of recitative without much of a tune. The samisen player strums on her instrument at the beginning of each verse and calls out the question “A kora, nan jaro kai kora?” The dancer answers with a verse as he steps lightly about the room stroking or waving a stick about a foot long and smoothed off at the end, which is placed against his body so as to represent a phallus. Thus the song and dance were performed at a farewell banquet in honor of the author in Hirayama, a mountain hamlet of Suye Mura. In Hirayama speech and act are freer than in hamlets of the plains.
In form this song is an example of a counting pattern whereby each succeeding stanza commences with a number in consecutive series. The second line of each stanza except 59a also begins with the same syllable as the number of the stanza. (Cf. some of the children’s songs, Nos. 88, 89.) The arrangement of syllables in a stanza is mostly 5-7-7-7.
| 59a | Now then what is this? | |
| 59b | Dancer: Kora futatsu |
Now two |
| 59c | Dancer: A mitsu |
Now three |
| 59d | Dancer: Yotsu |
Four |
