Music: Japan's Big Apple

From Yokohama to Nagasaki, Japanese last week hummed, whistled and sang Ringo No Uta (The Song of the Apple). It was Japan's first big sentimental song hit since 1941, when Japanese music went martial. Tokyo's radio station JOAK got 100 requests a day for it. It had sold 200,000 phonograph records and 50,000 copies of sheet music, and would have sold more if its publishers had had the materials. Even G.I.s hummed it. Apple's lyrics, translated:

I bring close my lips And the blue sky quietly looks on. Though the apple says nothing, I know well how she feels. She...

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