Midnight Diner Theme Song

I’ve recently been enjoying Midnight Diner (on Netflix). It’s so good! It makes me laugh, tear up, and hungry all in 24 minutes.

I also love listening to the tonality of the Japanese voice acting. I suppose we have the same thing in English, but the vocal affective stereotypes of men, women, and elderly in Japanese culture seems more exaggerated and entertaining to me than in English.

The theme song is hauntingly beautiful too. The late Japanese composer, Tsunekichi Suzuki, borrowed an old Irish song Cailin Deas Cruidte na mBo (Pretty Girl Milking a Cow) but adds in some open string notes which give it a melancholy pentatonic flavor. I was surprised to learn that Judy Garland did renditions of it in 1940 and later even learned some Irish Gaelic verses.

This guy does a great cover of it. I’ve been learning it on guitar, and have a fantasy of also singing along in Japanese.

I also love this guy’s rendition of the Celtic original: