Shirley in Japan



This is a very rare 'novelty' recording; most of people even never heard about this recording before. Shirley Temple, the all-time great child actress, sings two famous Japanese nursery rhymes, "Yuyake Koyake (夕焼け小焼け)", and "Kutsu ga naru (靴が鳴る)", in Japanese. Recorded on March 11th, 1937, at Japan Polydor Studio at Tokyo, Japan. Temple was briefly visiting Japan for promoting her film "Dimples". Despite the fact she learned the lyrics phonetically, there are basically no errors in pronunciation; it is pretty astonishing for a 8 year-old girl. This record had very few copies made.  It was only released in Japan, and after WWII broke out, the Japanese government prohibited listening to records made by any 'American enemies', so it is even rare in Japan.