A shoal of medaka — the Japanese rice fish — darting through a shallow stream, with water weed, river stones and a piece of driftwood to fill in around them. Barely three centimetres long, this is the freshwater fish every Japanese child knows from the nursery song “Medaka no Gakko” (“The Medaka School”), and selectively bred, brightly colored strains have made keeping them popular all over again.
🗣 Conversation Starters — for care activities and family time
Did you ever catch medaka when you were a child?
Do you still remember the song “Medaka no Gakko”? Shall we sing it together?
Do you have memories of playing by a stream or out in the rice fields?
Where is the song “Medaka no Gakko” set?
The lyricist Shigeru Chaki is said to have written it after watching a shoal of medaka in the Ogikubo irrigation channel in Odawara, Kanagawa. The song was introduced on an NHK radio programme in 1951, and a stone monument to it stands in Odawara today.
Is the medaka really an endangered species?
The two wild forms, the southern and northern medaka, are listed as Vulnerable on the Japanese Ministry of the Environment’s Red List. Rebuilt paddy fields, concrete-lined irrigation channels and agricultural chemicals have all reduced the shallow, slow-moving water they need. Ornamental strains, meanwhile, are more popular than ever, and an unusual one can change hands for a startling sum.
Where does the name medaka come from?
It is usually explained as me ga takai — “eyes set high” — because the eyes sit close to the top of the head. The fish feeds just under the surface, so eyes placed high up make it easier to watch the light, and the food, coming down from above.
