Mio Matsuda is a “traveling singer” who has spent five years on a project reviving precious Japanese folk songs on the verge of obscurity. By visiting the landscapes that nurtured the songs, she aims to convey the regional lifestyles and sentiments of old-day Japan in her performances. A key resource for her is a folk art research center in Akita with archived recordings of 70,000 folk songs. In the program she introduces several such songs including “Yamago-uta”, sung by hunters in Akita in reverence of the mountains, and “Tokohai-bushi”, sung by seamen navigating the Seto Inland Sea. Her quest also takes her to Palau, where residents still sing a Japanese song titled “Lemongrass”. Written in Micronesia during the time of Japanese administration, the song expresses a sad romance between a Japanese man and a Micronesian woman, and as such it is a valuable testament to the sentiments of that time.