Translation: Evening Love (Chu Kosaka)

Evening Love (Kosaka/Koh), the most classically city-pop song on Horo, has music by Chu himself (which, in the Horo / Morning era, was rare) and lyrics by Eika Koh, to whom Kosaka was married. 

It's a wonderful love song. In its "this is all really a little too much" spirit, Evening Love reminds me of Hosono's Choo Choo! and the Clattering Train. But where Hosono's narrator was ready to throw in the towel, Koh's is indomitable. The couple in this song can only spend one day a week together: it's not a lot, but it's something, and these two lovers are going to make sure it counts.

Mind that the title is a pun. ゆうがた (yuugata) means "evening" but considering how it's pronounced and the word that appears next, the song's title sounds a lot like "you gotta love." — I figured that much out on my own, and found my surmise confirmed in the Chu's Café episode about this song, and therefore felt all clever and perceptive. But Kosaka went on to reveal that the album title is a pun too! — ほうろう, romanized on the front cover as Horo, punning on the phrase "hold on." I had no idea. 

There's a great episode of Daisy Holiday with Eika. Chu had passed away a year earlier. Hosono had been charged with preparing the tracklist for the two-disc Ultimate Best Chu Kosaka retrospective. Eika, who married Kosaka in the early '70s and was with him until his death, wondered whether it hadn't been too painful a task, but Haruomi assures her that, bittersweet though the task may have been, he had a lot of fun ("it was so hard to pick only two CDs' worth of songs!"). The two reminisce about the friend and companion they had lost. Eika calls Hosono "Omi-chan."

Speaking of the passage of time, the line "but Sundays are all yours" took on an unexpected meaning for Kosaka after his conversion to Christianity later that decade. Please go watch the Chu's Café episode just so you can enjoy Kosaka's smile as he reflects on how that worked out.

:::

On Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays

I work at the movie theater

all evening long,

all evening long.

Otherwise I'm

at the drink stand, selling

Coca-Cola,

Coca-Cola.

Daytime? Nope.

Nighttime? Nope.

But Sundays are all yours.

(Thursday, Friday, Saturday.)

(Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.)

(Thursday, Friday, Saturday.)

(Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.)

On Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays,

it rains.

Crowds of people.

Crowds of people.

Weekly magazines

and a crowded train:

I'm a day laborer.
I'm a day laborer.

Daytime? Nope.

Nighttime? Nope.

But Sundays are all yours.

(Thursday, Friday, Saturday.)

(Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.)

(Thursday, Friday, Saturday.)

(Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.)

I don't have any steady work.

Just part-time jobs.

Just part-time jobs.

I never even have

two days off in a row.

Crowds of people.

Crowds of people.

Daytime? Nope.

Nighttime? Nope.

But Sundays are all yours.

(Thursday, Friday, Saturday.)

(Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.)

(Thursday, Friday, Saturday.)

(Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.)

(Thursday, Friday, Saturday.)

(Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.)

(Thursday, Friday, Saturday.)

(Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.)

(Thursday, Friday, Saturday.)

(Back to: List of Translations)

Translation: The Thread that Pulls the Well Bucket Up (Chu Kosaka)

The Thread that Pulls the Well Bucket Up is an Akiko Yano song that the Horo liner notes credit to Akiko Suzuki, because Akiko (who was essentially a full-time member of Tin Pan Alley by that point, stepping in for the marvelous Masataka Matsutoya, who had diverged away from Hosono's Caramel Mama operations so that he could focus better on musical collaborations with his wife-to-be, then still known as Yumi Arai — which is not to suggest that the Caramel Mama guys left Masataka + Yumi behind! Hosono visited various Yumi albums in various capacities, or sent Hideki Matsutake in his stead; and Shigeru Suzuki and Tatsuo Hayashi remained mainstays of the personnel on Yumi albums for years) hadn't yet married Makoto Yano (a genius arranger and frequent Takashi Matsumoto collaborator in the years just after Happy End).

The title turns on a pun: the 糸 in つるべ糸 ("ito," meaning thread) is a mere shift of a consonant away from 井戸, ("ido," meaning water well). In the Chu's Café episode about this song, Kosaka lingers appreciatively over Yano's image, recalling a job he once had, hauling water from a well. "You need a good solid rope to pull the bucket out," he notes. "A mere thread would, of course, be too thin!"

Akiko's own version of the song closes her odds-and-sods second album, Iroha ni Kompeito (perhaps better known as the dolphin album), under a different title: The Cold Wind from the Mountains (The East Wind). 

Incidentally, also appearing on that Yano album is her cover of Horo's title track Wandering, as well as Hosono's Sharing an Umbrella from Happy End's third album (from which Hosono and Kosaka also drew for Horo, revisiting Suzuki/Matsumoto's Sketch from the Month of Sleet and Hosono's Wanderer) (for Akiko's Umbrella, see here). 

All this interconnectivity naturally stems from the fact that, as you (dear reader) are perfectly aware, the Hosonoverse is woefully short on connections between the people and projects involved. I mean — it's as if the people in this circle were hardly interacting at all! Couldn't they have produced each other's albums occasionally?! They were all living in the same damn city, weren't they? At least throw in a guest spot here and there, for god's sake, come on.

:::

The autumn days

end early,

the sun like a bucket

dropping down a well.

My fingers turn numb

as I walk home.

I'm blowing kisses

at the trembling city.

The moon's gaze

keeps me safe.

I'm feeling warm

inside.

And you, east wind —

oh whimsical wind that you are —

at last I have the chance

to talk with you.

There isn't a single wave

on the ocean of my heart.

You alone are floating

ever forward in it,

ever forward in it.

(Back to: List of Translations)

Translation: It's Getting Boring (Chu Kosaka)

It's Getting Boring (Hosono/Matsumoto) was originally a pure Hosono original called Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo, in reference to the 1948 song, with lyrics (like Wandering) about dancing and old-time music. Someone in Alfa was dismayed that music so impeccably poppy should get tied up with Hosono's idiosyncrasies like that, and called Takashi Matsumoto in to save the day.

I'm sure Hosono's original ruled too, but this company-mandated rewrite is an incredible Matsumoto lyric, so thank you, Alfa moguls, for being such enemies of self-expression.

This was one of the first Hosono songs I loved, playing it a ton when I was getting to know the first disc of his 20th Century Box. The melodies were infectious, the backing vocals aimed for the sky, Kosaka's voice was soft and emotional in the verses, and passionately uplifted in the refrains. And then there was the fact that this burst of utter joy soundtracked the words "sayonara baby." And then one day I realized that what Kosaka was singing in one of the verses was "I'm grateful, baby, / that you were always smiling. / I had fun" and, considering all the insistent goodbyes the song is filled with, the lines blew my mind. "What is this miasma of malevolent tenderness?!" I wondered. I looked up the title in the dictionary and was presented with "completely disenchanted." Mind BLOWN! AGAIN!

Turns out that the phrase has a different connotation too, which is the one Matsumoto is using. There remains a smidgen of disappointment, a slight shadow on my heart, that "completely disenchanted" isn't what Kosaka and his marvelous Minako Yoshida / Tatsuro Yamashita / Taeko Ohnuki chorus is belting out, but it's okay. The lyrics are fantastic regardless.

The bravado and callousness of the narrator will be familiar from certain other Matsumoto texts, but the moments where that veneer almost breaks apart makes this take on a favorite theme unusual. Granted, the lines are too fierce and the offhanded cruelty too habitual for the "insensitive tough guy" attitude to be mere pretense, but the narrator is clearly barely holding it together himself, exaggerating his own cruelty to hurry the farewell along, lest he shatter in the presence of the girl that, for reasons we're not privy to, he's so desperate to be done with.

Matsumoto is a high priest of the "happy tune, miserable lyrics" technique, but if there's a song in his catalogue where that contrast is starker than it is here, I can't wait to hear it.

P.S. I'm not sure how long the link will last (that is to say, whether their website or mine will vanish from the Internet first, or whether we'll combust epically together!), but Alfa's channel has this great, long interview with Kosaka about the volcanic masterpiece we know as Horo. What's more, it has English subtitles.

Other good links: a contemporary live performance with Tin Pan Alley (with a precious but infuriating video; why on earth would they intersperse still photographs with this footage?) and Kenji Sato's bass cover.

:::

Let's end things tastefully, hey.

Goodbye, baby.

No turning around for one last look.

He's out there somewhere, waiting for you.

Go on, baby.

Hurry up and get out of here.

I don't go in for crying.

If there's crying, we'll be right back where we started,

and it's getting boring.

It's always just wounds all over.

Love, romance, all of that — I've had enough, really,

it's getting boring.

Don't look at me

with such misery in your eyes, baby.

It might rub off on me.

Sentimentality isn't my thing,

crybaby.

You shouldn't depend on others so much.

You'll get used to being by yourself.

Eventually you'll feel better.

Come on, it's getting boring.

It's getting boring.

It's getting boring.

I'm grateful, baby,

that you were always smiling.

I had fun.

Now let's shrug

and go our own ways home, baby,

whistling as we walk away.

I don't go in for crying.

If there's crying, we'll be right back where we started,

and it's getting boring.

It's getting boring.

It's getting boring.

It's getting boring.

Goodbye, baby.

Goodbye, baby.

Goodbye, baby.

Goodbye, baby.
Goodbye, baby.

Goodbye, baby...

(Back to: List of Translations)

Translation: Oh Youth (Takuro Yoshida)

Thematically and tonally, Oh Youth (Yoshida/Matsumoto) is a rank stranger to the Town of Wind, but the way the lyrics work — their playful structure, the imagery, the cruelty, the stark vision — is the way Happy End songs worked too. It’s a glimpse of an alternate timeline in which the band got back together a year after making their ‘72 album, but Takashi, for one reason or another, got more and more cynical over the years (about life, not the band).

I’ve dug around for Japanese lore about this song and have gathered that the people who know it treasure it. It’s an anthem alright — and yet so personal, and also — for all the flames in the chorus — cold.

The composer is Takuro Yoshida, a folk musician three years Matsumoto's senior. Oh Youth was their first (and, thankfully, far from last) collaboration.

The tune was originally an instrumental theme for a popular detective show on TV; for some reason or another, someone somewhere commissioned Takashi to write words for it, and specified that the lyrics needed to involve counting. Lo and behold: a spectral, bitter, bone-splintering masterpiece. Origin stories sometimes have nothing to do with anything at all.

If I’ve done my research correctly, this 1975 performance at a massive music festival was the first time anyone outside Yoshida’s circle and management heard the song. It looks like the start of Yoshida’s set. His band is up there, playing the familiar instrumental version, the TV show theme; and as they're approaching the end, the 28-year-old Yoshida strides onstage with his acoustic guitar, receives a rapturous welcome, and — plot twist! — steps up to the mic and begins to sing. A stir runs through the crowd. The microphone levels are good, and Yoshida sings Matsumoto’s lines with with clarity (meaning they’re audible) and passion (meaning they grab your attention) — though in fact no one would have known, yet, that the lyrics were Matsumoto’s. I wonder how many people in that huge audience had been Happy End fans.

I presume that there’s not a lot of us who grew up outside of Japan who know anything about this performance, or this festival, or even this artist; but it feels like a milestone moment in rock music history. First time I watched the video footage, I got chills several times.

Now for the translation notes. My version is a lot less literal than I would normally allow myself to be, but

(A) the structural conceit is tricky: there are two verses of four lines each, and each of them begins with a numeral reference, counting 1 to ... well, two verses of four lines equals eight lines, so you would think 1 to 8, right? But Takashi counts to 10, slipping 7 and 10 into the back half of 6 and 9’s respective lines. In some cases, Takashi says literally “firstly,” “thirdly,” “fifthly,” or “eighthly,” but that “firstly” (ひとつ) is immediately followed by a “one person alone” (ひとり), and the second line plays off of this, mentioning “two people together” (ふたり) but omitting a “secondly” (ふたつ). Lines four, six, seven, and nine pun on the words you would expect (that is, “fourthly,” “sixthly,” etc.) by borrowing the opening syllable or syllables of, say, “fourthly” (よっつ, yottsu) and instead substituting a different word that begins with an identical syllable or syllables (so, in this case, 酔いつぶれ, yoitsubure, meaning "dead drunk")

and also (B) Takashi’s lines are short and dense. Maintaining their brevity would have meant giving short shrift to the speaker’s tone, which is arguably the most important thing about the song.

So once I realized my usual literalist approach wasn’t getting anywhere, I said “fuck it,” made the counting explicit (because, good luck translating puns), and decided that it would be okay for the English lines to be long and intricate (versus Takashi’s short and dense) as long as I was getting the tone across and making the images clear.

I’d love to see alternate English takes on these lyrics, but doubt I ever will, and probably neither will any of you; so please just remember that my translation, while divergent, was made while I was fully under the sway of the song’s emotions, and that my version is imbued with love for the original. That’ll have to suffice.

Or else you’ll have to learn Japanese too.

Or else you can play with AI and see what our Good Robot Cube comes up with. (Anyone else a veteran of Live a Live?)

:::

So — one —

you're either by yourself,

which is horribly lonely,

or — two —

you're with somebody

in a room

where even the air suffocates you,

and in any case — three —

you're crushed to pieces

by your unfulfilled dreams,

all while — four —

the city is dancing

with the drunk evening wind.

You've only just finished

counting your sorrows,

and the day has already

grown dark.

Is youth like

the shimmering

heat of the summer

the moment the shimmer

combusts?

Is youth like

the shimmering

heat of the summer

the moment the shimmer

combusts?

Now, listen  — five — 

life's aftertaste is so foul

that — six — by the time you're done 

thinking it over,

seven — you'll have cried 

a whole ocean of tears.

And — eight (oh, would you stop counting) —

even when you're holding

somebody tight in your arms,

(nine) your heart is already

(ten) leaving these cheap lodgings behind.

You're busy counting

your sleepless nights

as day after day

slips by.

Is youth like

the shimmering

heat of the summer

the moment the shimmer

combusts?

Is youth like

the shimmering

heat of the summer

the moment the shimmer

combusts?

(Back to: List of Translations)

Translation: Shooting Star City (Chu Kosaka)

One of two new Hosono/Matsumoto songs on Horo, Shooting Star City is the result of an alchemical process. Hosono reused the verses from Tanger by Apryl Fool, the first band he and Takashi played in together (famous for pulling the great reverse-publicity stunt in which they announced their break-up the same day their debut album came out), rewriting the bassline into the kind of glorious show-stopping thing you expect from him in 1975 and adding a new funk-soul chorus. Takashi, for his part, transplanted elements of the unreleased Happy End song Drifting Clouds into an indoor setting, making the characters' situation less earthy, more urbane-sophisticated. Their interaction is a whole lot less meaningful this time around (Drifting Clouds is one of my favorite lyrics of all time), but still touching.

Shooting Star City isn't one of Horo's standouts.* I didn't like it much at all for months — but there came one midsummer day when, climbing our neighborhood hill in midsummer while listening to this song through headphones, I decided to sing along...

There is a category of song that can leave you cold if all you're doing is playing it, but blossom into beauty when you sing it. Strange to consider, isn't it? — that some songs are meant more for fellow singers to indulge in than for your average, non-musician listener? Chadwick Stokes has written a lot of songs like that.

The bassline and arrangement of Shooting Star City are fantastic no matter what, of course, but if you're like me, then to enjoy the vocal you'll have to put yourself in Kosaka's shoes.

* Edit, two days later: as I was writing that line, I was thinking about how subjective music can of course be, and wondered whether there are in fact listeners who rate this song highly. And what would you know, today I stumbled on a review in which someone called Shooting Star City not just their favorite song on Horo, but the song that singlehandedly launched their lifelong love of music.



:::

Your skin is pale fire 

where it's lit by the moon.

The city spreads out

from your billowing skirt.

I'm eternally in love.

It's with you I'm in love. 

I'm dozing off with my head in your lap

and we'll stay just that way until morning.

The curls of your hair

and your lips

are weaving dreams.

The submarine from H. G. Wells

floats by outside the window.

I'm eternally in love.

It's with you I'm in love.

Captain Nemo is playing 

the Hammond organ.

Shooting stars are falling

like rain over the city.

I hold you as you tremble

and that's how we cross the night.

I'm eternally in love.

It's with you I'm in love.

It's so warm in your arms.

I'm almost asleep.

I'm eternally in love.

It's with you I'm in love. 

I'm dozing off with my head in your lap

and we'll stay just that way until morning.

(Back to: List of Translations)

Translation: Tales of First Love (Norihiko Hashida & Endless)

1972 was the year of the epic Hiro Yanagida collaborations and, of course, the final (and still my favorite) Happy End album. By 1974, Takashi Matsumoto was establishing himself as a professional lyricist. Inbetween was 1973, which is when most of the work (if not actual releases) of Takashi's great Production Year was getting done. Lyrics were on the backburner.

Among the few he did write in '73 is Tales of First Love (Hashida/Matsumoto), recorded by Norihiko Hashida & Endless. A great overview of Takashi's work in the early '70s points out that his lyrics here are "not particularly virtuosic." Right: they're too general and abstracted, and on the sappy side (althoooough Takashi may not be fully to blame for that; consider the title of the non-Matsumoto B-side, "Youth is a Journey of Tears", and you can see the vibe Hashida, or Hashida's label, was going for). 

But one does not leave the best band in the world and go straight to writing trash. The second verse, for instance ("we were busy tickling..."), is pretty great — there's an element of startled wonder in the Japanese that I couldn't figure out a way to get across in English. And the chorus, while labored, and unnecessarily dense, says something real and disquieting.

Call it growing pains, maybe. Speaking with Shigeru Suzuki about Heroine of the Skyscraper (Matsumoto's contribution to the Happy End era's begun/then scrapped/but ultimately transfigured "four solo albums" project), Takashi laughed and said, "Happy End would have instantly rejected a song titled Heroine of the Skyscraper." They would have rejected Tales of First Love too, on artistic rather than thematic grounds. But the thing is, if you're trying to move your art somewhere new, you're bound to take some wrong turns here and there; and without those wrong turns, you wouldn't know which way you should actually go.

Besides, it's a good song. The melodicism and drive of Hashida's tune shore up the places where Takashi fumbles, while the slightly askew manner in which Takashi goes about writing a conventional love song / youth anthem does the same for the unadventurous early-'70s folk-pop arrangement.

Plus, it's addictive! I've played it thirty times today alone.



:::



We were busy

with our bittersweet kisses.

Our fingers intertwined,

we smiled and daydreamed

about love.

A first love is like the wind —

transparent, lemon-yellow wind

that blows and blows among the seasons

we've forgotten.

And time keeps flowing 

ever forward.

All this happened

long ago.

We were busy

tickling each other's ears

with our whispers.

We were spilling

radiant love 

over our hands.

A first love is like the wind —

transparent, lemon-yellow wind

that blows and blows among the seasons

we've forgotten.

But you are someone

I remember:

a girl I knew once,

long ago.

A first love is like the wind —

transparent, lemon-yellow wind

that blows and blows among the seasons

we've forgotten.

But you are someone

I remember:

a girl I knew once,

long ago.

(Back to: List of Translations)

Translation: The Door of the Heart (Agnes Chan)

I'm finishing up my work at the university I've been teaching at for eight years, preparing to move south and inland, and juggling a whole variety of time commitments related to not especially interesting things. In this way, I make no progress transcribing the Zipangu Boy lyric sheet, let alone translating it. 

But as I find myself slipping back into Takashi Matsumoto obsession (is it the season? his stuff feels so right in summertime... will my life henceforth be a series of Summers of Matsumoto?! maybe it wasn't just a beautiful one-off!?), I've uncovered several part-finished Matsumoto translations among my notes, some of which I forgot ever starting. I can work on them in two or three minutes installments, and it makes me happy, so here's The Door of the Heart (Masaaki Hirao/Matsumoto) from 1975.

Exquisite high harmonies — a glorious, tremendously sweet refrain — unexpected, forthright, and pure lyrics that call the word "crystalline" to mind — sure enough, it's Takashi writing for Agnes Chan. 

How long will their collaboration be this great? Always? All twenty-eight of Takashi's songs for Agnes could rule, couldn't they? Why not? Ah, the heart is a hopeful machine.

Also: I perk up every time Takashi uses "wind" as an image. You should too. It's his favorite image, after all, and not one he uses lightly.



:::



I knock,

but your gentle voice doesn't answer.

You invited me to come,

and that's why I came,

but now look, I'm heading back alone,

and it's already Sunday.

I strain my ears

but hear nothing beyond

the anxious pounding

of my heart.

I wonder where you are

and who you're with.

The door to your heart

is firmly shut.

I want my love

to turn into

the key that will unlock it.

I wonder how

you feel about me.

I wish I could turn into wind,

slip through the keyhole

and find out.

And I wonder what is written

in the diary you keep 

inside your room.

I wish I could turn into wind

and take a peek

as I ruffle the diary's pages.

The door to your heart

is firmly shut.

I want my love

to turn into

the key that will unlock it.

The door to your heart

is firmly shut.

I want my love

to turn into

the key that will unlock it.

(Back to: List of Translations)