Translation: Sultry Night (Haruomi Hosono)

Just one of those "put it on repeat and bliss out forever" songs.

Sultry Night is a major piece of the Hosono lore — the first arrangement, ala The Band / Hosono House, wasn't working, and for a while, Hosono couldn't figure out why — then came several epiphanic moments, and Harry "The Crown" Hosono was born, and the Tropical Trilogy was underway — but all that's been documented elsewhere.

Also! Two things Hosono and I have in common: we don't change our guitar strings, and we love The Band's Cahoots. You can really hear the Cahootsianism here. 

:::

The submerged sea,

the floating island —

this calm, quiet feeling that's waxing full

is all on account of the moon.

In Tokyo, at about this time,

the asphalt's melting

and the streets are busy

becoming streaming rivers.

In Shanghai, at about this time,

the pots of fish will be at rolling boils

and the wind wandering the city.

Close your eyes.

Fragrant water.

Drowsing ferns.

This is the Pure Land.

Yet it's hot as hell.

At about this time, in Minnesota,

the eggs will have boiled through

and no one will be able to fall alseep.

When I think of Trinidad,

it hurries across the world to me.

It must be so lovely there tonight.

The submerged night.

The floating dream.

Wind patterns inside

a full moon heart.

(Back to: List of Translations)

Translation: The Three o'Clock Lullaby (Haruomi Hosono)

One of the great things about Side B of Tropical Dandy is the tracklist. Very classy of Hosono not to add "instrumental" to the fourth and fifth track titles.

I adored The Three o'Clock Lullaby (and its lush instrumental follow-up) before I listened into (/read into) the lyrics, but let me tell you, once I did...

I didn't get the last line right, it's still a little off. I'll come back and edit it after I figure it out. Gotta first await the eventual, inevitable hit of TSE (Translator's Sudden Epiphany). Can't rush that, just have to listen more — as if I needed more excuses to play Tropical Dandy, ha! (Edit, many months later: Yeah, nailed it.)

:::

Dream thee now, here on my lap

while an old record is playing.

And you, wind;

and you, light, too:

passing by outside my window.

It's the three o'clock lullaby you're hearing.

Until someone knocks on the door,

we'll stuff this magic bottle

full of tea 

and full of stories

underneath a cold tin roof.

When we've talked over the town gossip

and when we've sung along to that hit song

even though it's popular,

tell me more about the dream

you dreamed last night.

Your words will be my lullaby.

(Back to: List of Translations)

Translation: A Castaway's Story (Haruomi Hosono)

The Japanese is economical — two short verses and a chorus repeated verbatim; the individual lines are mostly short too — as befits someone in the narrator's position. So then I got to wondering whether Hosono's leisurely singing style isn't also a reflection of the speed of the narrator's conveyance.

I opted to elaborate rather than stay faithfully terse. I couldn't get the details of the scene across clearly when I tried to keep the English lines as short as the Japanese. 

A Castaway's Story both opens and closes Side B of the Dandy.

:::

Right underneath me

something strange floats along:

a phantom version

of the town I'm from.

In every other direction

there's nothing visible at all.

I myself

am on a raft.

Even if I reached a desert island,

there'd be nobody there but me,

so I let the heat do what it will

and start to whistle —

as off-key as ever? 

Man, some things never change.

Right underneath me

the town goes on floating

as I go on poling

my raft along.

If I dove in right now,

it would fill up my memory:

that town

in which I was born.

Even if I reached a desert island,

there'd be nobody there but me,

so I let the heat do what it will

and start to whistle —

as off-key as ever? 

Man, some things never change.

(Back to: List of Translations)

Translation: Honey Moon (Haruomi Hosono)

Honey Moon is from Side B of Tropical Dandy. 

Side B of Tropical Dandy is as good as I can imagine music getting. 

Side A is too. 

All hail the mustachioed one.

But there's also an awesome Honey Moon — with Akiko Yano — on Hosono's (as yet...!) uncelebrated 1993 album, Medicine Compilation from the Quiet Lodge.

:::

The setting sun is in my heart.

The honey moon is in the sky.

Angels come to earth at night.

Our dreams are their hair swaying.

A serenade like touching silk.

The honey moon is in the sky.

My chest's a trembling pegasus

and its mane, too, is swaying.

Shall I captivate you with this love song

as the full moon tiptoes closer?

We'll be heading back up there

but not so soon, don't worry.

Swaying...

(Back to: List of Translations)

Translation: Fortune, Come In! Demons, Get Out! (Haruomi Hosono)

Songs like Fortune, Come In! Demons, Get Out! are why albums are tied with novels for my favorite art form. 

Had this come out as a non-album single, it'd feel like a novelty track — bright and playful, with a killer band, but you wouldn't listen and feel touched. 

If it appeared on Bon Voyage Co., you'd feel it was par for the course, and maybe file it alongside Black Peanuts in the "delightful/silly genre exercise" drawer.

But on Hosono House, it stands out as the one song that looks forward to the Tropical Trilogy (which I can only say with the benefit of hindsight; back in 1973, Hosono himself had no idea he'd move further in this direction). 

And when its tracklist companions are Rock-a-Bye My Baby, I'm Sort Of, No Fixed Abode / Jobless / Barely Making Any Money, Love is the Color of Peach Flowers, The Rose and the Wild Beast, and Sharing an Umbrella, it does become touching. In the context of Hosono's situation and state of mind that year, the novelty factor drains right away.

The song title, by the way, is a reference to the Setsubun festival.

:::

Come on in, come on in

through the gate

and indoors.

Come on in, come on in

through the gate,

god of fortune.

Here comes the answer to all my prayers. 

Demons, get out!

So lovely a sight that I'm speechless. 

Fortune, come in!

Please come in, please come in

through the gate

and indoors.

Please come in, please come in

through the gate,

god of fortune.

I had my palm read.
I have no luck to speak of —

I was born under

an evil star.

That's why I need you to

come on in, come on in

through the gate

and indoors.

Come on in, come on in

through the gate,

god of fortune.

(Back to: List of Translations)

Translation: Party (Haruomi Hosono)

Party started life as an instrumental theme song to a baseball tournament out in Hosono's new neighborhood of Sayama. 

Later, two fellows supposedly named Ryoko Suzuki and Yasushi Nakayama added lyrics. I don't doubt that the lyrics aren't Hosono's, but given how little information exists online about either figure, and given that the Nakayama fellow is credited all over Eiichi Ohtaki solo albums — but nowhere else — and given the Happy End members' fondness for pseudonyms (remember Bannai Tarao?), these two lyricists might actually just be Shigeru Suzuki and Eiichi Ohtaki indulging a runaway fondness for random English.

There's lots of word games and puns (for instance, "oh doll-up" is a near-homonym for the Japanese word for "dance," and the word I translated as "buoyant" in "buoyant moods" is a near-homonym for "boogie-woogie"), probably all put there to make sure Hosono would have fun singing. 

The text is OTT, so I've taken a different approach than usual. The words Hosono sings in English are capitalized. Hopefully, reading my "translation" will give you a feeling as bizarre as the average Japanese listener in 1973 would've had when they flipped their Hosono House LP to Side B.

:::

Today, there's a house PARTY.

Where's she from, that girl with the PONYTAIL

and BOBBY SOCKS and RED SADDLE SHOES?

She's SUZIE!

She's DANCING enthusiastically!

She's the one everyone wants.

That girl is dancing with her SWEET LIP KISS.

That girl is CHIC.

That girl is gleaming.

That girl's a CANDY KID tonight.

KISS angry SUZIE.

She's the one everyone wants.

Dance, dance, OH DOLL-UP PARTY.

Buoyant moods and BOOGIE-WOOGIE MUSIC.

Dance, dance, OH DOLL-UP PARTY.

Buoyant moods and BOOGIE-WOOGIE.

Today, there's a house PARTY.

Where's she from, that girl with the PONYTAIL

and BOBBY SOCKS and RED SADDLE SHOES?

She's SUZIE!

She's DANCING enthusiastically!

She's the one everyone wants.

Dance, dance, OH DOLL-UP PARTY.

Buoyant moods and BOOGIE-WOOGIE MUSIC.

Dance, dance, OH DOLL-UP PARTY.

Buoyant moods and BOOGIE-WOOGIE.

(Back to: List of Translations)

Translation: Love is the Color of Peach Flowers (Haruomi Hosono)

I realized yesterday that Hosono House is in my top ten favorite albums of all time.

You can look up the album's backstory elsewhere. It's fairly well-documented. But now that I think about it, its earliest origins might not be.

Apparently there was a period, back when Happy End was still together, when someone in management decided to pull a CSNY-in-1970 and have each member release a solo album, thereby (he hoped) raising the profile of the mothership. 

That's the context for Eiichi Ohtaki's solo album, which came out between Kazemachi Roman and Happy End's second self-titled. 

Shigeru Suzuki also got straight to work writing new material, which explains how he went from a single song on Kazemachi Roman to four Suzuki/Matsumoto co-writes next time around. 

Hosono, likewise, got thinking. Sharing an Umbrella, which appears on the third Happy End record, had to leave an early version of the Hosono House tracklist to do so, which means that he'd already been writing with his solo album in mind. 

Takashi, for his part, had to wonder: "Okay, and how do I, a drummer/lyricist, make a solo album?" The answer: find a new frontman to deliver a fully Takashi-written record. Enter Yoshitaka Minami... but that's a story for another time.

Anyway, Happy End broke up, so the "four solo albums" scheme became (from a record company perspective) meaningless. Hosono also seemed to concede, "Hmm, alright. So much for that." He was more interested in playing bass than recording a solo album. The Caramel Mama / Tin Pan Alley dream was taking shape inside him. 

But his friends began to pester: "Hey Hosono, Ohtaki has a solo album out. Where's yours?"

I've seen comments on Japanese sites suggesting that, lyrically, Love is the Color of Peach Flowers is Hosono doing Matsumoto, but I think the only reason people say that is the presence of unusual colors in the song title. Like much of Hosono House, the lyrics are confessional, whereas Takashi's songs sound like fictional vignettes even when they're autobiographical. 

In 1972, Hosono moved into a neighborhood that had formerly been living quarters for American soldiers, in the town of Sayama, some forty kilometers away from Tokyo (this is the part that's well-documented in English). The walls of the house really did stink with mildew. And, in tribute to the Band, Hosono painted the outside pink — like peach blossoms.

The "chariot made of fire" is not Elijah's chariot. It's the kasha of Japanese folklore, a monster in the shape of a fiery chariot whose job it is to carry the corpses of evildoers down to hell. So, yeah, not Elijah's chariot. In modern times, the phrase was repurposed to mean dire financial straits. (That said, Hosono was having visions of the end of the world around that time...)

I love how the verse about "coughing out my merry songs" communicates both how little Hosono thought of his own voice, and how highly he thought of the music.

And how beautiful is the "rain was falling" bit?

:::



So where am I now? What is this place?
Oh, it doesn't matter. Anywhere's alright.

As for the road I took to get here —

well, I can forget all about that now, right?

The soil is fragrant

and I smell paint.

The walls have turned as white as ivory

and the sky the color of glass.

I spend night after night 

coughing out my merry songs,

racing into darkness

in a chariot made of fire,

playing games of tag

with the red moon.

I've come down this road before,

this river road.

And I have glimpsed this town

between breaks in the clouds —

little wonder that it seems so familiar.

If rain was falling in your heart

and I closed my umbrella,

I wonder whether I'd get wet too.

The rain is fragrant

and the mildew stinks.

The sky has turned gray

and love the color of peach flowers.

I've come down this road before,

this river road.

And I have glimpsed this town

between breaks in the clouds —

little wonder that it seems so familiar.

(Back to: List of Translations)

Translation: Morning (Happy End)

By 1970, it wasn't just Buffalo Springfield that the guys in Happy End had in their collection of imported LPs; there was Neil Young's first solo album (1968), which proved similarly influential, and even the first Crosby, Stills & Nash (1969). So they knew the softer side of Stephen Stills. Eiichi Ohtaki used it as his model for Morning.

Who says derivative things can't also be beautiful?



:::



Morning leaks through

the gaps in the curtain,

enfolding you tenderly

where you lay.

Light comes to play

on the white of the wall.

You're beautiful, 

asleep there.

Morning is moving

inside of me too.

I'd been living alone

with my face turned away,

and I couldn't see a thing,

and I couldn't hear a thing.

And it seems

so long ago now.

"You're awake?"

I hear your sleepy voice say.

Your eyes are open a crack

and you're smiling.

I don't answer,

I just take a deep breath.

It's warm here,

while outside our window

is winter.

(Back to: List of Translations)

Translation: Happy End (Happy End)

What do Happy End and Black Sabbath have in common?

   1. Both had four members.

   2. Both proved insanely influential.

   3. Both were awesome.

   4. Both put out their first album in 1970.

   5. Both of their first albums were self-titled.

   6. Both of their first albums had self-titled songs.


Actually I only meant to mention #6, but got carried away.

So here is Happy End, in which you'll hear (1) Takashi crafting the candid, conversational voice that would define Kazemachi Roman, (2) Ohtaki singing lead vocals even though Hosono wrote the music, which you would think was breaking their own Buffalo Springfieldian rules, except that the Springfield did the same thing on their debut, with Richie Furay — whom the band later met in Los Angeles!!! Poco was recording at the same studio — singing lead on three Neil Young songs, (3) Hosono writing his own version of Neil's Broken Arrow, (4) the band at their most solemn, and (5) the album's original closer; the actual album closer was an inspired Hosonian afterthought.

:::

People say

that if you could live forever

like Momotaro,

you'd be happy.

An ending as happy

as in some old legend

definitely does sound good.

Except, you know,

happiness doesn't come at the end of things,

it comes at the beginning.

People say

that if you drove a Benz

and kept a mistress,

you'd be happy.

Being as big a deal

as a company president

definitely does sound good.

Except, you know,

happiness is not about what you have,

it's about what you want.

(Back to: List of Translations)

Assorted Gems: John Wesley Harding

BOB DYLAN - JOHN WESLEY HARDING  (1967)

This is one of those albums that just makes you think, “What...?”

Or more elaborately: “What... what happened? Where on earth did this come from?” And let’s say that, seeking the answer to your question, you go research the background of the album. Aha, you think, so that’s how it was. Then you go back and listen again, armed in contextual information, and this time you think: “What... what happened? Where on earth did this come from?” 

Big Blood’s Night Terrors in the Isle of Louis Hardin is like that. There’s all the albums the band made around the same time, and then there’s... Night Terrors. Also: Neil Young’s Peace Trail (musically modelled on John Wesley Harding, as it happens). And, to some extent, Daniel Romano’s Finally Free. And maybe also —

No, that exhausts it. I’ve looked over the albums of my Personal Canon, and nothing else fits the bill. Those albums all belong within the arc of a larger story. Even the one-offs are cozy inside the lore of their one-offness. But John Wesley Harding... 

You can say, “Blonde on Blonde and the touring life were too crazy, so he went rustic.” Okay, but if we’re talking lyrics, then Lost on the River is the rustic album, and if we're talking music, the Basement Tapes came first. You could counter, “Well, Dylan didn’t record Lost on the River, and he didn’t release the Basement Tapes. So JWH was the official start of his second folksy era.” Fair enough, but after JWH came a year and a half of silence, and while Nashville Skyline obviously grew out of the last two JWH tracks, neither it nor 1970’s Self Portrait and New Morning really feel like follow-ups. 

John Wesley Harding just sort of sits there, like a dragon on top of but not exactly guarding its treasure horde. It sits and watches you, and if you approach, it might give a warning sniff, but won’t bite your head off. It won’t allow you to make off with any riches either. Or maybe it would, but you’d never think to try, because that stare freezes you to the spot. You and the dragon watch each other in silence. And finally you turn around and leave, climbing back up the tunnel toward daylight.

You bring the memory of the cave and its treasure with you. Then you become a metalworker so that you can create swords and pendants and necklaces yourself, and what you make is beautiful. But it's earthly, or downright ordinary, compared with what inspired it.

In other words, another strange aspect of John Wesley Harding, which I don't think applies to Night Terrors, or Peace Trail, or Finally Free, but which does (or might) apply to another weird album Dylan made twenty-three years later, called Under the Red Sky — another strange aspect of John Wesley Harding is that it proved to be ridiculously fertile ground for cover versions.

Jimi Hendrix’s All Along the Watchtower is the most famous of them, a reinvention so awesome that even Dylan never performed the song in the JWH arrangement again. But there have been very, very many excellent others. It’s like the songs are ready to become anything you want them to; you dream it, they'll become it.

Except that once they leave the hands of Dylan, drummer Kenny Buttrey, and bassist Charlie McCoy — once they break out of that Nashville autumn of 1967 — the dark and rare magic of the songs, which the three musicians themselves probably didn’t understand and never recreated, seeps away. There is nothing as captivating, confusing, and unsettling as the original.

I think this would also prove true of Al Joshua’s Anomalous Events, a descendant of JWH. God knows how many great full-band arrangements its songs could spark. I love to imagine what the rootsy, punky, psychedelic Skeletons at the Feast band might have made of them. It's also fun to cast the net further and think — if someday the wider public recognizes Al’s genius, and tribute/cover albums start to emerge, what would, say, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard do with an Anomalous Events track? or Decisive Pink? or Quinnisa Kinsella Mulkerin? There's no limit to the possibilities — but no matter what interesting things might happen musically, on an atmospheric level, the original would remain untouchable. The ghost inside that handful of 2020 recordings will never let itself be tamed.

I wrote a lot about John Wesley Harding in my Dylan series from a few years back, so if you'd like details, please venture along this way. To avoid repeating myself (too much), I'll end with six lessons that I, as a songwriter and musician, have taken away from this album:

1. You can make great music with very simple chord progressions.

2. You can make great music in standard tuning, especially if you have a capo lying around.

3. You can make great music while flying directly in the face of what the wider music culture or the record-buying public currently deem worthwhile (which in Dylan's case, back in the autumn of 1967, meant Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band).

4. You can make great music without meaning to. Reports indicate that Dylan wrote the lyrics on train rides to the sessions (he was living in New York and recording in Tennessee). And the recording sessions took about twelve hours total. That probably includes the time Buttrey and McCoy spent learning these songs, as I don't think Dylan held any rehearsals.

5. It doesn’t really matter how high you mix any given instrument, even one as shrill as a harmonica. Nothing matters but the songs.

6. However, if you as a singer-songwriter have the chance to be backed by the best rhythm section in history, take it!

(Back to: A Personal Canon)

Translation: The Zoo of the Ghosts (Happy End)

Takashi has said that, with Yudemen, he was learning as he went. Hosono has called his Yudemen songs practice runs. Ohtaki was busy stretching his mimetic muscles, emulating Stephen Stills on some songs and Neil Young on others. And Suzuki was busy just having a blast. Everyone was focused on craft, and didn't expect the album to be as influential or controversial as it was. And certainly nobody expected to make a timeless masterpiece the following year. Nowadays, Takashi talks about Kazemachi Roman with amused regret: "I would've liked to mess around more before making an album that good. We were all surprised by how good it was... too good."

Yudemen is the sound of unfettered messing around. It's rough and can be awkward, but it's energized by the excitement of four young musicians in a recording studio, two of them for the first time. They all believed in the band they had formed, and were eager to discover what they could create together.

The Zoo of the Ghosts (Hosono/Matsumoto), which opens Side B, is typical of that spirit. It's also a bit of a dry run for the following year's Metamorphosis of the Kurayami-Zaka Flying Squirrel, in that Ohtaki sings harmony with Hosono on every line of the verses.

:::

This is not a city of ghosts.

This is not a city of horror.

This is not a lonely city.

The place where we currently reside

is a city full of people and their problems.

You're sipping black tea.

My throat is parched

from laughing so much.

It's as dry as a fountain pen.

I grope your body

so as to feel a connection

though I know

we can't actually touch.

It's the kind of habit

a ghost picks up.

You and I exist,

and at the same time we don't.

We talk about freedom

and plaster up the walls.

(Back to: List of Translations)

Translation: A Sky You Can't Fly In (Happy End)

"Angsty" is not a word I would have used to describe Haruomi Hosono, especially not in the Happy End period (have you seen photos of him with the band?). But as I work on these lyrics, I'm discovering that Yudemen is all about the angst. (The members were only just past twenty, after all... Shigeru was still nineteen actually, and he was the cheeriest of the bunch.)

Both of Yudemen's non-Takashi songs are deeply unhappy. Takashi wasn't necessarily feeling cheerful either, considering that he dedicated the Side A closer to Thanatos. But the two songs his bandmates supplied — It's Infuriating by Ohtaki and A Sky You Can't Fly In by Hosono — are straightforwardly, and seemingly autobiographically, miserable.

While Ohtaki seems weighed down with personal sorrows, for Hosono, it's his mission (or capabilities) as a musician that are at stake.

But that's not an insight I can take credit for. Everything after the second verse had me so stumped that I went searching through the Japanese Internet to see what Happy End heads over there made of it. I came upon a conversation between two music scholars (Japan loves publishing this sort of interview, and it's amazing; why hasn't the west caught on?) who pointed out the aggression of the lyrics (audible in the great slowburn psych-freakout music) and the depth of the speaker's bad mood. They go on to agree that the song is about Hosono feeling frustrated with Japan's music scene (this was just after the short-lived Apryl Fool experiment, remember), as contrasted with the kinds of things that were coming out of the States (see Buffalo Springfield and Moby Grape). 

To be fair, I could tell that much from the first verse. What didn't occur to me is that the painter of the shoddy sky might not be Hosono's homeland or fellow Japanese artists, but Hosono himself, blown away by Takashi's lyricism and furious that he couldn't do right by it (unlike Ohtaki, who even on Yudemen so clearly could). In that case, the "poem" waiting to be born is Takashi's artistic vision, and the "experiment" Hosono's own! So even as Hosono bemoans his inability to give Takashi's words the right setting (calling himself the murderer of somebody else's newborn child!), he's taking inspiration from his bandmate, and thinking: "Maybe I'm just not being as singleminded as I should be." Or as Czesław Mozil sang in Caesia & Ruben: "If you think it's tough, you don't want it enough."

Hosono was, of course, being too hard on himself, but young songwriters have that prerogative.

Alternatively (and for me, less convincingly) the con artist in the closing segment is Japan, butchering the beautiful rock and roll music that was arriving newborn and glorious from the west, in the sense that Japanese artists were only mimicking their inspirations (and singing in English, ha!) instead of making something heartfelt, true, and new in its own right.

:::

What can happen

under a sky

so distant from America's?

What can happen

inside a heart

that's like a country

closed to entry?

It feels like this shoddy sky

was drawn by a con artist

passing himself off as a real artist.

If you have one single wish,

that wish can grow wings,

whether it's the birth of a poem you dream of

or the birth of an experiment.

Who would rejoice

if a con artist

passing herself off as a mother

killed a newborn baby?

— 'cause that's what this feels like, you know.

(Back to: List of Translations)

Translation: It's Infuriating (Happy End)

All but two of the songs on Yudemen have Takashi Matsumoto lyrics. The two that don't are an all-Hosono song near the end of Side A and Ohtaki's It's Infuriating in the middle of Side B. On the level of lyrics alone, I'd say it's a finer specimen than his other "solo" Happy End song, Kazemachi Roman's Typhoon. It has a more concentrated mood, and the last verse is worthy of Takashi.

Musically it veers to the rock side of Yudemen's folk-rock equation. My favorite thing about Yudemen is the closer, but my second favorite is the Shigeru Suzuki solos, and this has killer ones.



:::



What's going on here?

The ticking of the clock

is getting on my nerves

and I can't sleep.

I can't sleep at all.

It's infuriating.

I'm in pain.

I'm in serious pain.

I can't even take a proper breath.

It's too much.

It's too much this time.

It's infuriating.

I hate it.

I hate it.

There's nothing good

about hanging out in the city

and there's nothing good

about staying at home.

It's infuriating.

Infuriating.

Infuriating. 

(Back to: List of Translations)

Translation: A Rainy Day in December (Happy End)

Takashi Matsumoto wrote lyrics to four songs by Apryl Fool, the first band he and Hosono were in together. But it doesn't seem to have been in earnest. In interviews, he has always traced the origin point of his lyrical world to a certain winter afternoon at Eiichi Ohtaki's place, when he (Takashi) wrote two sets of lyrics on notebook paper and, before going, left them lying on Eiichi's kotatsu. One of them was Come On, Spring. The other was A Rainy Day in December.

Another major part of the Rainy Day lore is that it was Shigeru Suzuki's introduction to Happy End. Shigeru's try-out happened with only Hosono and Matsumoto present. Ohtaki had already set Rainy Day to music, and Hosono had learned the arrangement, and on try-out day, taught it to Shigeru and asked him to play along. So, on an unamplified electric guitar (what could represent a young band's early rehearsals better than this detail?), Shigeru played along.

The other set of lyrics left lying on Ohtaki's kotatsu that autumn day was, I would argue, Takashi's first masterpiece. A Rainy Day in December is a wispier and vaguer thing. But it succeeds on the level of atmosphere, and Ohtaki recognized that, and wrote a suitably moody song.

But the famous version on Yudemen (Happy End's debut / first of two self-titled albums, called Yudemen because that's the name of the noodle shop on the cover), sounds tentative when compared with the single version, which the band recorded from scratch three months before sessions for Kazemachi Roman began.

The Japanese wikipedia page suggests that Eiichi Ohtaki — which is to say, the artist the world came to know later through his eccentric Niagara label and especially/eventually also the elegant and best-selling high-pop album A Long Vacation — that Eiichi Ohtaki made his first real showing on the re-recorded Rainy Day in December. Apparently Eiichi was obsessed with George Harrison's My Sweet Lord at the time, and a student of Phil Spector's heavyhanded production. So where the Yudemen version had one acoustic guitar, the single version has four. 

I personally happen to think Spector mangled All Things Must Pass, but music undergoes some kind of alchemy when it makes the great Pacific crossing, so the Spector influence that rooted in Eiichi grew into something way cooler. Eiichi's ambitions were growing all the while too. Plus Shigeru gets way more solos. Really that clinches the deal all by itself: the single version is better.

:::

The fragrance of water 

is upon the bright streets.

The possessed come and go 

in the rain.

And when the rain goes away,

the wind suddenly rises,

and waves of people flow past

as I watch, as I watch.

The shadows that the city casts

are like a photo frame

for dried-up hearts

that took sick in the rain

and the similarly sick 

frozen sky.

And when the rain goes away,

the wind suddenly rises,

and waves of people flow past

as I watch, as I watch.

(Back to: List of Translations)

Translation: Rainy Station (Shigeru Suzuki)

THIS SONG. 

Holy hell.

My first run through the translation had me weeping like a baby. And for a while, every time I reread my draft to make edits, the ending made me cry again. And again. And again. And again. Even without the band's sensitive musical accompaniment. This is TAKASHI MATSUMOTO, dear reader, the one & only.

The impact was all the stronger, first time around, because Takashi carefully obscures where the story of Rainy Station is headed. At first I thought it would be about a negligent boyfriend who was supposed to go pick his girlfriend up at the train station, but lost track of time, and now is heading over as fast as he can, because he doesn't want to catch a cold. (I've been there. As recently as — cough — May of this year...) 

But Takashi is great at plot twists, isn't he? Like in Seiko Matsuda's December Morning.

My translation obviously doesn't have the power of the original Japanese. Still — if you don't know the language, and you play Rainy Station and follow along with the translated lyrics, I think you might be able to get partway to the place that Takashi takes me.

And even if not, you'll have the music to enjoy. Hosono on bass, Hayashi on drums, great horn arrangement, great — samba? — feel, great propulsion and urgency in the performance, great heartfelt singing from Shigeru (single-tracked! our boy's gaining confidence).

By the way, Japanese comments online are full of people getting emotional about how good the words are, so it isn't just me.

:::

Through my sunglasses

I see rain

painting the streets of the city.

I have to hurry. I have to hurry.

You're at the station

with a heavy suitcase.

The taxi's stuck in traffic.

I hop out and take off running,

weaving my way through the rain.

I didn't realize

what was going through your mind.

God, I'm such a blockhead.

I have to hurry. I have to hurry.

If I don't make it in time,

I know we'll never meet again.

I cross the ticket gate without a ticket.

If I run like hell, there's still a chance —

but the train

is already pulling away.

If all this were a movie, it would end right here.

But love should keep right on going.

I see you, indistinctly,

standing on the opposite platform.

I have to hurry. I have to hurry.

I see traces of tears

on your cheeks.

Your courage gave out

before you boarded.

You break down crying

in my arms.

(Back to: List of Translations)

Translation: The Evening Light is Orange-Lime (Seiko Matsuda)

Takashi is a master of tone and voice. He gets nuanced emotions across in simple, conversational lines. In his hands, a "mere" sentence-ending particle can turn a good line into an awesome one. The second chorus ("you always...") is like a slap to the face, the Japanese so fierce that tears started in my eyes as I translated. Actually the first chorus ("even if you called...") had me tearing up too — that combination of sadness and honesty — the pure and profound sorrow, too crestfallen (as yet) for anger. 

The Evening Light is Orange-Lime has music by the great Shigeru Suzuki. If the lyrics to December Morning were less excellent, this would be my favorite song on Side B.

Also, it raises the question — how many times did Shigeru and Takashi collaborate after 1979's Cosmos '51? I thought that was where their partnership ended, but this song is from 1981. Maybe there are others.

(Omitted chorus tag: "It's too late.")



:::



I'm waiting for your phone call.

The evening light is orange-lime.

I'm dressed and ready for our date.

The hands of the clock are being mean to me,

moving idly forward.

Actually, even if you called,

we wouldn't make it to the movie on time.

And I'd been really looking forward

to seeing it together.

I squeeze a lime into my glass.

What I want is to drink and forget.

You always do just what you please.

I've had it up to here with your selfishness.

Go find somebody else, okay?

I go get changed.

Tears come to my eyes

when I see the sun setting.

It's weird...

It's weird, but

tears come to my eyes when

I see the reflection

of the sunset in the glass.

(Back to: List of Translations)

Translation: Starry Night (Seiko Matsuda)

Starry Night opens Side B of Kaze Tachinu (the Shigeru Suzuki side — he wrote one song and arranged four) with lonesome fantasies and brief, beautiful dreams that confuse and hurt you when you wake.

Tulip's Kazuo Zaitsu pairs the nervousness and restlessness with another barrage of bubblegum pop.

So it seems that Kaze Tachinu's whole modus operandi is happy-sounding songs about unhappy situations. Of the six I've worked on so far, Rainy Resort has the most serious disconnect, but Starry Night is in the neighborhood.

As usual, I've left out the tag in the chorus ("oh starry, starry night").



:::

I'm half asleep. I'm almost dreaming.

My feelings are becoming shooting stars.

The wind is wide awake

and the sound it makes in passing

is like the thrumming of a piano

in my heart.

The night is azure blue.

Dreaming, I saw

the lonely silhouettes of leaves

on the stone paving slabs.

With your hands in your pockets,

you turn my way.

"I love you," I can't help but say.

You look like you're going to answer

but then cut your answer short.

And time stops in that moment.

The words — those words —

go tumbling about in the sky.

I feel wide awake

every time I think of you.

The night is azure blue.

The traffic light turns green.

As we start walking,

you put your arm around my shoulders.

Your tenderness catches me completely by surprise

and I wake up, alone.

I'm half asleep. I'm almost dreaming.

My feelings are becoming shooting stars.

The wind is wide awake

and the sound it makes in passing

is like the thrumming of a piano

in my heart.

The night is azure blue.

(Back to: List of Translations)