Gathering the Wind, the first of the the four Hosono/Matsumoto co-writes on Kazemachi Roman, is Happy End's best-known song in Japan (a karaoke staple, actually) and — because it played over the credits of 2003 film Lost in Translation — their least unknown song in the west. When Hosono made his live debut overseas a few years back, several western fans performed it for him in tribute, Japanese lyrics and all. It seems to have melted both Hosono and Matsumoto's hearts.
The background doesn't really matter, though, does it? Like any other profoundly great song, its beauty remains intact despite the adulation (or, as the case may be, neglect) it collects over the years.
To draw a comparison, it makes no difference when or how you first heard Cowgirl in the Sand — as a Buffalo Springfield fan in 1972, spinning Neil's first record with new band Crazy Horse, still mourning the Springfield's break-up but curious about what the writer of Mr. Soul and On the Way Home would do next — or playing it from an iPod Classic linked up to a cassette deck, driving across Tulsa, Oklahoma on a sultry summer morning in 2012, as was my own experience — or even if you were Neil himself, hunched over an acoustic guitar, discovering the song in the moment you write it, burning with fever — the song has the capacity to hit any listener with the same force, as long as the strings of their heart are tuned right. Time, place, language, none of it really matters.
That's what Gathering the Wind is like too. Maybe if you're Japanese and have to hear colleagues sing it every time you go to a karaoke party, it's a different story, but if you encounter the song on your own terms, and dwell with it, and keep it near, it's bound to take up permanent station within you, sooner or later. It's just that good. (And it isn't even my favorite song on the album.*)
A technical side-note: extremely little of Matsumoto's work has been translated into English. I like having alternate versions to compare my own against — sometimes I can do this with Chinese versions, but very rarely with English. Gathering the Wind is an exception, with no shortage of English translations available online. After I finished mine, having consulted only Chinese versions, so that I wouldn't be unduly influenced by some other English translator's phrasing or word choices, I was looking forward to doing a deep dive and seeing how other English speakers had wrestled with Takashi's text. But half an hour of searching turned up only a single respectable version, here — respectable in that it's both a faithful rendition of the actual Japanese words and an attempt to be poetic in English too. Most of the top hits on Google abound in egregious mistakes. I'm not sure why the situation should be so dire. But it makes me glad I made my own.
*But probably in the top three.
:::
On the outskirts of the city,
strolling along
an overextended road,
I saw an early-morning tramway car —
still bright with dew —
cross the sea
in the blemished mist.
And so, I too will go
gathering the wind,
gathering the wind,
gathering the wind.
I want to soar through that blue sky,
that blue sky.
One outrageously lovely early morning,
before the sun was up,
I saw —
out beyond a breakwater
that made me think of a temple —
how the city,
with its scarlet sails unfurled,
lay at anchor.
That's why I too will go
gathering the wind,
gathering the wind,
gathering the wind.
I want to soar through that blue sky,
that blue sky.
Whiling the morning away
in an unpopular café,
I saw a crack form in the glass
and watched as the gentle rustle
of the skyscrapers' clothing
soaked into the pavement.
And so, I too will go
gathering the wind,
gathering the wind,
gathering the wind.
I want to soar through that blue sky,
that blue sky.
