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.

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