Translation: The Wanderer (Happy End)

By the time the sessions for the final Happy End album came around, relations between the three principal writers (Matsumoto, Hosono, and Ohtaki) were strained. Matsumoto declined to write new lyrics for Hosono and Ohtaki. So Hosono — who by then had contributed three songs to the first solo album of former Apryl Fool bandmate Tadashi (Chu) Kosaka (original candidate for the Happy End position that Eiichi Ohtaki eventually claimed) — he'd also already done some of the songwriting for Hosono House too — wrote his own words.

But it was one thing to write songs for a solo album, or even one by Kosaka, and another for Haruomi to know that his lyrics would be sharing album space with Takashi's. No matter how well things might turn out, Hosono was convinced that in the proximity of Matsumoto songs, his own efforts would appear paltry. So he swerved in an entirely different direction, leaning hard into wordplay (or, on No Wind, allegory).

Most of The Wanderer is just the title phrase sung over and over again. Other lyrics are playful verbal variations on the title phrase. The first line, which I translate as "roaming without aim," merely conjugates the first two syllables of the title phrase. The line I have as "manners so vulgar" is a four-character phrase, the first character of which is the same as the first character of the title phrase. And so on. There are rhymes, near-rhymes, and verbal/sonic echoes across verses. 

All very formalist, right? But the thing is, Hosono turned out to be a great lyricist in his own right. For all the playfulness, this song comes out feeling as heavy as a mountain, as old as time. In that sense, if not in literary style (but then again, see Time), it's like something by Micah Blue Smaldone. 

And talk about bringing a feeling of awe to translation (I ramble on about that here). Nearly every next new line had me thinking, "Holy fuck, Hosono..."

Finally — Tatsuo Hayashi drums on a Caramel Mama "nighttime in the big city" re-imagining of The Wanderer. It closes Kosaka's 1975 Hosono-produced album Horo. Rare is the song that you can hear Hayashi and Matsumoto drum on — two of the best drummers of all time, with such different styles.

:::

Roaming without aim:

the wanderer, the wanderer.

From morning until night:

the wanderer, the wanderer.

The wanderer.

The wanderer.

Getting tired:

the wanderer, the wanderer.

Even after all this time:

the wanderer, the wanderer.

The wanderer.

The wanderer.

Roaming without aim:

the wanderer, the wanderer.

Years have passed:

the wanderer, the wanderer.

The wanderer.

The wanderer.

Manners so vulgar:

the wanderer, the wanderer.

Acting so cool:

the wanderer, the wanderer.

The wanderer.

The wanderer.

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