Translation: The Locomotive (Chu Kosaka)

The Locomotive first appeared on Side A of Arigatou as a country/folk-rock song with Hosono playing the mandolin. On that initial version, each stanza was sung to the same melody, with the chorus signalled by harmonies. (The whole album has great fucking harmonies.)

A few years later, Kosaka slowed the tempo way down and rewrote the chorus melody into something Jerry Garcia or Robbie Robertson might have come up with. This new country-soul arrangement came out on 1975's Horo.

The lyrics, written in 1971, are about the generation Kosaka went to university with in the late '60s. Being a solitary artist type, distrustful of movements, he kept his distance from the radical student protests of 1968 and 1969 — then watched as the classmates who'd poured their hearts into the protests and reforms entered the workforce and got subsumed into the machine they'd fought.

:::

Anyway, nothing has been left behind.

The locomotive rushes forward.

As you continue treading on my shadow,

the locomotive rushes forward,

ever forward.

My eyes are closed

and my ears can't hear,

and what's more,

my hands are bound together.

I've been hurrying 

so as not to miss the train

and now there's no stopping

and no getting off the tracks.

The locomotive belches out

the indigo-blue smoke of lies.

I love you, I love you.

My eyes are closed

and my ears can't hear,

and what's more,

my hands are bound together.

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