Translation: Wayside Grass (Chu Kosaka)

Commenting on Arigatou's songs as I post these translations has got me addicted to the album again. The more I listen to it, the more beautiful and affecting it becomes. And as if we needed more evidence that originality is overrated — Kosaka and Hosono's work on Arigatou was deeply influenced by the contemporaneous scene on America's west coast, but the albums the two of them made in the early 1970s were so much better than nearly anything I've heard coming out of the States in the same period.

Wayside Grass, which shares a title with a Natsume Soseki novel, is the gentle comedown from the Crazy Horse-esque Evening Firefly, in which the lyrics remind me of Kusamakura, another Soseki book. Kosaka must have been a fan.

This is Chu's song, not Haruomi's, but it shows how similar a wavelength they were on. The lyrics hold their own (good wandering song, great lunch box), but the best thing about the words is how they sound, not what they signify. In Japanese, the song's chorus, "far away in the mountainous country / the flowers are rapeseed and renge" (遠い山国の花は菜の花 れんげ草) is mellifluous beyond belief. The sound combinations are not very natural (poetry rarely is) and far from obvious, but they become such a pleasure to sing once you get to used to how and in what order they fall.

In late 1972 and 1973, Hosono got deep into that region of sonic/verbal play himself, but he'd already unlocked the gates here with Chu Kosaka, one year earlier. The title track, for instance, is just nuts in this regard. You don't hear that kind of thing on Kazemachi Roman (except, you see, on Ohtaki's self-penned Typhoon!) because the Hosono songs have Takashi lyrics, and Takashi, not being a singer, didn't develop that side of his songwriting until he was a hardened professional. Not needing to worry about how his words would sound when sung is partly what allowed him to write so much wonderful image- and mood-heavy stuff. (And sometimes — like in 1972's Suburban Train, by Sons of Sun — the words came out breathtakingly mellifluous anyway.)



:::



In a little village
at the foot of the mountains,
there are fields of rapeseed flowers
over by where the mulberries grow.

I've walked a long way,
now I'm tired.
I'll take a break by the wayside
and unpack my lunch box.

Far away in the mountain country,
the flowers are rapeseed and renge.
Far away in the mountain country,
the flowers are rapeseed and renge.

In a little village
beyond the mountains,
renge is growing
in the disused fields.

I've walked a long way,
now I'm tired.
I'll take a break by the wayside
and unpack my lunch box.

Far away in the mountain country,
the flowers are rapeseed and renge.
Far away in the mountain country,
the flowers are rapeseed and renge.



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