Translation: Falling Thickly, Piling Up (Happy End)

You can glimpse the Haruomi Hosono of Kazemachi Roman and beyond in Falling Thickly, Piling Up (Hosono/Matsumoto). Takashi was surprised when Haruomi brought the song into live rotation in 2012, reckoning the decision had to do with the Fukushima disaster. In the version with Ren Takada, Haruomi gently alters the pronoun in the outro, first to "I" (僕が汚した) and then to "you" (君が汚した).

Lest we overlook the studio version, beautiful in its own rough way — how perfect is Shigeru Suzuki's lead guitar?! I wish he could've just gone on playing like this for decades.

:::

A musty, yellowed heart

has fallen on the dirty snow

and is mingling with the trash

at the edge of the street.

I'm fed up with it all.

I want to vanish

into the dirty snow.

I want to become slush.

The white thing that the cars speed through is snow.

The snow that the people trudge through is white.

Behind the city are snowdrifts.

Just then I find myself noticing something

that resonates unusually deeply,

as the snow goes on falling

in perfect silence.

For some reason, everyone thinks it's normal

for the snow piling up in the city

to get dirty.

But that's so stupid.

Who fouled it up?

Who fouled it up?

Who fouled it up?

Who fouled it up?

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Translation: Remember the Enemy: Thanatos! (Happy End)

A crazed psychedelic shakedown closing Side A, Remember the Enemy: Thanatos! (Hosono/Matsumoto) sounds like little more than an excuse to unleash Shigeru Suzuki. Hosono remembered thinking, "Wow, Matsumoto wrote a lot of words. I guess I'll just shout them out without any melody."

Working on the translation was a drag, since the lyrics are neither easy nor interesting, but — completionism again — I forbid myself from doing any of the great Yudemen songs before I finished this one.

A really faithful version would have required more effort than I was willing to give, so line for line the translation may often be off, but I think it gets the mood across. As it happens, Hosono himself wasn't faithful to Takashi's lyric sheet. The main point of the song is probably not any given line or verse so much as the nervous, feverish, psychedelic piling-on of weird and gloomy images.

:::



The tearful green moon

crept in through the cracks

as I was drifting off to sleep.

I could feel something coming toward me,

cleansing the room as it moved.

Rain blew and beat against

the floorboards and the walls

and the quiet sound of their breathing.

It was a very strange night.

Time flapped its wings,

looking off in every direction.

February drifted by,

so dizzyingly deep as to seem bottomless.

An enemy was present,

exploding with energy,

as cold as glass,

a cold screw slumbering

behind a curved needle.

It was a very strange night.

A warm futon!

I needed to be wrapped up snugly

inside a warm futon!

I was so cold.

What was the resentment aimed at? What?

Gasping in pain

at the bottom of an explosion of glass.

It wasn't the least bit funny,

but I still felt like laughing.

Silence fell.

It was a very strange night.

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Translation: Satin Doll (Shigeru Suzuki)

Before I found out how good the lyrics to Rainy Station are, Satin Doll (Suzuki/Matsumoto) was my favorite song on Caution. The only Caramel Mama member playing on it is Shigeru himself, but if Discogs didn't have the line-up details, I'd swear it was pure Tin Pan Alley magic.

The chorus-closing tag ("you're a satin doll," 君はサテン・ドール) was hard to deal with. The literal, word-for-word translation felt too awkward to include. At the other extreme, omitting the tag left the choruses too spare. So I got creative trying to strike a balance.

The second chorus ("evading my feelings...") is mostly guesswork. 

This completes my work on Caution, since the remaining songs — the two that open Side B — don't have Takashi lyrics. They're nice tunes, if more pedestrian in arrangement than what's on Side A. One of the songs has a pre-YMO Ryuichi Sakamoto on piano and the other has Caramel Mama.

:::



A sip of Bloody Mary

moistens your lips.

The tremolo of ocean waves

fills the seaside terrace.

You give me a strange smile

all covered in the colors 

of tropical flowers in bloom...

satin doll that you are.

A second sip of Bloody Mary.

Your hair is swaying.

The light of the Southern Cross

pierces the curtains of the night.

Evading my feelings

as they lean your way,

your red shoes retreat...

satin doll that you are.

You've drained your Bloody Mary

and now your cheeks are burning up.

The damp tone of the piano

is quivering within me.

Life is a carnival.

We sing la la la la.

And in the middle of the night,

barely able to keep my feet,

I begin to dance with you, 

my satin doll.

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