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 falls on

in perfect silence.

For some reason, 

everybody thinks it's normal

for the snow piling up in the city

to get dirty.

But that's so stupid.

Who fouled it all up?

Who fouled it all up?

Who fouled it all up?

Who fouled it all up?

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