But now I've stumbled on the answer.
No Wind — in which a sea voyage is an allegory for the band's own figurative and literal journeys — was clearly inspired by The Pirate Kid's Adventure (Yanagida/Matsumoto), the title track of this Sons of Sun album, which came out between Kazemachi Roman and the third Happy End record. The song the parrot in No Wind is singing is probably this very one. "It has the feel of some old poem," Hosono's loving description goes.
The Pirate Kid's Adventure is an allegory for Takashi's own voyage as a writer. He's young, and the entire ocean is stretched out in front of him. It's not clear whether he'll reach that treasure island or not, but his spirit is ready to try.
It's a beautiful way to to describe someone who'd just got done writing his first masterpiece. No one could say what lay ahead. The pirate kid had to set sail and find out for himself.
In No Wind, there's talk of a whole crew, but the pirate kid sails alone. By the time Takashi was writing the words, Happy End had probably already made the decision to disband.
The narrator in No Wind can't remember how the parrot's song goes, because The Pirate Kid's Adventure is a song about endless possibility, while the crew in No Wind had just about reached the end of their line: "And if there's no wind, captain? Then what?"
Hosono was a competitive kind of guy — it's clear from his history with friend-rivals Eiichi Ohtaki and Ryuichi Sakamoto. Apryl Fool, the band Hosono and Matsumoto were in before Happy End, had broken up because of creative differences between Hosono and Hiro Yanagida. So when Yanagida wrote his own album with Matsumoto, releasing it just a few months after Kazemachi Roman, it figures that Hosono was paying attention.
Moreover, Hosono has said he was nervous about his lyrical contributions to the third Happy End album. He wrote all of Hosono House in Matsumoto's shadow too, constantly worried whether his own lyrics were good enough. He leaned into wordplay for the L.A. Happy End songs specifically to avoid unfavorable comparison with Takashi. So it makes sense that another way Hosono might have covered his bases is by using existing Matsumoto songs (specifically, Sons of Sun songs) as springboards for his own. If the criticism came up ("man, your lyrics can't compare to Takashi's!"), Hosono would be armed with the self-abnegating answer: "Yeah, duh, I'm just writing my own versions of Matsumoto songs anyway."
Matsumoto had written an allegory about a sea voyage (The Pirate Kid's Adventure) — okay, so would Hosono (No Wind). Matsumoto had written about drifters (The Drifters' Elegy) — okay, so would Hosono (The Wanderer). But though the topics were similar, Hosono's chosen method (heady word-play) would set his songs apart.
Sharing an Umbrella, which was originally intended for Hosono House, not Happy End, has a less clear connection to Matsumoto specifically, but it lifts a whole line ("tomorrow's a day off") from one of the Sons of Sun songs that Takashi didn't write. Unless both that lyricist and Hosono were referencing a third source...
And to make the interconnections still more fun, a detail in the lyrics of The Pirate Kid's Adventure might actually draw inspiration from a slightly older Hosono song, Festival of Mud, recorded the previous year for Chu Kosaka's Arigatou, with Matsumoto drumming.
In the lyrics to Festival of Mud, there's a (probably accidental to start with, but then fully embraced) shout-out to Happy End's lead guitarist Shigeru Suzuki, who also plays on the track. His given name, Shigeru, appears in the lyrics, and when Hosono sings that word/name, Shigeru's electric guitar answers.
Here in The Pirate Kid's Adventure — appearing prominently at the end of a line, just like in Festival of Mud — we hear Matsumoto's given name, Takashi (though with different kanji — in this case, a literary form of the word "high," as in "the weather is clear but the waves are high," a line quoting a telegram sent by the very-soon-to-be victorious admiral Heihachiro Togo at the Battle of Tsushima, in the Russo-Japanese War).
I'll end with a personal note of awe: as a description of the field of eternal possibility that is art, I don't think "the sea is so wide / the sea is so wide / the sea is so wide / and so huge" — breathless, delighted, disbelieving, full of anticipation, maybe even a little afraid — has been surpassed. I have no doubt that's exactly how Takashi felt at the age of 22, with two albums behind him and a third in the making. It's how I still feel at 34, nine albums in.
Maybe things start to feel different after a certain point. Maybe the borders of each sailor's ocean eventually come into view. Or maybe not, maybe it's just that — as Ursula Le Guin wrote about making art in old age — pure physical fatigue makes the journeying hard, while the ocean remains as wide and as huge as ever.
:::
I'm setting sail
for a treasure island
that's unimaginably far away.
There's a yellow parrot
on my right shoulder.
My eyes have the gleam
of a pirate kid's.
The weather is clear
but the waves are high.
Granted, there's a skull and crossbones on my flag.
The sea is so wide.
The sea is so wide.
The sea is so wide
and so huge.
I'm setting sail for the seven seas.
The anchor's going up.
The sky is cloudless,
the ocean endless,
and I'm a pirate kid.
Red and blue and yellow:
the colors of the waterspout
that shoved the kid we were speaking of just now away.
He lifts his left hand,
brandishing the keys that now are his,
and challenges Peter Pan himself
to a friendly match.
The weather is clear
but the waves are high.
Granted, there's a skull and crossbones on my flag.
The sea is so wide.
The sea is so wide.
The sea is so wide
and so huge.
I'm setting sail for the seven seas.
The anchor's going up.
The sky is cloudless,
the ocean endless,
and I'm a pirate kid.
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