Translation: I'm Inside the Kotatsu, Waiting for Spring (Chu Kosaka)

I'm Inside the Kotatsu, Waiting for Spring (Kosaka/Kosaka) — or just Waiting for Spring, as the song is known on Country Pumpkin — is among my favorite Kosaka songs. The arrangement of the backing vocals is brilliant, and no song on Motto Motto makes it clear how powerful a unit Four Joe Half was, quite like this one. No wonder Haruomi Hosono elected to keep [most of] the band for himself.

:::



The sound of footsteps
comes clip-clopping down

from the clouds.

In due time,

the main street in town

will be similarly bustling...

I'm inside the kotatsu,

waiting for spring.

The snowmelt too,

any day now,

will go flowing

through the valley

as far as the foot of the mountains...

I'm inside the kotatsu,

waiting for spring.

Here under this grayish roof,

the ends of the floral-print kotatsu quilt

hang downwards,

one across from the other...

I'm inside the kotatsu,

waiting for spring.

(Back to: List of Translations)

Translation: Because I Love You (Chu Kosaka)

Because I Love You (Kosaka/Kosaka) is the ecstatic set closer, followed on Motto Motto by a Kosaka + Hosono duet version of Spring is Here. One of those songs where I'd welcome the outro being twice again as long. As would the protagonist! But the way the song seems to fade out even in a live arrangement, I think the implication is that the sleeping woman went on sleeping a while yet. 

I love how gently Kosaka and Matsutoya play together on the verses, the quarter-note strums cuddled by the quarter notes on piano.

The band name Four Joe Half is a pun on 四畳半 (yojouhan), a four and a half tatami room, an expression that I think was still a literal reckoning of size in the 1970s, and has since become proverbial for "the smallest and cheapest apartment possible". So maybe the "spacious room" in these lyrics is ironic. But since the song was most likely written in Sayama, where all these musicians accustomed to Tokyo city life could suddenly be living in entire houses of their own (whence the awe-struck/bemused album title Hosono House), the room probably was spacious — a whole lot of space for just one married couple.



:::



It's raining.
The copper pheasants' song
fills up the morning.
You're sleeping soundly.

The windows have clouded over.
The curtains are white.
And the rain goes on falling,
quietly falling.

I want to stay like this
longer, longer.
And I want to hold you
closer, closer.
I want to be with you
just like this
longer, longer,
because I love you...

I wonder whether
you're still dreaming here
within my arms.
Our spacious room
is filled up with
a grandfather clock
and broken toys.

I want to stay like this
longer, longer.
And I want to hold you
closer, closer.
I want to be with you
just like this
longer, longer,
because I love you...

I want to stay like this —
with you, together —
longer, longer.
And I want to hold you
closer, closer.
I want to be with you
just like this
longer, longer,
because I love you...

It's raining.
The copper pheasants' song
fills up the morning.
You're sleeping soundly.

The windows have clouded over.
The curtains are white.
And the rain goes on falling,
quietly falling.

I want to stay like this
longer, longer.
And I want to hold you
closer, closer.
I want to be with you
just like this
longer, longer,
because I love you...

I want to stay like this
longer, longer.
And I want to hold you
closer, closer.
I want to be with you
just like this
longer, longer.
I want to stay like this —
with you together —
longer, longer.
And I want to hold you
closer, closer.
I want to be with you,
be with you just like this
longer, longer,
because I love you...


(Back to: List of Translations)

Translation: The Huge Keyaki Tree (Chu Kosaka)

Chu Kosaka's vocal melodies are often simple and minimal, but even when they are, they sound so right. I don't know how he does it. There's a fine line between boring and meditative, and Kosaka (especially in this early period) likes to keep it in view, but always ends up on the "meditative" side, both feet planted firmly on the earth.

I don't know the context for the collaboration, but the words to The Huge Keyaki Tree (Kanzawa/Kosaka) are credited to Toshiko Kanzawa, a celebrated writer of Japanese literature. Wikipedia lists a book of the same title published in 1976. Perhaps this particular poem came out early, and Kosaka got permission through Mushroom to release the song...? An online search didn't turn up much.

:::

The huge keyaki tree —

the one out in

the open field —

is rustling in the wind.

Long ago,

ninjas used ninjutsu

to leap right over

huge keyaki like that.

"Hmmm. Did they now?"

rustles, rustles, rustles

the tree.

The huge keyaki tree —

the one out in

the open field —

is rustling in the wind.

Long ago,

ninjas used ninjutsu

to turn themselves into

huge keyaki like that.

"Hmmm. Did they now?"

rustles, rustles, rustles

the tree.

(Back to: List of Translations)

Translation: The Garden's Nice and Warm (Chu Kosaka)

In 1971, Chu Kosaka signed a "three albums in three years" deal with his label Mushroom. He didn't quite manage to get enough songs together for the first of the three, Arigatou, which is why his best friend Haruomi Hosono ended up contributing three songs.

Then, before you know it, it was 1972, and Kosaka — an incredible songwriter, but not a fast one — had written exactly three new songs. Or, okay, four, if you count one called Waiting for Spring, which he'd contributed to the Hosono-produced Japanese country music supergroup project Country Pumpkin (Hosono had two of his own originals on there, one of which likewise found a second home on Hosono House). But even counting Waiting for Spring, four new songs did not an album make.

Solution: record a Tokyo show with the touring band you put together in your artist commune neighborhood, to whom your wife gave the name Four Joe Half, most members of which (drummer Tatsuo Hayashi, keyboardist Masataka Matsutoya, and pedal steel guitarist Hiroki Komozawa) would head next door the following year to record Hosono House and (in Hayashi & Matsutoya's case, while Komozawa stuck around as an adjunct) become Caramel Mama.

The album was Motto Motto (kind of untranslatable out of context: maybe "More, More", echoing the audience's demands as a concert ends; but the phrase is drawn from the lyrics to Because I Love You, and nowhere in my English version does the phrase "more, more" appear as such; literally, it's something like "[Grammatical Intensifier], [Grammatical Intensifier]"). Six songs from Arigatou, one from Country Pumpkin, and the three fully new ones. 

Hosono and Shigeru Suzuki showed up too, guesting on a couple tracks, and received rapturously by the audience — I guess if you were at a Kosaka show in 1972, you knew exactly who Happy End were!

The new songs on Motto Motto — including this one here, The Garden's Nice and Warm (Kosaka/Kosaka) — are so awesome that I wish there had been more of them — ideally, enough for a second album in the uber-gentle folk-barely-rock Arigatou vein. The third Mushroom Kosaka album, 1973's Hazukashi sou ni, is terrific in its own right (ten new Kosaka originals!!!) but it's already leaning folk-soul — not a bad thing! It's just that, by then, Kosaka was leaving the Arigatou/Motto Motto sound behind. 

On Arigatou, Kosaka's city boy reveries-slash-travelogues of the country could be totally convincing or transparently fake, but come Motto Motto, the Sayama countryside had seeped into the blood. The quiet domestic bliss in the new songs is as real as it gets. I love that, in the first verse, Kosaka's wife is pissed off at him — mind you, they stayed together until Kosaka's death.

A note about the cat: when I was translating Arigatou, I really wanted to mention the fact that Hosono's cat was given him by Kosaka. What is friendship, if not the offer of a cat from your household to adopt?! But I couldn't find an appropriate place to mention it. 

Well, and now here it is: that's Omi-chan's cat who has slipped into his former caretaker's garden. 

:::

If you open the window,

the gentle fragrance

of winter daphnes

comes indoors

and even your angry expression

turns into a glad one.

The garden's nice and warm.

I'm feeling cheerful.

The garden's nice and warm.

I'm feeling cheerful.

If you open the window,

the gentle fragrance

of winter daphnes

comes indoors.

The cat from next door

is stretched out in the sun,

half-asleep.

The garden's nice and warm.

I'm feeling cheerful.

The garden's nice and warm.

I'm feeling cheerful.

(Back to: List of Translations)

Translation: The Tale of a Thousand and One Seconds (Seiko Matsuda)

Another from the archive of unfinished translations. When I started work on this, I didn't know that the title, The Tale of a Thousand and One Seconds (Ohtaki/Matsumoto), was an Inagaki Taruho reference. Many months of Morio Agata obsession later, whose favorite writer is Taruho, and who continues to hold the monthly-or-bimonthly free & everyone-is-invited-to-grab-an-instrument-and-play-along outdoor concerts called Taruho Picnics, I'm now also a bona fide Taruho fanatic.

Granted, this Seiko song has nothing in common with Taruho's stories other than the presence of the moon. Two separate Japanese blog posts point out how utterly unromantic Taruho's stories are, and what a contrast that makes with Matsumoto's text.

I've elaborated that romantic element a little in the second verse ("If I don't say much..."). The Japanese sticks to a straight metaphor — 町は銀河 — literally/drily, "our city [or, even more strictly, just "the city"] is the Milky Way." But as so often with idol-era Matsumoto, the heart of the art is the tone. And translations are new originals; we know this. So, sometimes these new originals sit close to the hearth, and sometimes they wander.

In any case, the Japanese in this song is simple — give the language one or two months of well-intentioned study and you'll be able to make most of Takashi's nuances out for yourself!



:::



In the sky, a paper moon —
a silver moon —
has deigned to shine on me.

As we walk together
after the party,
I tell you the truth:
"You know, that was my first kiss."
A fragrance of cool mint gum
lingers on my lips.

If I don't say much
just this minute,
will word get around
that I'm a boring girl?
I can see the whole city
from this hilltop —
no, not the city —
the Milky Way.
The smoke from your cigarette
permeates my line of sight.

In the sky, a paper moon —
a silver moon —
has deigned to shine on me.

In the sky, a paper moon —
a silver moon —
has deigned to shine on me.

Now don't you dare
let go of me, alright?
Not for the next
one thousand and one seconds...

We walk along
the rusty railroad tracks.
You've wrapped your coat
around me.
The city lights call us back,
but I want to stay
right where I am
at least a little while longer.

In the sky, a paper moon —
a silver moon —
has deigned to shine on me.

Please pinch my cheek.
Tell me that, despite everything,
I'm not dreaming.

And don't you dare
let go of me, alright?
Don't you dare
let go of me...



(Back to: List of Translations)

Translation: When the Sky and the Sea Blend into One (Young 101)

The backstory of this song is hard to puzzle out. Young 101 was some kind of TV program (maybe?) or music business pop-folk conglomerate (maybe?) (or both?), something to which a large group of young people were invited to contribute, anyway — primarily vocally, maybe? I venture that last guess because, on the album for which When the Sky and the Sea Blend into One (Osamu Shoji/Matsumoto) serves as closer, Side B has Caramel Mama backing. Right: what you're hearing is Haruomi Hosono on bass, Shigeru Suzuki on guitar (good luck picking him out, though; hint: right channel!), Masataka Matsutoya on keys, and Tatsuo Hayashi on drums.

Knowing that Caramel Mama's here will make you listen more deeply. So it's good that you know that now. Because, if you're like me, your first few listens would otherwise get submerged in the orchestral folk-pop bombast. Persevere! It's really a good song! The melodies are sophisticated and beautiful, the harmonies addictive. There are cool brass and clarinet parts, too. The arrangement is overdramatic, no doubt about it, but what's happening lyrically up in that sky above the sea is dramatic too — as is the song's personal drama, even if the way Matsumoto gets it across is characteristically subdued.

And here's the really cool thing: this song may be the grand finale of the entire Town of Wind concept.*

There aren't a lot of references online to this song, but in one of them, a commenter calls it the story of somebody who escapes the Town of Wind. I don't see textual evidence for that per se, but I love the image. 

The way I understand it, this is the song in which Takashi washes his hands — or, as the metaphorical case may be, his oil paints — clean. Hosono killed the band Matsumoto gave his heart to — alright, well, that's the end of that. Let's wrap things up.

If my interpretation is on point, the question remains: who's this "you" ? I can't figure it out. If or when I do, the translation may need some editing. But for now, here it is, with the central piece missing — which is itself, come to think of it, an appropriate metaphor for the end of Happy End: the songwriter alive & well — at the top of his game, in fact — but the context in which he thought his art would flourish, gone.

— at least, in a manner of speaking... the year this song came out (1973) also saw the release of Minami & Matsumoto's Heroine of the Skyscraper. And that's a major album. But however you choose to arrange your Matsumoto lore, 1973 certainly marked one crucial ending in Takashi Matsumoto's artistic life.

Would Hosono have made a Well, You Know, It's Summer-like masterpiece out of these words? Of course he would've, why even ask? But this was the world after Happy End and before Seiko Matsuda. There weren't a whole lot of Hosono/Matsumoto songs written in the years between 1973 and 1982.**

* at least prior to its unexpected one-off revival on Shigeru's 1975 album Band Wagon

** not a whole lot, indeed; only seven (or eight, if you count this late revision) that we know of

:::

The morning sky

seems made of molten dreams.

The only cloud that I can see

is as nimble 

as a flying fish.

The fishermen have yet to

bring their boats back to shore,

but it doesn't matter.

I'm letting my oil paints

dissolve in the water

as I carry on waiting

for you.

The striped patterns 

that the waves form

as they gently near the shore

close me in like slatted shutters.

The sand keeps crumbling

underneath my feet,

but it doesn't matter.

I'm letting my oil paints

dissolve in the water

as I carry on waiting

for you.

I'll wait right here 

until your wine-dark shadow

softly overlaps

my purple one.

The sea tilts,

bleeding like the evening twilight,

and dissolves in the sky.

The clouds have ignited

and fallen to earth,

but it doesn't matter.

I'm letting my oil paints

dissolve in the water

as I carry on waiting

for you.

(Back to: List of Translations)

Translation: When the Gods are Dozing (Hiro Yanagida)

The last two (vocal) songs on Hiro are kind of similar sonically, which makes Yanagida's gambit of sequencing them back-to-back even better: it shouldn't work, but it does. Both songs are wonderful, even if you hear one right after the other. In fact, all the Side B Takashi/Hiro co-writes are wonderful. But so are the ones on Side A. And even moreso, every last Matsumoto co-write on the Sons of Sun album. 

My point is, Happy End is enough of a miracle already, but now I have this additional gladness of knowing Hiro was helping bring music to even more 1972 Matsumoto lyrics. These two Yanagida records have burst my understanding of the Happy End period wide open. The 'Town of Wind' project feels a lot wider now than when I thought it was two and a half records, and no more. These Yano albums are a key part of the Matsumoto lore, and they’re both so beautiful — how could they be this unsung!

That's what all this gushing is for, you see. I need to help restore the balance.

So here’s  When the Gods are Dozing (Yanagida/Matsumoto) — I love the ambiguity and mystery at the heart of the lyrics, and the lingering uncertainty that the song ends on repetitions of.

The first line alludes to, or prefigures, or gave inspiration to, a song Matsumoto wrote a year later: When the Sky and the Sea Blend into One, which feels like a valediction to the entire Town of Wind chapter of Matsumoto’s work. That connection casts the shadow of endings on When the Gods are Dozing as well.

:::

When the sky and the sea blend into one,

the world looks

just like an oil painting.

The gods, for their part, are dozing.

You bow down your head

and start praying.

Painted by the wind,

you're trembling,

your eyes closed,

your delicate hands stretched out.

I wonder what it is you're in search of.

Abruptly the sky

splits right apart

and light dangles down

from the crevice.

The gods, for their part, are dozing.

Placing my arm around your shoulders

I bow my head down too.

Painted by the wind,

you're trembling,

your eyes closed,

your delicate hands stretched out.

I wonder what it is you're in search of.

I wonder what it is you're in search of.

(Back to: List of Translations)

Translation: Evening Love (Chu Kosaka)

Evening Love (Kosaka/Koh), the most classically city-pop song on Horo, has music by Chu himself (which, in the Horo / Morning era, was rare) and lyrics by Eika Koh, to whom Kosaka was married. 

It's a wonderful love song. In its "this is all really a little too much" spirit, Evening Love reminds me of Hosono's Choo Choo! and the Clattering Train. But where Hosono's narrator was ready to throw in the towel, Koh's is indomitable. The couple in this song can only spend one day a week together: it's not a lot, but it's something, and these two lovers are going to make sure it counts.

Mind that the title is a pun. ゆうがた (yuugata) means "evening" but considering how it's pronounced and the word that appears next, the song's title sounds a lot like "you gotta love." — I figured that much out on my own, and found my surmise confirmed in the Chu's Café episode about this song, and therefore felt all clever and perceptive. But Kosaka went on to reveal that the album title is a pun too! — ほうろう, romanized on the front cover as Horo, punning on the phrase "hold on." I had no idea. 

There's a great episode of Daisy Holiday with Eika. Chu had passed away a year earlier. Hosono had been charged with preparing the tracklist for the two-disc Ultimate Best Chu Kosaka retrospective. Eika, who married Kosaka in the early '70s and was with him until his death, wondered whether it hadn't been too painful a task, but Haruomi assures her that, bittersweet though the task may have been, he had a lot of fun ("it was so hard to pick only two CDs' worth of songs!"). The two reminisce about the friend and companion they had lost. Eika calls Hosono "Omi-chan."

Speaking of the passage of time, the line "but Sundays are all yours" took on an unexpected meaning for Kosaka after his conversion to Christianity later that decade. Please go watch the Chu's Café episode just so you can enjoy Kosaka's smile as he reflects on how that worked out.

:::

On Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays

I work at the movie theater

all evening long,

all evening long.

Otherwise I'm

at the drink stand, selling

Coca-Cola,

Coca-Cola.

Daytime? Nope.

Nighttime? Nope.

But Sundays are all yours.

(Thursday, Friday, Saturday.)

(Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.)

(Thursday, Friday, Saturday.)

(Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.)

On Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays,

it rains.

Crowds of people.

Crowds of people.

Weekly magazines

and a crowded train:

I'm a day laborer.
I'm a day laborer.

Daytime? Nope.

Nighttime? Nope.

But Sundays are all yours.

(Thursday, Friday, Saturday.)

(Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.)

(Thursday, Friday, Saturday.)

(Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.)

I don't have any steady work.

Just part-time jobs.

Just part-time jobs.

I never even have

two days off in a row.

Crowds of people.

Crowds of people.

Daytime? Nope.

Nighttime? Nope.

But Sundays are all yours.

(Thursday, Friday, Saturday.)

(Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.)

(Thursday, Friday, Saturday.)

(Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.)

(Thursday, Friday, Saturday.)

(Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.)

(Thursday, Friday, Saturday.)

(Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.)

(Thursday, Friday, Saturday.)

(Back to: List of Translations)

Translation: The Thread that Pulls the Well Bucket Up (Chu Kosaka)

The Thread that Pulls the Well Bucket Up is an Akiko Yano song that the Horo liner notes credit to Akiko Suzuki, because Akiko (who was essentially a full-time member of Tin Pan Alley by that point, stepping in for the marvelous Masataka Matsutoya, who had diverged away from Hosono's Caramel Mama operations so that he could focus better on musical collaborations with his wife-to-be, then still known as Yumi Arai — which is not to suggest that the Caramel Mama guys left Masataka + Yumi behind! Hosono visited various Yumi albums in various capacities, or sent Hideki Matsutake in his stead; and Shigeru Suzuki and Tatsuo Hayashi remained mainstays of the personnel on Yumi albums for years) hadn't yet married Makoto Yano (a genius arranger and frequent Takashi Matsumoto collaborator in the years just after Happy End).

The title turns on a pun: the 糸 in つるべ糸 ("ito," meaning thread) is a mere shift of a consonant away from 井戸, ("ido," meaning water well). In the Chu's Café episode about this song, Kosaka lingers appreciatively over Yano's image, recalling a job he once had, hauling water from a well. "You need a good solid rope to pull the bucket out," he notes. "A mere thread would, of course, be too thin!"

Akiko's own version of the song closes her odds-and-sods second album, Iroha ni Kompeito (perhaps better known as the dolphin album), under a different title: The Cold Wind from the Mountains (The East Wind). 

Incidentally, also appearing on that Yano album is her cover of Horo's title track Wandering, as well as Hosono's Sharing an Umbrella from Happy End's third album (from which Hosono and Kosaka also drew for Horo, revisiting Suzuki/Matsumoto's Sketch from the Month of Sleet and Hosono's Wanderer) (for Akiko's Umbrella, see here). 

All this interconnectivity naturally stems from the fact that, as you (dear reader) are perfectly aware, the Hosonoverse is woefully short on connections between the people and projects involved. I mean — it's as if the people in this circle were hardly interacting at all! Couldn't they have produced each other's albums occasionally?! They were all living in the same damn city, weren't they? At least throw in a guest spot here and there, for god's sake, come on.

:::

The autumn days

end early,

the sun like a bucket

dropping down a well.

My fingers turn numb

as I walk home.

I'm blowing kisses

at the trembling city.

The moon's gaze

keeps me safe.

I'm feeling warm

inside.

And you, east wind —

oh whimsical wind that you are —

at last I have the chance

to talk with you.

There isn't a single wave

on the ocean of my heart.

You alone are floating

ever forward in it,

ever forward in it.

(Back to: List of Translations)

Translation: It's Getting Boring (Chu Kosaka)

It's Getting Boring (Hosono/Matsumoto) was originally a pure Hosono original called Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo, in reference to the 1948 song, with lyrics (like Wandering) about dancing and old-time music. Someone in Alfa was dismayed that music so impeccably poppy should get tied up with Hosono's idiosyncrasies like that, and called Takashi Matsumoto in to save the day.

I'm sure Hosono's original ruled too, but this company-mandated rewrite is an incredible Matsumoto lyric, so thank you, Alfa moguls, for being such enemies of self-expression.

This was one of the first Hosono songs I loved, playing it a ton when I was getting to know the first disc of his 20th Century Box. The melodies were infectious, the backing vocals aimed for the sky, Kosaka's voice was soft and emotional in the verses, and passionately uplifted in the refrains. And then there was the fact that this burst of utter joy soundtracked the words "sayonara baby." And then one day I realized that what Kosaka was singing in one of the verses was "I'm grateful, baby, / that you were always smiling. / I had fun" and, considering all the insistent goodbyes the song is filled with, the lines blew my mind. "What is this miasma of malevolent tenderness?!" I wondered. I looked up the title in the dictionary and was presented with "completely disenchanted." Mind BLOWN! AGAIN!

Turns out that the phrase has a different connotation too, which is the one Matsumoto is using. There remains a smidgen of disappointment, a slight shadow on my heart, that "completely disenchanted" isn't what Kosaka and his marvelous Minako Yoshida / Tatsuro Yamashita / Taeko Ohnuki chorus is belting out, but it's okay. The lyrics are fantastic regardless.

The bravado and callousness of the narrator will be familiar from certain other Matsumoto texts, but the moments where that veneer almost breaks apart makes this take on a favorite theme unusual. Granted, the lines are too fierce and the offhanded cruelty too habitual for the "insensitive tough guy" attitude to be mere pretense, but the narrator is clearly barely holding it together himself, exaggerating his own cruelty to hurry the farewell along, lest he shatter in the presence of the girl that, for reasons we're not privy to, he's so desperate to be done with.

Matsumoto is a high priest of the "happy tune, miserable lyrics" technique, but if there's a song in his catalogue where that contrast is starker than it is here, I can't wait to hear it.

P.S. I'm not sure how long the link will last (that is to say, whether their website or mine will vanish from the Internet first, or whether we'll combust epically together!), but Alfa's channel has this great, long interview with Kosaka about the volcanic masterpiece we know as Horo. What's more, it has English subtitles.

Other good links: a contemporary live performance with Tin Pan Alley (with a precious but infuriating video; why on earth would they intersperse still photographs with this footage?) and Kenji Sato's bass cover.

:::

Let's end things tastefully, hey.

Goodbye, baby.

No turning around for one last look.

He's out there somewhere, waiting for you.

Go on, baby.

Hurry up and get out of here.

I don't go in for crying.

If there's crying, we'll be right back where we started,

and it's getting boring.

It's always just wounds all over.

Love, romance, all of that — I've had enough, really,

it's getting boring.

Don't look at me

with such misery in your eyes, baby.

It might rub off on me.

Sentimentality isn't my thing,

crybaby.

You shouldn't depend on others so much.

You'll get used to being by yourself.

Eventually you'll feel better.

Come on, it's getting boring.

It's getting boring.

It's getting boring.

I'm grateful, baby,

that you were always smiling.

I had fun.

Now let's shrug

and go our own ways home, baby,

whistling as we walk away.

I don't go in for crying.

If there's crying, we'll be right back where we started,

and it's getting boring.

It's getting boring.

It's getting boring.

It's getting boring.

Goodbye, baby.

Goodbye, baby.

Goodbye, baby.

Goodbye, baby.
Goodbye, baby.

Goodbye, baby...

(Back to: List of Translations)

Translation: Oh Youth (Takuro Yoshida)

Thematically and tonally, Oh Youth (Yoshida/Matsumoto) is a rank stranger to the Town of Wind, but the way the lyrics work — their playful structure, the imagery, the cruelty, the stark vision — is the way Happy End songs worked too. It’s a glimpse of an alternate timeline in which the band got back together a year after making their ‘72 album, but Takashi, for one reason or another, got more and more cynical over the years (about life, not the band).

I’ve dug around for Japanese lore about this song and have gathered that the people who know it treasure it. It’s an anthem alright — and yet so personal, and also — for all the flames in the chorus — cold.

The composer is Takuro Yoshida, a folk musician three years Matsumoto's senior. Oh Youth was their first (and, thankfully, far from last) collaboration.

The tune was originally an instrumental theme for a popular detective show on TV; for some reason or another, someone somewhere commissioned Takashi to write words for it, and specified that the lyrics needed to involve counting. Lo and behold: a spectral, bitter, bone-splintering masterpiece. Origin stories sometimes have nothing to do with anything at all.

If I’ve done my research correctly, this 1975 performance at a massive music festival was the first time anyone outside Yoshida’s circle and management heard the song. It looks like the start of Yoshida’s set. His band is up there, playing the familiar instrumental version, the TV show theme; and as they're approaching the end, the 28-year-old Yoshida strides onstage with his acoustic guitar, receives a rapturous welcome, and — plot twist! — steps up to the mic and begins to sing. A stir runs through the crowd. The microphone levels are good, and Yoshida sings Matsumoto’s lines with with clarity (meaning they’re audible) and passion (meaning they grab your attention) — though in fact no one would have known, yet, that the lyrics were Matsumoto’s. I wonder how many people in that huge audience had been Happy End fans.

I presume that there’s not a lot of us who grew up outside of Japan who know anything about this performance, or this festival, or even this artist; but it feels like a milestone moment in rock music history. First time I watched the video footage, I got chills.

Now for the translation notes. My version is a lot less literal than I would normally allow myself to be, but

(A) the structural conceit is tricky: there are two verses of four lines each, and each of them begins with a numeral reference, counting 1 to ... well, two verses of four lines equals eight lines, so you would think 1 to 8, right? But Takashi counts to 10, slipping 7 and 10 into the back half of 6 and 9’s respective lines. In some cases, Takashi says literally “firstly,” “thirdly,” “fifthly,” or “eighthly,” but that “firstly” (ひとつ) is immediately followed by a “one person alone” (ひとり), and the second line plays off of this, mentioning “two people together” (ふたり) but omitting a “secondly” (ふたつ). Lines four, six, seven, and nine pun on the words you would expect (that is, “fourthly,” “sixthly,” etc.) by borrowing the opening syllable or syllables of, say, “fourthly” (よっつ, yottsu) and instead substituting a different word that begins with an identical syllable or syllables (so, in this case, 酔いつぶれ, yoitsubure, meaning "dead drunk")

and also (B) Takashi’s lines are short and dense. Maintaining their brevity would have meant giving short shrift to the speaker’s tone, which is arguably the most important thing about the song.

So once I realized my usual literalist approach wasn’t getting anywhere, I said “fuck it,” made the counting explicit (because, good luck translating puns), and decided that it would be okay for the English lines to be long and intricate (versus Takashi’s short and dense) as long as I was getting the tone across and making the images clear.

I’d love to see alternate English takes on these lyrics, but doubt I ever will, and probably neither will any of you; so please just remember that my translation, while divergent, was made while I was fully under the sway of the song’s emotions, and that my version is imbued with love for the original. That’ll have to suffice.

Or else you’ll have to learn Japanese too.

Or else you can play with AI and see what our Good Robot Cube comes up with. (Anyone else a veteran of Live a Live?)

:::

So — one —

you're either by yourself,

which is horribly lonely,

or — two —

you're with somebody

in a room

where even the air suffocates you,

and in any case — three —

you're crushed to pieces

by your unfulfilled dreams,

all while — four —

the city is dancing

with the drunk evening wind.

You've only just finished

counting your sorrows,

and the day has already

grown dark.

Is youth like

the shimmering

heat of the summer

the moment the shimmer

combusts?

Is youth like

the shimmering

heat of the summer

the moment the shimmer

combusts?

Now, listen  — five — 

life's aftertaste is so foul

that — six — by the time you're done 

thinking it over,

seven — you'll have cried 

a whole ocean of tears.

And — eight (oh, would you stop counting) —

even when you're holding

somebody tight in your arms,

(nine) your heart is already

(ten) leaving these cheap lodgings behind.

You're busy counting

your sleepless nights

as day after day

slips by.

Is youth like

the shimmering

heat of the summer

the moment the shimmer

combusts?

Is youth like

the shimmering

heat of the summer

the moment the shimmer

combusts?

(Back to: List of Translations)

Translation: Shooting Star City (Chu Kosaka)

One of two new Hosono/Matsumoto songs on Horo, Shooting Star City is the result of an alchemical process. Hosono reused the verses from Tanger by Apryl Fool, the first band he and Takashi played in together (famous for pulling the great reverse-publicity stunt in which they announced their break-up the same day their debut album came out), rewriting the bassline into the kind of glorious show-stopping thing you expect from him in 1975 and adding a new funk-soul chorus. Takashi, for his part, transplanted elements of the unreleased Happy End song Drifting Clouds into an indoor setting, making the characters' situation less earthy, more urbane-sophisticated. Their interaction is a whole lot less meaningful this time around (Drifting Clouds is one of my favorite lyrics of all time), but still touching.

Shooting Star City isn't one of Horo's standouts.* I didn't like it much at all for months — but there came one midsummer day when, climbing our little local mountain while listening to this song through headphones, I decided to sing along...

There is a category of song that can leave you cold if all you're doing is playing it, but blossom into beauty when you sing it. Strange to consider, isn't it? — that some songs are meant more for fellow singers to indulge in than for your average, non-musician listener? Chadwick Stokes has written a lot of songs like that.

The bassline and arrangement of Shooting Star City are fantastic no matter what, of course, but if you're like me, then to enjoy the vocal you'll have to put yourself in Kosaka's shoes.

* Edit, two days later: as I was writing that line, I was thinking about how subjective music can of course be, and wondered whether there are in fact listeners who rate this song highly. And what would you know, today I stumbled on a review in which someone called Shooting Star City not just their favorite song on Horo, but the song that singlehandedly launched their lifelong love of music.



:::

Your skin is pale fire 

where it's lit by the moon.

The city spreads out

from your billowing skirt.

I'm eternally in love.

It's with you I'm in love. 

I'm dozing off with my head in your lap

and we'll stay just that way until morning.

The curls of your hair

and your lips

are weaving dreams.

The submarine from H. G. Wells

floats by outside the window.

I'm eternally in love.

It's with you I'm in love.

Captain Nemo is playing 

the Hammond organ.

Shooting stars are falling

like rain over the city.

I hold you as you tremble

and that's how we cross the night.

I'm eternally in love.

It's with you I'm in love.

It's so warm in your arms.

I'm almost asleep.

I'm eternally in love.

It's with you I'm in love. 

I'm dozing off with my head in your lap

and we'll stay just that way until morning.

(Back to: List of Translations)

Translation: Tales of First Love (Norihiko Hashida & Endless)

1972 was the year of the epic Hiro Yanagida collaborations and, of course, the final (and still my favorite) Happy End album. By 1974, Takashi Matsumoto was establishing himself as a professional lyricist. Inbetween was 1973, which is when most of the work (if not actual releases) of Takashi's great Production Year was getting done. Lyrics were on the backburner.

Among the few he did write in '73 is Tales of First Love (Hashida/Matsumoto), recorded by Norihiko Hashida & Endless. A great overview of Takashi's work in the early '70s points out that his lyrics here are "not particularly virtuosic." Right: they're too general and abstracted, and on the sappy side (although Takashi may not be fully to blame for that; consider the title of the non-Matsumoto B-side, "Youth is a Journey of Tears", and you can see the vibe Hashida, or Hashida's label, was going for). 

But one does not leave the best band in the world and go straight to writing trash. The second verse, for instance ("we were busy /  tickling..."), is pretty great — there's an element of startled wonder in the Japanese that I couldn't figure out a way to get across in English. And the chorus, while labored, and unnecessarily dense, says something real and disquieting.

Call it growing pains, maybe. Speaking with Shigeru Suzuki about Heroine of the Skyscraper (Matsumoto's contribution to the Happy End era's begun/then scrapped/but ultimately transfigured "four solo albums" project), Takashi laughed and said, "Happy End would have instantly rejected a song titled Heroine of the Skyscraper." They would have rejected Tales of First Love too, on artistic rather than thematic grounds. But the thing is, if you're trying to move your art somewhere new, you're bound to take some wrong turns here and there; and without those wrong turns, you wouldn't know which way you should actually go.

Besides, it's a good song. The melodicism and drive of Hashida's tune shore up the places where Takashi fumbles, while the slightly askew manner in which Takashi goes about writing a conventional love song / youth anthem does the same for the unadventurous early-'70s folk-pop arrangement.

Plus, it's addictive! I've played it thirty times today alone!



:::



We were busy

with our bittersweet kisses.

Our fingers intertwined,

we smiled and daydreamed

about love.

A first love is like the wind —

transparent, lemon-yellow wind

that blows and blows among the seasons

we've forgotten.

And time keeps flowing 

ever forward.

All this happened

long ago.

We were busy

tickling each other's ears

with our whispers.

We were spilling

radiant love 

over our hands.

A first love is like the wind —

transparent, lemon-yellow wind

that blows and blows among the seasons

we've forgotten.

But you are someone

I remember:

a girl I knew once,

long ago.

A first love is like the wind —

transparent, lemon-yellow wind

that blows and blows among the seasons

we've forgotten.

But you are someone

I remember:

a girl I knew once,

long ago.

(Back to: List of Translations)

Translation: The Door of the Heart (Agnes Chan)

I'm finishing up my work at the university I've been teaching at for eight years, preparing to move south and inland, and juggling a whole variety of time commitments related to not especially interesting things. In this way, I make no progress transcribing the Zipangu Boy lyric sheet, let alone translating it. 

But as I find myself slipping back into Takashi Matsumoto obsession (is it the season? his stuff feels so right in summertime... will my life henceforth be a series of Summers of Matsumoto?! maybe it wasn't just a beautiful one-off!?), I've uncovered several part-finished Matsumoto translations among my notes, some of which I forgot ever starting. I can work on them in two or three minutes installments, and it makes me happy, so here's The Door of the Heart (Masaaki Hirao/Matsumoto) from 1975.

Exquisite high harmonies — a glorious, tremendously sweet refrain — unexpected, forthright, and pure lyrics that call the word "crystalline" to mind — sure enough, it's Takashi writing for Agnes Chan. 

How long will their collaboration be this great? Always? All twenty-eight of Takashi's songs for Agnes could rule, couldn't they? Why not? Ah, the heart is a hopeful machine.

Also: I perk up every time Takashi uses "wind" as an image. You should too. It's his favorite image, after all, and not one he uses lightly.



:::



I knock,

but your gentle voice doesn't answer.

You invited me to come,

and that's why I came,

but now look, I'm heading back alone,

and it's already Sunday.

I strain my ears

but hear nothing beyond

the anxious pounding

of my heart.

I wonder where you are

and who you're with.

The door to your heart

is firmly shut.

I want my love

to turn into

the key that will unlock it.

I wonder how

you feel about me.

I wish I could turn into wind,

slip through the keyhole

and find out.

And I wonder what is written

in the diary you keep 

inside your room.

I wish I could turn into wind

and take a peek

as I ruffle the diary's pages.

The door to your heart

is firmly shut.

I want my love

to turn into

the key that will unlock it.

The door to your heart

is firmly shut.

I want my love

to turn into

the key that will unlock it.

(Back to: List of Translations)

Translation: Schooldays Spent Daydreaming (Part 2) (Morio Agata)

One of the audacious things about Morio Agata is that he'll fill his albums with reprises... no I know, that in itself is not audacious, lots of artists do that (not, however, enough artists). But you know how standard procedure is to put space between repeating motifs? The Band on the Run chorus bookends its album; Mrs. Vandebilt's reappears only towards the end of Side B; there are several minutes of music between You Never Give Me Your Money and Carry That Weight; The Happiest Days of Our Lives divides Another Brick in the Wall 1 and 2; etc. That's standard procedure. 

But Agata's never bothered much with standard. 

His 1985 psych-folk triple-album masterpiece 永遠の遠国 (That Everlasting, Far-Off Land) is a wonderful extreme, with Side A basically being different arrangements of the same song all lined up in a row, and Side E doing the same thing again (even more transparently) for a different song. And those two songs still get reprised in a more ordinary way on Sides D and F.

And so, directly after Schooldays Spent Daydreaming (Part 1) comes Schooldays Spent Daydreaming (Part 2) (Agata/Agata, arr. Keiichi Suzuki). Honestly, listening to the album straight through, you wouldn't necessarily realize that Parts 1 and 2 are different tracks. It transitions so smoothly.

The arranger is Keiichi Suzuki of Moonriders, later of The Beatniks (with Yukihiro Takahashi), and later still of Mother/Earthbound OSV fame. Keiichi, who produced That Everlasting, Far-Off Land, learned the trade by observing Haruomi Hosono work on Zipangu Boy. As the double album took shape, Suzuki found himself wishing that Hosono would just fall asleep already, so that he (Suzuki) would have a chance to take over for half a track or two. No words were spoken about this burning desire but Hosono must have noticed, because here and there pockets were suddenly left open, as if on purpose, for Suzuki to take the lead on — Schooldays 2 being one of them.

Haruomi and Keiichi were old friends by then. Keiichi was already hovering around in the Happy End days (he and Agata, who were in a band called Hachimitsu Pie together, got Hosono to play bass on Agata's home-recorded 1970 debut album, 蓄音盤 / The Gramophone). He played piano with them at their farewell concert in autumn 1973, and liked to daydream of the band continuing with him in it full-time.

Postscript: there aren't many things better than being so moved by a song that I cry while I'm translating it. I wonder if Zipangu Boy will have moments like that. I did tear up a little bit, working on this one. But what I really want is to weep like a baby.

:::

The distant silver sea...

Schooldays spent daydreaming.

All of us enjoying

summer break together...

Schooldays spent daydreaming.

I'll be a good boy, and wait...

And where are those terraced fields

swimming off to now?

Ever closer to the sea.

Ding-dong... dreaming days.

The distant silver country...

Schooldays spent daydreaming.

And all along, the summer break...

Schooldays spent daydreaming.

I'll be a good boy, and wait

for my ear infection to get better.

It's not like I've never swum before.

We'll all go swimming,

and we'll swim fast.

Ding-dong... dreaming days.

.

And so the boy dozes, and dreams, and finds himself embarking on a journey to the Pure Land.

(Back to: List of Translations)