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 down my head 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)