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...


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