I am so, so sorry to keep y'all waiting for this translation for a whole year and a half... but in a way, I'm not actually sorry. This is, without exaggeration, the most difficult Buck-Tick translation I've ever done (runner-up, Guernica no Yoru.)
It's not because "Boukyaku" is technically difficult in terms of words and phrases - it's not. But the meaning is oblique. Yeah, the lyrics to so many Buck-Tick songs are oblique in meaning, and I never let that stop me before. But at the nexus of the pandemic, the cancelled Buck-Tick tours, and the things I've been going through in my personal life through this time, this song aroused a lot of very strong emotions in me and I wanted to sit with it, tease it out, let it percolate before I translated it. Like so much of Sakurai's recent work, it's yin-yang level multi-faceted. Is it happy, or sad? It's both, and one in the other, and both in each, both because it's each, each because it's both. How best to express that?
If you just glance at these lyrics, maybe you'll think they're simple - and they are, deceptively so, like most of everything Sakurai has ever written. Let's start with the word "hitosuji," which he uses in the first verse to mean "stream (of blood)" (as in, one drop of blood dripping down), and in the second verse to mean "stream of a tear" (one tear dripping down). In Japanese, this word literally means "one line." So first, we have the comparison between a drop of blood flowing, and a tear flowing. The verb here, "nijimu," is one that Sakurai likes a lot, and we've seen it before very recently, in the lyrics to "Koi" and the lyrics to "Villain" - in both cases, to express oozing blood. Here, we see it to express both oozing blood and oozing tears - a upwelling and slow flow that leaves a trail behind - so, a drop of blood flowing down skin, a teardrop flowing down a face.
But then, we have the ever-present "me vs. you" that Sakurai employs in his lyrics. He stated in interviews that in this song, he was trying to express the way that some people hurt others because of the pain in their past, because they can't get past it, because they can't help themselves - but that ultimately, through hurting others, they hurt themselves the most. Sakurai, the son of an abusive alcoholic father, who has spoken openly throughout his life about the trauma he has suffered, is clearly referring to himself in the victim role - but probably also in the perpetrator role. Why do I say this? Because he's written many songs where he laments having hurt other people without meaning to - "Rain" is probably the most notable, but there are a sheaf of others ("Megami," "Zangai," even "Guernica no Yoru.") On this album, "Villain" might get an honorable mention - not that he's admitting to cyberbullying (perish the thought! but just sit for a minute with the image of him typing spam comments on Buck-Tick's YouTube channel...), but in most of his lyrics about injury or crime/punishment, he maintains a sense of culpability, like he really doesn't want to turn a blind eye from the way everyone can be complicit in tableaux of abuse. He knows he is the next link in the chain of his family's trauma.
So, "senketsu hitosuji," or "stream of blood." How is it relevant? Well, a stream usually only flows one way. It flows from me, to you (or you, to me?). That's just like time, which is the other theme of this song, and also a one-way road. Time flows from then, to now. And yet, there's the implicit duality in the lyrics, the pas de deux of perpetrator-victim. There is a sense of back-and-forth flow, as the pain inflicted rebounds on its originator. (Which connects well with the ambiguous back-and-forth perpetrator-victim dialogues in "Villain" and "Urahara-juku.") At first I thought of translating "hitosuji" as "track," as in "tracks of my tears." But does a "track" flow? In writing this translation, I thought a lot, even more than I usually do, about word choice - not just the denotations and connotations of the words, but the way they sound when you speak or sing them. I really wanted this translation to flow, like blood, or like tears. "Track" sounds harsh, stopped-up, thick. So instead, I chose "stream," to express that flowing feeling - the nature of blood, tears, emotions, time, memory and wind - the main themes in this song.
There's a connection here to the theme of Buck-Tick's album One Life, One Death (2000). The title of this album comes from the lyrics to the song "Cyborg Dolly: Soramimi: Phantom" (by Imai), which go "You live on the straight line / We’re born once, we die once / We die once, only once." We doubt that Sakurai was thinking of this when he penned the lyrics to "Boukyaku," but the two form another sort of dialogue. "Hitosuji," the straight line, the arrow of time, the thrust of a sword into a wound - same as Imai's thesis statement, "we die once, only once." Sakurai comes to more or less the same conclusion at the end of "Boukyaku," with the line "all these irreplaceable days." Life's a one-way street. You can't go back. And yet, in "Boukyaku," there's still this sense of flow, of connection, of return - that everything is not quite as linear as it might seem.
Another main theme in this song is wind. This is another deep one. In Japanese poetry, the image of strong wind is often used as a metaphor for adversity, though it can also be used as a metaphor for positive support, with the word "oikaze" ("tailwind.") In this song, I couldn't help but also think of Bob Dylan's famous anti-war/protest anthem "Blowin' in the Wind" (if you don't know it, look it up, please.) It's not entirely clear whether Sakurai wrote this whole song before or after the pandemic began, but it seems like he finished it up following the pandemic. But even if he didn't... it doesn't really matter. "Wind" is also breath. The breath that we breathe in and out every minute (and isn't that theme of breath pandemic-relevant, despite Sakurai's insistence that he didn't want to let the pandemic affect his lyric-writing). But "wind" is also the spirit of life.
The English words "spirit," "inspire," "respire," and "conspire" are all derived from the Latin root "respirare," meaning, "to breathe." Spirit = "that which breathes." Inspire - "to be given breath." Respire = "to breathe again." Conspire = "to breathe together." But this connection is by no means limited to languages influenced by Latin - it goes much, much deeper into human consciousness. In Japanese, the phrase "kaze wo hiku" ("to catch a cold") literally means "to pull the wind." Also, the kanji for "kaze" (「風」, "wind"), when read with its on-yomi, or Chinese-derived reading, "fuu," means "feeling," "vibe," "atmosphere," or "flavor." It can be found in words like 「風」 ("fuu," "manner/vibe"), 「風味」 ("fuumi," "flavor"), and 「風景」 ("fuukei," "scenery/view"). There is, naturally, a deep-seated sense in human beings that the flow of wind and breath is what propels life forward. Each breath we take marks the time we live on this earth. Wind travels from one part of the earth to another, carrying messages. In Western occult symbology, the element of air (wind) represents ideas, concepts, dreams, and imagination. Things that float past. Things that have no substance. Spirits, vibes. Things that travel from here to there, like sound waves, and like time. Things that flow, like sound waves, and like time. The stuff of thought, or memories. Wind and water have a commonality in the fact that they flow, they are never still, and Sakurai draws on this commonality in these lyrics, not just by mentioning both tears/blood (i.e. water) and wind, but also connecting the two with the image of "toori ame," or "passing rainfall." The wind blows the rainstorm across us, over and away, as the water falls, then ceases.
Overall, the connection of these two images lead us to the heart of the song: nothing ever stays static. Everything flows onward. You can't hold onto anything. The passion and the pain both rain down and then blow away. And, depending on your perspective, this could feel like grief, or like a blessing. On the one hand, there's often so much we want to hold onto from the past - the beautiful moments with people and places now lost. On the other hand, there's so much we want to be able to let go of. The pain of the times we were wounded or abused. The pain of the memories of the times we ourselves were the ones who caused the pain or abuse.
In this song, Sakurai says, "let it go." He says that it's okay to let go of the past, that it doesn't define you, good or bad. His invocation of "the rainbow you saw today" underscores this. How many moments of wonder, joy, and beauty have we forgotten, or let us pass us by? In the last stanza, Sakurai says, everything passes by anyway, and it's fine to forget about it - but, remember, it's irreplaceable. He doesn't come and say it outright, but the ultimate implication is, you have to live in the moment. Be here now. Feel what you feel. It's kind of the opposite of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." It's, "see that rainbow before it fades." (And then there was this adorable post on Imai's Instagram, about the rainbow his daughter saw in the park.) In any case, in my final draft I chose to translate the final line as "Oh, all those irreplaceable days." But my second choice translation was, "Today's the only day, every day." So I've also written an alternative ending.
In translating this song, my biggest question was, who is Sakurai really referring to when he says "you"? In the first verse, it seems clear that the "you" is another person, someone he (or the narrator of the song) hurt, but as it goes on, it gets less and less clear. When we get to "Ah, but when I am embraced by you / All my tears, they slowly vanish," I started to wonder. Is this a tale of forgiveness and redemption? Is this "you" the same person who was hurt, or another person who has forgiven the song's narrator his past sins and absolved him with love? Or, is this "you" a more cosmic "you," the love of the entire Universe, as it takes our souls back into its arms after our brief mortal lives here on this Earth? The answer, as usual, is probably, "all of the above," and/or "you decide." But I wanted to draw attention to the ambiguity here.
There is a strong belief in Eastern religion and philosophy, going back many thousands of years, in the non-linear nature of time - cosmic cycles and reincarnation. But if we are reincarnated, why don't remember our past lives? The answer is an idea called "the veil of forgetting." Each time we're born, our souls pass through this veil, and temporarily lose all memory of their previous lifetimes. Then, each time we die, we return through the veil, to the outer cosmos, and regain the memories. Buck-Tick have dealt a lot with themes of reincarnation over the course of their career, hell, they even made a whole album about it (Six/Nine). So, why forget? What's the point of reincarnating if you have to start everything over? Why can't you keep what you've learned? In fact, in many cases, people do keep some of what they've learned - whether through flashes of past life memories, or more nebulous things like dreams and gut feelings and inexplicable attractions to certain places, people, or activities. But the point of forgetting everything before each new birth is so that each new lifetime can be experienced afresh - so that you can live in the moment again, as the new you, having new, authentic experience, without being weighed down by what might be tens or hundreds of lifetimes' worth of not only joy and pleasure, but also pain, regret, sorrow, and trauma. Between lifetimes, and also within lifetimes, forgetting can be salvation.
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Forgotten
Lyrics: Sakurai Atsushi
Music: Imai Hisashi
I sit alone here waiting
For nightmare
Fresh, a stream of my flowing blood
Like tears falls
Oh, how I have wounded you
Deeply, oh, so deeply
And so, too, have I wounded me
Deeply, so deeply
In the quiet, my panting breath
Unravels
Fresh, a stream of my flowing tears
Still falling
Ah, but when I am embraced by you
All my tears, they slowly vanish
Ah, and when I'm wrapped up in you
The tears all melt away
Ah, let go and let it be forgotten
Pass over like a brief-falling rain
Like on a sunny day spent doing nothing
Wind blowing, let it blow it away
In the wind
But when I melt into you, the pain
Ah, slowly it leaves me
Ah, and when I'm wrapped up in you
The pain, it leaves you, too (1)
Ah, let go and let it be forgotten
Pass over like a brief-falling rain
Like on a sunny day spent doing nothing
Wind blowing, let it blow it away
Ah, let go and let it be forgotten
Just like that rainbow you saw today
Like on a sunny day spent doing nothing
Oh, all those irreplaceable days (2)
Everyone
Everybody lives them through
.
[Alternate ending]
Ah, let go and let it be forgotten
Just like that rainbow you saw today
Like on a sunny day spent doing nothing
Today's the only day, every day (2)
Everyone
Everybody lives it through
Note on the title: "Bouyaku" can be translated as "oblivion" or "forgetting." After much consideration, I settled on "Forgotten," because I think the theme of this song is less about the way everything vanishes with time (though it certainly is about that), and more about how it's okay to live in the moment and let the past go. Happy or sad, don't hold onto regrets, hold onto love.
(1) This isn't quite a literal translation - in the original Japanese, it's unclear whether the pain belongs to the "I" or the "you" or to both. However, Sakurai stated when this song was released that one of the themes he wanted to express is the way in which our past pain leads us to hurt others, but when we hurt others, we hurt ourselves, too - so I added the "you" into this line to help keep that back-and-forth balance (which has been a big theme in Sakurai's lyrics since day one.)
(2) Sakurai stated explicitly that, in addition to being about the general "you can't take it back" nature of life, this line was about his feeling of poignant regret, come the pandemic, that Buck-Tick tours are probably never going to be what they used to be - the sense of loss on realizing that, despite him singing about death all the time, it still hurts when you realize things you thought were forever can vanish in an instant.
忘却
作詞：櫻井敦司
作曲：今井寿
悪夢を待っている 独り
鮮血一筋 滲む
あなたを傷つけた 深く とても 深く
そしてこのわたしを 深く 深く
呼吸は静かに 乱れ
涙が一筋 落ちる
あなたに抱かれている 痛みが消えてゆく
あなたに包まれて 消えてゆくよ
忘れ去られてゆけばいい 通り雨のように
何気ない ある晴れた日 風が通り過ぎる
風が
あなたに溶けてゆく 痛みが消えてゆく
あなたに包まれて 消えてゆくよ
忘れ去られてゆけばいい 通り雨のように
何気ない ある晴れた日 風が通り過ぎる
忘れ去られてゆけばいい 今日の虹のように
何もない ある晴れた日 かけがえの無い日々
誰も 通り過ぎてゆく
Boukyaku
Lyrics: Sakurai Atsushi
Music: Imai Hisashi
Akumu wo matteiru hitori
Senketsu hitosuji nijimu
Anata wo kizutsuketa fukaku totemo fukaku
Soshite kono watashi wo fukaku fukaku
Kokyuu wa shizuka ni midare
Namida ga hitosuji ochiru
Anata ni dakareteiru itami ga kieteyuku
Anata ni tsutsumarete kieteyuku yo
Wasuresararete yukeba ii toori ame no you ni
Nanige nai aru hareta hi kaze ga toori sugiru
Kaze ga
Anata ni toketeyuku itami ga kieteyuku
Anata ni tsutsumarete kieteyuku yo
Wasuresararete yukeba ii toori ame no you ni
Nanige nai aru hareta hi kaze ga toori sugiru
Wasuresararete yukeba ii kyou no niji no you ni
Nani mo nai aru hareta hi kakegae no nai hibi
Dare mo toorisugite yuku
.
.
.
not forgotten ;)
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