Before the Love Generation

Shogo Hamada - Before the Love Generation (1981)

Music & Lyric: Shogo Hamada

Today's song is "Before the Love Generation," by Shogo Hamada. Apparently the sunglasses are a bit of an obsession; the Japanese version of the Wikipedia article says that there are no known photographs of him as an adult with his face fully exposed. YouTube search for his name here. I listened to several songs at random, and most of them ranged from decent to good. I like this one the best so far, though:

Ai no sedai no mae no boufuuu no naka
Surikaerareta moroi yume nado kuzureochiteku

In the storm before the love generation
Fragile dreams, stolen, crumble to pieces.

Ruuletto wa mawaritsudzuketeru
Teeburu ni tsumareta kirifuda no kage de
Dare mo minna katsu koto dake o shinjite
Kake o tsudzukeru

The roulette wheel goes on spinning
In the shadow of the betting slips piled up on the table.
Everyone, believing that he can win,
Goes on betting.

Ai no sedai no mae no isshun no hikari ni
Surikaerareta moroi yume nado kuzureochiteku

In the flash of light before the love generation,
Fragile dreams, stolen, crumble to pieces.

Nikushimi wa nikushimi de ikari wa ikari de
Sabakareru koto ni naze kidzukanai no ka

Hatred is hatred, rage is rage;
Why can they not see they are being judged?

Miraa bouru wa mawaritsudzuketeru
Ikutsumo no kodoku na ude ni dakare
Ore mo mata ian no naka de
Munashiku odoritsudzukeru

The mirrored ball continues to turn,
Grasped by countless lonely arms.
I, as well, once again in the comfort it provides,
Continue vainly to dance.

Ai no sedai no mae no boufuuu no naka
Surikaerareta moroi yume nado kuzureochiteku
Ai no sedai no mae no isshun no hikari ni
Surikaerareta moroi yume nado kuzureochiru
Ai no sedai no mae ni

In the storm before the love generation,
Fragile dreams, stolen, crumble to pieces.
In the flash of light before the love generation,
Fragile dreams, stolen, crumble to pieces.
Before the love generation.

According to the Japanese Wikipedia article about the album, this was intended as a protest against nuclear weapons. Having been told that, I guess I can see it, but I can't say it's something I would have picked up on my own. Hamada's explanation of the title was, "Until nuclear weapons are eradicated from the face of the Earth, the true love generation cannot begin." The flash of light referenced in the lyric is a nuclear explosion. I have no idea what the mirrored ball is supposed to be.

The lyric demonstrates an interesting feature of written Japanese that doesn't have any analog in English. The Japanese writing system has two types of characters: Chinese characters, or kanji, which are typically used for their semantic meaning, and phonetic Japanese characters, or kana. There are a couple of thousand kanji in common use, and it takes many years to learn how to read them all.

When an author suspects that some readers will not know how to read a kanji, he will write the pronunciation on top of the kanji using kana. Kana used in this manner are called furigana. For example, you can see this at 0:22 in the video. The kanji in moroi (brittle) is rarely used, so the pronunciation is provided with small furigana above the kanji.

Normally, furigana are used to remind the reader of a kanji's standard pronunciation. But occasionally in poetic contexts they're used to indicate that the kanji are intended to be read in a nonstandard way, often as a word entirely different from the one indicated by the kanji. Essentially, two words are written in place of one. What this means, usually, is that the word indicated by the furigana gives the primary meaning (since it's the one to be pronounced), while the word indicated by the kanji adds nuance.

For example, the word yume (dream) appears four times in the song. The first and last times it's written with the standard kanji. But the second time, the kanji used indicate the word kibou (hope), and the third time the kanji indicate the word gensou (illusion). I tentatively read this as indicating a growing sense of futility, but I'm not really sure why he went back to the standard kanji for the last occurrence of yume.

Also, hikari (light) is throughout the song written with kanji indicating senkou (flash, or glint); hence my translating it as "flash of light."

Note that this information is lost entirely if you don't have access to the written lyric. This isn't in any way conveyed in the actual singing of the song.

Notes on translation: No major difficulties with this song. I had some trouble with surikaerareta yume, as I couldn't think of an elegant way to convey in English the idea of something having been secretly swapped with something else. I considered "counterfeit dreams," but decided to go with "stolen dreams." It gets the idea across, I think.

I'm wondering if there's any semantic significance to 崩れ落ちてく morphing to 崩れ落ちる at the very end. I think it was probably just to shave off a syllable to make it fit better with the coda.

Update: I just realized the futility of protesting nuclear weapons in a language spoken only in a country that not only does not have nuclear weapons, but is constitutionally prohibited from engaging in warfare. Ha!