"Nazo Nazo" Mysteries and Riddles

Mystery lies thick upon the air in today's edition of StudyOke!, but fear not! You have a guide to lead you through the mists of mystery to a true treasure of J-Rock: the RADWIMPS' Nazo Nazo.

Original Lyrics / Romaji / Phrasal Translation

About the Song

The RADWIMPS are my favorite band to introduce to Japanese friends. Their reaction is usually "I had no idea Japanese bands were still making good music!"

Originally a high school garage band from Kanagawa, the RADWIMPS scored their first #1 hit with 2008's Order Made (オーダーメイド) from the album Altocolony no Teiri (アルトコロニーの定理). Altocolony is a personal favorite, combining a broad range of styles and sounds with truly unique lyrics.

Track 2, Oshakasama (おしゃかしゃま), in particular hits on topics from 7-Day Creationism to Leonardo DaVinci at a rapid-fire pace. Today's song, Nazo Nazo (謎謎) also stretches far beyond the usual J-Pop pap with lyrics about life on Mars and epistemology of the self.

While Altocolony is perhaps RADWIMPS' highest concentration of awesome, their other albums are definitely worth checking out, particularly RADWIMPS 4 and Zettai Zetsumei (絶体絶命). Keep an eye out for Kimi no Na wa (君の名は。) - it's an upcoming movie featuring the RADWIMPS' music (link for the single).

[Today's Topic: Mysteries and Riddles is after the jump]

Today's Topic: Mysteries and Riddles

One of the advantages of studying Japanese through music instead of just through textbooks is that you get to experience Real Japanese©.

Language is messy. Grammar is an attempt to put rules onto that mess. But for all the rules we study, when they don't correspond to the messy mess of real language, we don't get anywhere.

I love Nazo Nazo because it introduced me to a whole new way of using Japanese. When I first started translating the song, lines like this annoyed the crap out of me:

君は生まれた時にはすでに出会ってるのに 

僕はやっとこの前出会えたものはなーんだ

Kimi wa umareta toki ni wa sude ni deatteru no ni 

Boku wa yatto kono mae deaeta mono wa naan da 

Now the literal meaning isn't that hard to decipher (and you can take a minute to try it yourself). A rough translation would run something like:

What is the thing that you had already met when you were born even though I just finally met it a little while ago?

And while that is a perfectly serviceable translation, it's not beautiful, clear, or interesting. It sort of rolls off the brain. We need to go deeper - what is the true meaning of this なーんだ that keeps showing up in the lyrics?

I wondered about this for a while, confused and ashamed, until one fateful day, I was introduced to a life-changing book by an 8-year-old:

Gaze upon its majesty

At the time, I knew from vocabulary study that 「謎」(nazo)  meant a mystery or a puzzle. What I didn't know is that 「なぞなぞ」specifically referred to a riddle - the sort of riddle you find in a children's joke book.

The なーんだ is a repeated, standard phrase used to indicate that the sentence is a riddle. In English, we might say "What do you call a __________" or "What do you get if you cross a ______ and a __________?"

Here's an example that even a beginning Japanese student may be able to appreciate:

Q: 

Original	Romaji	Translation
「まみむねも」これは何だ？	"Ma mi mu ne mo" - Kore wa nan da?	What do you call a "Ma mi mu ne mo"?

A.

Original	Romaji	Translation
メガネ	Megane (/Me ga ne)	"Glasses" (/"Me" is "ne")

Get it? The "me" is "ne"!

There's another thing you'll never learn from a Japanese textbook: terrible, terrible puns.

This revelation put Nazo Nazo into its proper context - it's a series of riddles, not a series of questions. The singer is riddling the subject of the song - what thing has she known since she was born, even though he just met it? It's her.

And even though she has come to hate herself (君はそいつを嫌いになってしまった/Kimi wa soitsu wo kirai ni natte shimatta - there's shimau again!), she only knows herself from the inside. He knows a part of her she cannot see, and to him, she is as wonderful and beautiful as cherries blossoming on a pear tree or finding life on Mars.

Things like puns and riddles may never show up in textbooks or tests, but they do show up in life. They're part of human communication and what makes human life fun and interesting.

I can't promise you that understanding riddles will land you a job as a translator, but dropping a few in conversation can help new people open up to you. It makes connections, transforming you from a foreigner to a person.

As you learn Japanese, you will find mysteries. What does this mean? How do I use this word? Keep looking for the answers, and keep StudyOkeing!