Good morning, and good morning. Today we're looking at the Origin of JPop, with the first single of the first Japanese rock band to break away from imitating the American sound. It's a perfect place to start our series on the Top 100 JPop Acts!
Original Lyrics / Romaji / Phrasal Translation / Poetic Translation
Top 100 JPop Acts?
Starting with this post, we're going to do a lesson on at least one song from each of HMV Japan's list of the top 100 JPop acts of all time.
Now this list was compiled in 2003, so more recent acts won't be on it. Then again, if you want to dig in to the roots of JPop, a slightly dated list is probably preferable. I'm sure you all know that AKB48 is a thing?
So while the HMV list might be dated or biased as a true Top 100 list, it works perfectly as a menu. And that's how we're going to treat it - sample a bit here, try a taste there. Our series will lean towards bands' biggest hits, but we'll swerve from that for songs of particular interest.
On to today's band!
Starting with this post, we're going to do a lesson on at least one song from each of HMV Japan's list of the top 100 JPop acts of all time.
Now this list was compiled in 2003, so more recent acts won't be on it. Then again, if you want to dig in to the roots of JPop, a slightly dated list is probably preferable. I'm sure you all know that AKB48 is a thing?
So while the HMV list might be dated or biased as a true Top 100 list, it works perfectly as a menu. And that's how we're going to treat it - sample a bit here, try a taste there. Our series will lean towards bands' biggest hits, but we'll swerve from that for songs of particular interest.
On to today's band!
About the Band
Happy End only ranked #4 on the HMV list, but in another sense, they're automatically #1.
If you're looking for the first true JPop act, it's hard to do better than Happy End. It's often said that they were the first Japanese rock group to sing in Japanese, which is completely untrue. GS (Group Sounds - think proto-JPop) bands had been singing rock in Japanese for a long while before Happy End hit the scene.
What Happy End did differently was making rock songs suited to the rhythms of the Japanese language. Whereas previous bands took the English-language rock sound and stapled Japanese words to it, Happy End crafted songs that matched the natural rhythms of spoken Japanese. In other words, truly Japanese popular music. In other other words, JPop.
If you want a fuller history of the band's activities and philosophy, check out chapter 5 of Michael K. Bourdaghs' Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon. It's a great overall look at the early history of JPop in general, but the breakdown of Happy End in particular is must-read material.
For today's song, we're going to look at 12月の雨の日 (Juuni Gatsu no Ame no Hi), the first of the only four singles ever released by this revolutionary band.
If you're looking for the first true JPop act, it's hard to do better than Happy End. It's often said that they were the first Japanese rock group to sing in Japanese, which is completely untrue. GS (Group Sounds - think proto-JPop) bands had been singing rock in Japanese for a long while before Happy End hit the scene.
What Happy End did differently was making rock songs suited to the rhythms of the Japanese language. Whereas previous bands took the English-language rock sound and stapled Japanese words to it, Happy End crafted songs that matched the natural rhythms of spoken Japanese. In other words, truly Japanese popular music. In other other words, JPop.
If you want a fuller history of the band's activities and philosophy, check out chapter 5 of Michael K. Bourdaghs' Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon. It's a great overall look at the early history of JPop in general, but the breakdown of Happy End in particular is must-read material.
For today's song, we're going to look at 12月の雨の日 (Juuni Gatsu no Ame no Hi), the first of the only four singles ever released by this revolutionary band.
Today's Topic: Your Best Guess
Let's look together at a very puzzling question.
While translating today's song...no, actually, while just reading the lyrics for today's song, I found something that threw me for a 100% loop. And I was happy when I realized it was throwing me - since it's a perfect opportunity to look at ambiguity in translation - what to do when you have to make a best guess.
Here's the troublesome line - see if you can pick it out what's unusual:
雨あがりの街に 風がふいに立る
Ame agari no machi ni kaze ga fui ni okoru
Ame agari is fairly straightforward, as are machi and kaze. The particles might give you some issues if you're still getting used to them, but otherwise it's all simple vocab.
Fui ni is a little more of a judgement call. Technically, it could either be 不意に (fui ni, suddenly/unexpectedly) or ふいに (fui ni, to come to nothing, be wasted). So it's a judgement call that we will make based on context.
Fui ni is a little more of a judgement call. Technically, it could either be 不意に (fui ni, suddenly/unexpectedly) or ふいに (fui ni, to come to nothing, be wasted). So it's a judgement call that we will make based on context.
Next came 立る. 立る is not a word. It's sung as okoru, which is a word, but okoru is never written with that kanji, The online dictionaries I use wouldn't even recognize it as a not-a-word, they just automatically corrected it to 立てる, which is a word.
In this sort of situation, it's best to check the context for clues, so I looked at the previous word: ふいに. Now obviously, in this case ふいに needs context, so I looked at the next word: 立る. ふいに. 立る. ふいに. 立る. ふいに. 立る. What the hell.
It's time for some judgement calls.
Let's start out by rephrasing that tangled mess of incomprehension into simple questions:
1). Which version of fui ni is meant?
2). Why did they use 立?
3). What did they mean by okoru?
Answering these three questions will answer the real question: how do I translate this? If you want to take a crack at that question yourself, now is a good time to minimize your browser and think it out.
Whether you're back or still here, I'll share my own answers - and more importantly, the thought process behind them.
Taking a moment to calm down and think clearly almost immediately answered question number 2 for me. 風がふいに立る looks an awful lot like a play on the common verb 風立つ (to blow [wind]). I mean, it's got 風 and 立 right in it!
So I make a judgement call: they're playing with the idea of wind blowing - that's the deep level concept here. Do I have proof? Nope! Just experience and a hunch.
To solve the other two questions, I used a somewhat unorthodox technique: punching "ふいにおこる" (fui ni okoru) into Google. Yes, professional translators do this, yes all the time.
After clicking some links and reading some sentences where that phrase was used, I realized that it's a set phrase meaning "to happen when you're not expecting it." As in, having a traffic accident when you aren't expecting it, or getting sick when you aren't expecting it.
So it seems most likely that in this sentence, fui ni means "unexpectedly" and okoru means "to occur." By looking at the words as a set, I found that the phrase is a set.
It also helped that I found a blog that posted an incorrect version of the lyrics to this song:
Bringing it all together, I deciding on the Phrasal Translation:
And the Poetic Translation:
Let's start out by rephrasing that tangled mess of incomprehension into simple questions:
1). Which version of fui ni is meant?
2). Why did they use 立?
3). What did they mean by okoru?
Answering these three questions will answer the real question: how do I translate this? If you want to take a crack at that question yourself, now is a good time to minimize your browser and think it out.
Whether you're back or still here, I'll share my own answers - and more importantly, the thought process behind them.
Taking a moment to calm down and think clearly almost immediately answered question number 2 for me. 風がふいに立る looks an awful lot like a play on the common verb 風立つ (to blow [wind]). I mean, it's got 風 and 立 right in it!
So I make a judgement call: they're playing with the idea of wind blowing - that's the deep level concept here. Do I have proof? Nope! Just experience and a hunch.
To solve the other two questions, I used a somewhat unorthodox technique: punching "ふいにおこる" (fui ni okoru) into Google. Yes, professional translators do this, yes all the time.
After clicking some links and reading some sentences where that phrase was used, I realized that it's a set phrase meaning "to happen when you're not expecting it." As in, having a traffic accident when you aren't expecting it, or getting sick when you aren't expecting it.
So it seems most likely that in this sentence, fui ni means "unexpectedly" and okoru means "to occur." By looking at the words as a set, I found that the phrase is a set.
It also helped that I found a blog that posted an incorrect version of the lyrics to this song:
雨あがりの街に風が不意におこるSo even if my judgement calls are incorrect, there's at least one Japanese blogger who agrees with me!
Bringing it all together, I deciding on the Phrasal Translation:
After the rain, city-to wind suddenly occurs
And the Poetic Translation:
After the rain, the wind blows suddenly through the city
Both of which butcher the original plays on words - but then, that's part of the judgement calls inherent to all translation.
Making judgement calls is not easy, but every judgement call is an experience that makes future judgement calls easier. Even easy ones - everyday conversations for example - build up your experience to the point where you can tackle difficult translations.
You do to build up experience. You build up experience to do even more. That's the virtuous cycle that starts with every decision to do today. So keep doing that doing, and keep StudyOkeing!
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