An innocent smile at the end of a gun
Paints the muzzle—so sinks the evening sun
Is the reason their trigger finger weeps
Due to a mother’s love from when they were small?
Out the window is rain that won’t let up,
The girl’s dream missing in action; ²
She turned off the TV, drank an antihemorragic agent,
Then donned a knife in order to breathe
After a long winter
She forgot even the smell of spring
Life is so damn fleeting
That bird roams, blown by the wind
Just as you do
Struggling and yet going out into the world
Still giving itself up to the flow
Those that live and those that are allowed to live
Human and beast, wolf and boar;
You ask me, and whether we’ve fortune
or misfortune along the route of our journey
depends on the future
Both the proof of righteousness
And the contradictions that counter it
All depends on me—
So long, God ³
That person resists the embrace of darkness
Just as I do ⁴
Running until their tears dry;
Make your life burn bright
No one knows the destination even of today
Their path lights up with an uncertain hope
So that they won’t get lost along the way;
Without knowing whether the wind was heads or tails,
And without tolerating the things we here abide by
They threw their body to the sky
That birds roams, blown by the wind,
Like anyone would;
In the end I guess we’ll meet
While in the flow of things
Upon whose back
did the singing voice, in innocence, also project? ⁵
.
NOTES / INTERPRETATION:
oo1. Despite the fact that the song’s title “YUKUESHIREZU” has a spelling in kanji, Saga chose to write it in katakana, for emphasis. For that reason, along with the way that this single’s cover and music video incorporates military imagery, I translated the title with the military-specific term, MIA (Missing in Action) instead of the more literal missing or whereabouts unknown.
oo2. There are several perspectives in this song, and especially without the music video’s story to give us clues, there is a bit of vagueness. The speaker in this song may or may not be the gunner from the first verse, but is most likely a separate narrator for the story that plays out in the lyrics. The girl’s dream from the second verse likely refers to the gunner (who, we learn here, is missing in action–her dream being a metaphor, a person).
oo3. What role does a God play when we write the rules of morality and make decisions of life and death? The speaker in the lyrics may not have lost their last strands of hope, but they do seem to have lost their faith, as it is hinted that the gunner, at the beginning, made a life-and-death call—that is, “played God”.
004. Though the music video originally made for this song (it had since been taken down) makes very clear its political message, the lyrics still carry hints of it, while focusing on more general cries for meaning in an existence that can feel devoid of such—that can feel filled with misfortune and trauma. There is a sense of hope in the words, all the stronger when you listen to the music and the way that the lyrics are sung. That person resists the embrace of darkness just as I do is a line that really captures the way that the words are sung; through all of the tragedy expressed in the lyrics, the speaker will not give up hope. Continues to imagine that things can change for the better, maybe.
005. The innocent singing voice in this last line echoes the innocent smile in the first line, tying the whole song together. Please take this line with a grain of salt, though; simple as it was in Japanese, I found the wording quite difficult to imagine in English and I did the best I could to capture the subtlety.
Thoughts. It’s an incredibly beautiful song, the emotion and imagery of such complexity that you feel both crushed and uplifted at the same time. But that is the reality of life, of the world that we live in. Hope, in the face of senseless tragedy; hope, and the reality of losing it, losing faith. I get chills whenever I listen to this song. It’s raw, gentle, and soulful.
If you get only a short time to change things, to make things better, do.
It doesn’t have to be grandiose. Do you remember another person doing one small thing for you, making an innocuous comment that you’ve never forgotten, been thankful for? Small acts done in the margins of your own ordinary life, for the people around you can have unexpected impacts.
Don’t get swallowed in the big picture. We paint that together. You are only responsible for your own little brushstrokes… so paint them with care.
.
VOLLAND GUMP ☾ ユクエシレズ → ユクエシレズ (VOLLAND GUMP・2015)
VOLLAND GUMP – YUKUESHIREZU | From YUKUESHIREZU (VOLLAND GUMP – 2015)
Original text translated from Japanese.
VOLLAND GUMP is a nom de plume used by 沙我 from アリス九號.