I spent the weekend with friends. I had long been meaning to burn a CD for one of them, but because of the vagaries of computer technology had been unable to do so. Therefore, I took the CD with me, so they could burn a copy on their computer.
The CD in question is Kerai no Hitori mo Inai Oosama, by Tomobe Masato, with the band Tama.
The title means 'The King Without a Single Subject', which is also the title of one of the songs.
The CD was played a number of times during my stay, and pronounced very appropriate for Sunday morning.
Some of the lyrics of the songs are impenetrable, and yet, they move me. I would like to attempt a translation of the lyrics of the title song, which I find particularly moving. If Tomobe Masato himself happens upon this page – you never know – I hope he will forgive me for translating this without his permission, and for any mistakes that I might make. Here is the song:
The King Without a Single Subject
The king without a single subject crosses the plain
The king who has never once had a kingdom, rides out on a horse
Down by the shore the fish are causing a commotion
The kingdom is in a place where the king can never go
The moon illuminates the fence by the railway tracks
The boy's parents are eating supper in the house
Hey, why is it that you alone aren't eating?
The family is in a place where the boy can never go
The steam train climbs a slope and descends a mountain
By the door, a traveller is watching the scenery
The granpas and grandmas are kneeling and taking tea
The journey is in a place where the traveller can never go
On the cake, the candles are lit
A friend puts a knife in the chicken
The lights go out and the adults celebrate their friend's birthday
But the friend is in a place where his friends can never go
In the school a boy and girl get to know each other
In a room that smells of a printing machine they embrace
The girl's body is hot, the boy's body trembles
Because the girl is in a place where the boy can never go
One day a newspaper reporter asked the boy this question
"Why do you sing like this in the middle of the street?"
"Everyone should really start living in the middle of the street.
But the town is in a place where the townspeople can never go."
I'm afraid that, translated in one sitting like this, the lyrics sound rather flat and clunky. Maybe one day I'll attempt a better translation. I just felt like doing this now, and I don't really know why. The original lyrics have hardly any punctuation, and I have tried to keep mine to a minimum, too. I am guessing how the speech marks should be arranged in the last verse; there are none in the original. Also, the word 'machi' is used in the original to mean, I believe, both town and street. In other words, it's the same word used all the way through that verse, where I have felt the need to change from street to town in order to make the meaning clearer.
This is something of a PS, but I also enjoyed these lyrics, which I found on Tomobe Masato's website. If you've ever lived in Japan for any length of time, and you're not American, or even if you are, I think these lyrics will strike a chord. I remember, in particular, one time when I sat on a train and opposite me was an American businessman surrounded by his Japanese equivalents. I could not get over his arrogance.
"Well, your computer systems are junk, you'll have to install some like ours. What? What's wrong? Don't you understand? Don't speak English, eh?"
I do not exaggerate.
"Well, he can't speak English, for a start," I said to my Japanese friend next to me, "And he probably won't know that he's a wanker."
I think we're all feeling a bit like this these days. There are other languages in the world apart from (American) English, and other cultures. The world resembles my friend and I, sitting on a train seat opposite an arrogant American businessman, and talking about him in a language he doesn't understand.
sad isn´t it?I am so glad that I can speak fluently two languages. And read well, spanish, my spoken spanish is a bit rusty though…as I never get to speak it, I´ve lost quite a bit of my spanish. :(But, I am practicing it again, thanks to my spanish opera crowd! :DAnd been struggling with french for years… 🙁
no, i don´t agree…you have gained a lot by speaking more languages. 😀
I’d love to speak more languages than I do. I suppose I could say I speak two and a half. Language, is, of course, a carrier of culture. Often in the past occupying nations have forced those they have conquered to stop using their native language. I think this still happens in more subtle forms – usually in a commercial rather than a military way these days.I believe that someone once said that learning another language is like gaining a soul. Perhaps, by the same token, having no native language of one’s own is like being stripped of one’s soul.
Oh, I have a native language, which is English. Perhaps I didn’t make myself clear. There are some people – my memory is vague on this now – but there are some people who feel that none of the languages they speak are their native language, either because their native language has been more or less eliminated at some point, or because they have lost the language of their childhood in some way. I seem to remember reading someone’s account of the loss of their dialect after they moved to the big city and became ‘educated’, and how they feel almost as if they can never speak from the heart again, because even when they do use the dialiect now, there’s something not right about it. I wish I had more concrete examples.
I am a person who is stuck between two countries.Born and raised American, yet I am not “American”.Descendant and living in Portugal and I am not “Portuguese”.So what am I????
Well, I’ll give my best shot at an answer and say you’re what Ruth Hill and the whistleblower Katharine Gun describe as a ‘third-culture kid’. Here’s the relevant part from the article to which I’ve provided a link:Her decision to follow her conscience sounds almost unthinking – “I didn’t want to step back and think, ‘But, hey, what happens if I do this, and then this happens and then that happens?'” she says. But she has clearly thought in detail about what made her that way. She calls herself a “third culture kid”, using a term first coined by the writer Ruth Hill to describe children raised by expat parents. The lack of belonging that can result is heartrendingly summarised in the title of a guidance document prepared by the US state department, “According to my Passport, I’m Coming Home”. But it can also lead to the development of something more positive. “One of the things the research says is that third-culture kids tend to be extremely empathetic, and because they’ve usually lived in at least one other foreign country, they somehow feel a global alliance, almost … ” Gun tails off, as if embarrassed to make too grand a claim for herself.
definitely feel the lack of “belonging”.Yes, I do feel a global alliance… I guess you can see this by my own blog!Thanks! It´s funny that you found the term so quickly!
Born American, raised ditto, haven’t traveled, and yet I feel a foreigner in my own country sometimes. But I don’t usually feel too global an alliance, either. I have a hunch I’d be disaffected no matter where I roam.I sometimes think that the reason Americans are so ugly abroad is that you’re usually only encountering the ones that can afford to travel…but that’s a broad statement, I suppose. And if I could speak any other languages, it would be Japanese and French, but I’m afraid I’m past all help at this point…
😛
Oh, I suppose I have travelled a bit, though.
“Born American, raised ditto, haven’t traveled, and yet I feel a foreigner in my own country sometimes. But I don’t usually feel too global an alliance, either. I have a hunch I’d be disaffected no matter where I roam.”Excuse me quoting, I know it can be disconcerting. I think I could say exactly the same, inserting the word ‘English’. I think cultural, or national, identity is a very complex issue, and, since I’m going to bed now, I’m afraid I don’t have time for what could be a very interesting discussion. In brief, on the one hand national identity fascinates me, and I think countries should preserve their identitities, and on the other hand I think national identity is intrinsically linked to group egoism and human conflict… I have no answers to this apparent dilemma, but a great many ponderings and questions.
I see, the list is literally about the children of missionaries… Hence the US-centric nature.
the missionary kid´s one is great! and I agree with a lot of his points!:lol:I can´t start a lawnmower, but, sure as hell can handle a machete real well! When we bought our “ruin” on Faial, there was a jungle around it and after about 5 hours of swinging a machete around, I had cut down all the wild ginger that grows like wild here. Then we had to dig up all the roots or they would come back with a vengeance! :lol:and some of the other points – the us postal service… i totally agree with! But, I am sure here it is better than where that kid is….
This person kindly pointed me in the direction of more information on third-culture kids.There is this website, and this humorous and strangely US-centric list of defining attributes of the third-culture or ‘missionary’ kid.
trini_naenae writes:Hey!Oooh, this is a great discussion. (Of course, being a ATCK, I’m a bit biased). ;)The TCK world website has some articles by Dr. Ruth Hill Useem. They’re very interesting.I’m barely starting to understand who I am and to not let what other people think bother me. It’s very hard to let go of national identities, but now I see myself as an artist, a geek, and a global nomad.
Hello. Thanks for dropping by. I’ll have to have a look at those articles. The whole question of national or cultural identity, as I have said, fascinates me. In some ways, I’ve never been very strong on group loyalty. However, I have not escaped the cultural influences of the country in which I grew up. This is a small observation, but I find that, in America, people are far more likely to define themselves as, for instance, Italian-American or Irish-American, and to think of themselves in terms of their ancestry. You don’t get that so much here. I would never describe myself as Italian-English, though I could. I simply feel myself to be English. Also, I don’t hold Englishness to be a racial thing (though I know there are some people who, in my belief, mistakenly, do). Even if we’re going beyond legal definitions to a more cultural or personal understanding, I think someone is English, basically, if they have an English accent, which, of course, signifies a way of feeling or being. At my writers’ group the other night, such identity was briefly under discussion. It was established that we had two Scottish people, one who described himself as ‘British’, having mixed Scottish and English parentage, an Irish lady, and myself. When I declared myself to be English, the Irish lady was incredulous: “Surely there’s no such thing as ‘English’.” “Oh, I think there is,” said one of the Scottish gentlemen.But others have found Englishness as chimerical as the Irish lady. Doris Lessing, in fact, wrote a whole book on the subject.
On the subject of how America differs from the rest of the world, there is this entry on Momus’ blog.There’s some quite interesting points being made in the comments section, too, some of them, I think, by me.