Hyakki yakou / Kiryu

Kanji & Romaji: hiphopvomit
Translation: myself

Lyrics & music: Sakai Mitsuki





百鬼夜行 [Hyakki yakou]
Night Parade of One Hundred Demons



Knitting, patching and fixing the disguise (1)     Fabricated smile     Dress right dress (2)
Writhing in pain while having the head chopped off     Tongue speaking the truth (3) is a lizard's tail

Manacles     Life's bondage     Light swaying here and there
Deadly sea of darkness is floating in the evening     Losing a companion leads to tedium

Successively (4)     Slowly (5)

Insects are crawling inside the head

Successively     Slowly

Devouring torn off nails, squirming bewilderment

What to chase, what to demand, what to cling to
Remaining unseen     While remaining unknown, Night Parade of One Hundred Demons (6) progresses
Boisterously noisy festival accompaniament is screaming from the viscera of mind (7)
Lying larynx (8) is being bitten and torn into pieces, that is the result of the real voice

Trembling with fear in the lie caressing the darkness     Therefore the light    seems to be slippery as an eel
To die in the life-burning lie

Soon     Slowly

Insects are dancing inside the head

Lied eggs of insects are thickly dripping

Dark senses smeared in familiar dirty mud are getting dim
When one's hand is pulled by a cruel hand, Night Parade of One Hundred Demons progresses
Transient world is prepared to flee (9) in boisterously noisy festival accompaniament
Not turning back, having one's ears plugged      Going as well as returning is so scary (10)

Lie that was experienced and sent around is like a nectar     Telling lies around while being unconsciously intoxicated

Nearby... One disguise (11) fell down     On another side, thousands deceptions

To indulge in the darkness, wriggle and [eventually] die      Or to tear the darkness off, paw at the ground and [eventually] die
Swaying paper lantern     Is carried off by the night wind     Disordered     One's footsteps of life


Footnotes:

1. As in 化けの皮を剥ぐ [bake no kawa wo hagu] - to unmask one's true nature / intentions; lit. to rip off one's disguise / face's skin
2. A military command in order to find dress and alignment in a formation
3. 本音 [honne] - what one really thinks; the opposite is 建て前 [tatemae] - what one says to people (usually fabricated)
4. Onomatopoeic word: ぞろぞろ [zorozoro] - in groups / in succession
5. Onomatopoeic multitool word: だらだら [daradara] - (inter alia) dripping / slowly / leisurely / endlessly
6. See: discussion
7. Wordplay: 心臓 [shinzou] - heart (anat.) written as 心の臓 [shin no zou] - viscera (guts) of mind
8. 喉笛 [nodobue] used here actually means windpipe; since it literally means throat pipe / flute (kanji wise), I decided to translate it into larynx, because I've found it fitting
9. Or to become restless / to become agitated
10. A reference to Japanese children song Tooryanse
11. See: footnote (1)

Discussion:

On the day of the dog of fourth lunar month, don't you dare to leave your house at night. You may encounter - Hyakki yakou - Night Parade of One Hundred Demons, which means death. Death of you and your beloved ones.

However, what do demons do in this song? They are a simile to lies. Imagine a person speaking fabricated words all the time, for instance an individual suffering from compulsive / pathological lying disorder. Reasons of one to lie may vary. From impress to avoid certain situations (though pathological liars may lie just for the sake of fraud itself). The fear of being unmasked is also present - it may lead one to make up more lies just to cover up them being caught on lying. Pathological liars also seem to be nervous when they have to speak the truth.

Releasing those one hundered demons, or more precisely - being utterly unmasked as an impostor, much like opening the Pandora's box may cause multiple disasters for the liar as well as for surrounding them people. In other words, I consider Hyakki yakou (as a motif) a metaphor of a pathological liar's darkness of mind. A night where demons dwell and parade.

Well done, Mitsuki.