Gekka bijin / Kiryu

Kanji: rocklyric
Romaji: WHO THE HELL NEEDS ROMAJI, I mean, I went with my keen ear
Translation: myself, *prof. Ryuichi Abe

Lyrics & music: Sakai Mitsuki





月下美人 [Gekka bijin]
A Queen of the Night / Dutchman's pipe cactus



There’s Paradise      Close your eyes and crouch down
“I can’t see”
“I can’t speak”
“I can’t hear”
“I can’t touch”
“I can’t feel”

...Is it a dream?

I lowered my head and now the me waiting a moment is an already withered corpse
When death agony cuts off flower buds stitched together

Shriek of flowers in dazzling colors      Screaming as if one’s life were spinned round (1)
A silhouette from the past invites       Me entwined in the emptiness
When shaking off, pain from vertigo     Even though I scream stretching my hand towards the future (2)
Experiencing evanescence when touching the dream     Experiencing certainty when touching the reality

Although its scent still lingers on    The form of a flower (3) has scattered away     For whom will the glory
Of this world remain unchanged      Arriving today at the yonder side     Of the deep mountains of evanescent existence      We shall never allow ourselves to drift away     Intoxicated, in the world of shallow dreams *

I cover eyes with both hands and lament It’s dark, it’s dark
While pitifully rotting like that     Dreaming itself is just laughable

I lowered my head and now the me waiting a moment is an already withered corpse
Reality becomes a pecking pain that drags one around

Screaming white dyed      “Transparency”, but somehow that’s “richly colored”
I’m just myself     Still, entwined in emptiness
When looking back, colorless sweet nectar     If I got intoxicated in it, a fake heart would be content
Experiencing evanescence when touching the dream     Experiencing certainty when touching the reality

Life, if blooms, will wither, disappear, rot and come to an end
In the moonlit night when flowers open to mark the passage of that time

To turn into a living corpse     Or to scream for life until I die
Swaying on the wind and caressing the dream     Or swaying on the wind and caressing the reality

Shriek of flowers in dazzling colors      Screaming as if one’s life were spinned round
A silhouette from the past invites       Me entwined in the emptiness
When shaking off, pain from vertigo     Even though I scream stretching my hand towards the future
Experiencing evanescence when touching the dream     Experiencing certainty when touching the reality

Although its scent still lingers on    The form of a flower has scattered away     For whom will the glory
Of this world remain unchanged      Arriving today at the yonder side     Of the deep mountains of evanescent existence      We shall never allow ourselves to drift away     Intoxicated, in the world of shallow dreams


Footnotes:

1. As in “to make a yarn”
2. Or “brightness”
3. Or "color"

Discussion:

"Blooms for only one night under the moon, a flower as pretty as a beautiful woman."

月下美人 [gekka bijin] lit. a beauty under the moon is a species of cacti that literally blooms at night and for only one night. Witnessing it blooming is often associated with good luck and it's a good omen in general, but this flower's meaning in hanakotoba is rather sad. Fragility, ephemeral romance, ephemeral beauty etc. due to its significantly short lifespan. 

Transcience itself is also a subject of Japanese buddhist philosophy of mono no aware (lit. the pathos of things) which is the awareness and acceptance of impermanence. The realization that every creature grows up, appears at its finest while being a full-fledged adult, then gets old and eventually passes away. The same goes for nature, beauty, dreams and so on and so forth. This motif is, in fact, deeply rooted in classical Japanese literature and culture. One of the best known examples is Iroha poem dating back to Heian period (AD 794–1179). Well, Iroha's entire text has been slapped into Gekka bijin lyrics that are marked in italics. What is more, Gekka bijin's lyrics are full of Iroha references. Just compare Iroha with the rest of lyrics.

What we have here is another song about a woman (Mitsuki tends to use 私 [watashi] - a gender-neutral, first person pronoun when the speaker is meant to be feminine) who is already dead. The woman dies prematurely, still full of hopes and dreams, nonetheless she appears as a ghost - something that exists only for one night, fragile and ephemeral. One can appear as a 幽霊 [yuurei] - a ghost from Japanese folklore, when one's soul still has something to be settled in the world of living, longs for something, misses something or just appears out of one's malignant intentions (held grudges, revenge etc.). Yuurei is, however, a bit different concept of spectres than Buddhism-derived ones (check my Rengoku translation for more information). I reckon, the ghost woman is a yuurei after all, due to her nature - she pops from the afterlife to seek for her lost dreams even though she ultimately realizes that there is basically no point in doing so - shallow dreams of aforementioned Iroha poem.

Nice song, isn't it?