書籍の分担執筆（論文形式のもの）：2002：
Ambiguous and connotative nature of the Japanese lyrics:
Language, imagination, and strategy．
Kami KARKI, Rebecca LEYDON, & Henri TERHO (eds): Looking Back, Looking Ahead: Popular Music Studies 20 Years Later. IASPM-Norden (Turku, Finland), pp.174-179.


YAMADA, Harumichi
Tokyo Keizai University

Ambiguous and connotative nature of the Japanese lyrics: Language, imagination, and strategy


Analysis on lyrics has been a basic part of the tradition of the popular music studies. Focii of the discussion on lyrics have been put in varied ways. Although the methods and approaches of analyses are still in challenging discussion, charm of understanding the deeper implication of lyrics attracts larger attention from scholars interested in popular music studies. Academic discussion on lyrics of Japanese popular songs has its own substantial traditions, which has been scarcely presented in non-Japanese languages, and thus hardly known by the rest of the world. The following discussion will present a brief background explanation and an example of analytical readings upon the lyrics in Japanese language.

Do the audience understand the lyrics ?

Analyses on lyrics of popular songs have largely been carried out either by sociologists or by Japanese literature scholars/critics, with some additional contributions from linguists, musicologists, historians, geographers, etc. Among the sociologist tradition, the most influential early work was Mita's look-over/pseudo-statistical analysis upon the hundreds of modern Japanese popular songs since the late nineteenth century (Mita, 1978 [originally in 1967]). As the title of his book, "The History of Sentiment in Modern Japan", suggests, Mita presumed that the lyrics of songs widely shared by the society should reflect the sentiment of the people in the particular time of history. He neither gave sufficiently critical discussion upon his presumption, nor tried intensive analysis on a particular song, but his idea was largely welcomed, and many followers of his approach appeared later.
Mita's presumption is based on the belief that the audience should understand, or sense, what those lyrics mean largely in the same way as the analysts do. This premise was thoroughly refuted by Inamasu's elaborately designed experiments which proved most of audience misunderstand or simply do not understand the story in the lyrics (Inamasu, 1984). Inamasu showed that large portion of the audience fail to grasp the story told in the lyrics of a song that was really popular at the time and played repeatedly in the experiment, unless the audience were asked to concentrate on the lyrics.
After Inamasu's experiment, any presumption on the audience's understandings of the lyrics seems too naive to be accepted among sociologists. While serious sociological discussion on the lyrics has been stunned, some literature scholars/critics have activated discussion on their own right. They introduced and applied varied methods in literary critique to the analyses of the lyrics of contemporary popular songs. Their interests, however, are hardly directed to the interaction between songwriters and audience.
The present author formerly tried to cast another light on the production/audience interaction scheme not simply by reading the text of lyrics, but by speculating the intentions or strategy of songwriters (Yamada, 1999). In the way of discussion over the lyrics of the songs of 'globe', a Japanese group of three, preeminently successful in the late 1990's, some interesting examples are found where the nature of Japanese language affect the possible interpretations by the audience.

Some features of Japanese language

Before proceeding to sample examination, some features of Japanese language should be explained. Since Japanese belongs to quite different language group from European languages including English, a lot of features and functions usually shared by European languages are not applicable or simply lacking in Japanese, and vice versa. For example, there is no grammatical gender in Japanese. No declension of nouns or pronouns occurs, and cases are shown by the postpositional particles, which are quite foreign to European languages. No conjugation occurs with subject's person or singularity/plurality. And, more importantly, subjects tend to be dropped. Sentences often appear without subject explicitly denoted in the text.
In addition, personal pronouns are grammatically not well distinctive from ordinary nouns. Varieties of "personal pronouns" exist, and the choice of terms often connotes gender and other social relations between the speakers, audience, and the person referred. In other words, there are dozens of "personal pronouns" for "I", and same is the way with "you", etc. More practically, neglecting rare or old-fashioned "pronouns", there still are several quite usual alternatives in reference to 'I', and the choice of certain "pronoun" connotes a lot about the speaking/ writing person's attitudes towards the surrounding people, the audience/readers of the text, and oneself. This choice may reflect gender, seniority, intimacy, and other established or temporal social status between the speaker and other people involved in the narrated story, between the speaker and the audience, and even between those referred in the story and the audience.

"Can't Stop Fallin' in Love"(1997)

The sample lyrics being considered in this paper come from the song "Can't Stop Fallin' in Love"(1997). This song roughly consists of five parts. The first part is the introduction, with a rapping refrain by a male vocalist (Marc). This is followed by the main part of the song that is sung by a female vocalist (Keiko). This part repeats the melody twice (first and second verse). Keiko's vocal part is then followed by a longer rapping/singing section that is sung by Marc (main rapper). Keiko then sings again, repeating the latter half of the preceding melody (third verse). The last section involves Marc's rapping refrain, which appeared in the introduction, though is now reprised with Keiko's additional high-tone singing.
The chart shown is the first verse with transliteration (by the Hepburn system). It also includes a word-to-word translation into English.
Can't Stop Fallin' in Love
Composed & Arranged by Tetsuya Komuro
Written by Tetsuya Komuro & MARC

[Only the first verse of main female vocal is presented.]
[Nouns either with or without postpositional particles, and equivalent to objective are 
indicated with (O).  Note some of them may differently explained as dative or locative.]
[Mostly, the second person appears as 'anata' with one exception of 'kimi', which is 
indicated with asterisk as you*.]

itsumo-wa  yubiwa-o hazushi-te-ita-no-ni
usually // ring (O) // put off //  being..., but

doushi-te  Kinou-wa  ude-mo kunde-ita-no
why // (as for) yaesterday // (even) arm(s) // being arm in arm

anata-ga  machiawase kimeta basho na-no-ni
you // appointment (O) // decide // place ..., but

kyou-wa hisashiburi shigoto-de okure-sou
(as for) today // after a long time // (because of) assignment // seem to be late


hito-ni-wa hanase-nai  dareka-ni hanashi-tai
(to) others (O) // cannot tell // (to) someone (O) // want to tell

dokoka-ni iki-tai  anata-to iki-tai
somewhere // want to go // with you // want to go

furueta yubisaki taisetsuna
trembling // fingertip // precious

omoide-ni shite-mo  sore-ja kurase-nai
memory (O) // make..into // that way // cannot live on


odoru kimi-o mi-te  koi-ga hajimat-te
dancing you* (O) // saw .. and then // love has started

anata-no kami-ni fure  watashi-ga dekiru-koto
your hair (O) // touch // what I can do (O)

nan da-ka  wakatta
what is // understood
The verse suggests that this is a story about a triangular affair. Apparently, the heroine's lover has a wife or a steady partner, who the lover was seeing well before he was seeing the heroine, and who wears the ring of marriage or engagement. He usually took off the ring when dating the heroine. Yesterday, the heroine ran into him and his partner arm in arm. Today, he sent the message to her telling her he would be late for the date. Though the appointment was arranged for his convenience, his excuse was that he had a business assignment, which is very rare. Because the relationship is hidden, she can't tell anyone about the affair, though she almost can't keep it just to herself. She wants to go away with him somewhere. Her fingertips tremble in unstable situations. She cannot get over him.
The story told above is based on the first impression of the first two stanzas (or 8 lines) of the female's lyrics. To hear such a story has become quite commonplace and the story fits very well within our every day experience of our taken-for-granted world.
If you are keen to understand the lyrics, however, the following stanza should present some bewilderment. There appears to be two different pronouns that both mean the second person, namely 'kimi' and 'anata'. The latter pronoun has appeared earlier and apparently refers to the heroine's lover mentioned in the preceding stanzas. Who could the former be then?
If this 'kimi' is identical with 'anata', it means that the heroine first fell in love with her man dancing. It is unnatural for Japanese lyrics, however, to refer to the same person with different pronouns. In the Japanese language, the choice of pronouns often suggests a lot about the speaker's and the referred people's identities and their relationship. For example, in many songs, especially in the Enka style songs, when 'anata' and 'omae' , both are second person pronouns, appear together, the former should be the female speakers reference to a male person, and vice versa. Using different pronouns in reference to the same person is not the norm. It might be possible in some cases where the changing relationship between the speaker and the referred person should be connoted, but such interpretation seems hardly acceptable in this particular case.
If the first line of the stanza is a direct narration spoken by 'anata', the heroine's lover, 'kimi' apparently is the heroine herself. He fell in love with her dancing. This seems to be a more harmonious interpretation with the context of the preceding stanzas. The difficulty is that hardly any other example of direct narration can be found in the lyrics of globe songs. If this line is a direct narration, it is more natural for it to come with an explanatory phrase that explains the audience who was speaking.
When 'kimi' is neither the heroine, nor her man, it should be another man. She should have fallen in love again when she saw this new man dancing. This is not an interpretation that is easily reached by the audience at first hand. Only after some bewildered moments, some of the audience would realize this deeper connotation. Once the existence of the other man is recognized, the earlier interpretation of the preceding stanzas should be revised. For this revelation possibly provides an alternative reading of the story, that is, one then presumes that it was she who frequently took off her ring, and it was she who was arm in arm with her man etc.
As such, the first interpretation of the story and the deeper interpretation lead the lyrics to completely different, and in a sense opposite, directions. Although they have a similar structure, the lyrics that give contradictory leads are also seen in varied forms. The main rapping part by Marc is nothing but a seduction, starting with lines that might roughly be translated as "No moral, no rules. Nobody can control the instinct." This part suggests the affairs of the heroine are quite sensual and physical. The following third verse, sung by Keiko, presents a counter lead with lines like "(I've) kept this feeling warm quite a while, failing to put in voices. (I'm) always satisfied just with seeing (your) smile." These lines suggest that all the sensual matters were just imaginary turmoil in her mind. She may be having no physical affair with anyone in fact, and the whole story could just be her imagination or fantasy.
After following the contradictory leads to interpret this ambiguous story of triangular love (the ambiguity enabling different interpretations) each listener (female in particular) can choose whatever interpretation she (or he) sympathizes with. From the interpretation that it is a fantasy, or that it is about platonic love, to the more mature interpretation that it is about a woman having an affair with a family man, and finally to an interpretation that it is about a girl playing with "boy friends" in plural, the audience can come to an interpretation of the song that fits their own feeling about, and experience of, the real world. For many people under the pressure of troubled love affairs, this is "My song".

Conclusion

The writer of this song, Tetsuya Komuro (a.k.a. TK), is the leader and keyboard player of the group, and also is the producer. He composes all the melodies the group play, and also writes lyrics for his melodies in most cases, with additional contributions from Marc, who usually writes lines for rapper. TK's success as a producer is not limited to his own group. He is also extremely successful as a producer of many other singers and groups, including such names as Namie Amuro, Tomomi Kahala, and TRF. Total sales of what is called the Komuro Family reached thirty million copies by 1999, and the figure is believed to have been growing further.
For the producer of music commodities, the most important target in production of music is the sales volume. Although there may be various strategies that can be used to achieve mass sales, the most successful songs are often sung with sympathizing lyrics. These songs often heard in pubs and party rooms with karaoke through the voices of the audience/consumers are the most successful songs. Songwriters elaborate their lyrics to gain a larger range of sympathy among the audience. Presenting a clear and single idea that can be shared among the larger portion of the public could be one possible direction of such efforts. As seen in the case of "Can't Stop Fallin' in Love", however, it is also possible to grasp the hearts of many by presenting ambiguous, or even ambivalent, lyrics that may be interpreted differently by different listeners. Good understanding on the lyrics is necessary. For the further academic discussion, however, it is more important to understand the strategy of the production side, producers, songwriters, performers, etc., and their manipulation on or interaction with the audience.


BIBLIOGRAPHY:
(All titles are in Japanese, transliterated by the Hepburn system.)
INAMASU, Tatsuo (1984): Shakaiteki communication to shite no ongaku. MIZUHARA & TSUJI (eds) "Communication no shakai shinrigaku", University of Tokyo Press, pp.147-168.
MITA, Munesuke (1978 [originally in 1967]): "Kindai nihon no sinjo no rekisi", Kodansha.
YAMADA, Harumichi (1999): globe: Komuro Tetsuya no kashi ga egakidasu sekai. Ongaku Kenkyu (Kunitachi College of Music) 11, pp.113-128.

DISCOGRAPHY:
("Can't Stop Fallin' Love" appears in the following albums with just slightly varied versions of lyrics printed in leaflets.)
GLOBE (1997): Faces Places. Avex Globe, AVCG-70002.
GLOBE (2000): Cruise Record 1995-2000. Avex Globe, AVCG-70006-7.
(For overview on TK's production works in his acme.)
V.A.(2000): Arigato 30 Million Copies -Best of TK Works-. Avex Trax, AVCD-11805-7.
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