Kan Mikami - "Lyon", November 4, 2010

Kan Mikami (三上寛) performing "Lyon" at Muryoku Muzenji (無力無善寺) in Tokyo"s Koenji neighborhood, November 4, 2010. "Lyon" is off Mikami's latest CD, Yakichi (Modern Music | PSF Records). He changed the lyrics slightly, but this is Alan Cumming's English translation from Yakichi's CD Booklet:

Amongst the questions that young people like to ask me,
"how was it back then?" is one of the most popular.
By back then they mean the period when I made my debut,
in the early 1970s.
If they ask me how it was when I was a kid, meaning the
fifties and sixties, I cast my mind back and tell them.

In a chrysanthemum field, carrying a bottle of cider
and two sharp grass-sickles

Even though I would only be using one, I had two.
Aah, two sickles?

At times when feeling particularly vulnerable, I suddenly recall
that guy with Fenki and wonder if he really died.

Some people say that you should never follow someone
who is too much like you, but sometimes I see people
who look exactly the same as me.

Along the road to the field there was a crematorium.
Where they cremated the bodies of the dead.
They used to cremate the dead
in charcoal maker's kilns.
One plume of smoke
or two?

Where I come from in Tsugaru, they used to say "hayaku dobose"
meaning "get to bed now", but you hardly ever hear this nowadays.
Amongst these dead Tsugaru dialect phrases there were almost
certainly those that captured the smell of my young body,
but they are now impossible to recapture.

There were nights of fear
And nights of impatience
But now they have
Vanished utterly.

But one thing I want to remember above all else
is my grandmother, looking down through her glasses
on a lazy summer's day...

Category:

Music

Tags:

• folk rock
• guitar
• blues rock
• Kan Mikami
• Koenji
• Tokyo
• Muzenji
• 三上寛
• 高円寺
• 東京
• 無力無善寺