Talking Translation with kimonobeat

We chat with K about the translation process, the J-pop audience and Japanese lyrics

This is part of This Side of Japan issue #16. You can return to the main newsletter here.

Since I started to do more translations for This Side of Japan as reading material, I wanted to chat with my internet friend who’s best known as @kimonobeat on Tumblr. K has been translating J-pop lyrics to English since she was a child first for herself and now for J-pop fans on the internet. Her archive via Tumblr runs very deep, ranging from the top of the Oricon to the alt-idol scene, from the current Reiwa stars to the Showa classics. We discussed the details of the translation process, the J-pop audience who request her service, and our personal observations of J-pop lyrics.

You can request K for J-pop translations via Ko-Fi.

Can you tell me how you started translating Japanese songs? And how fluent in Japanese are you? I’ve never taken the JLPT or anything, so I can’t give an exact measure, but I can understand most music, films, TV shows and manga pretty fine, but it would probably take some work if I ever wanted to get cracking on a novel or some political-opinion piece.

K: I'm half-Japanese but didn't grow up speaking it at home. When I was about 10, I got my parents to buy me a small dictionary so I could learn on my own. Music was such a natural and fun way for me to absorb new words that I spent a lot of time painstakingly writing out lyrics in Japanese, translating them for myself, then comparing them to whatever I could find on the internet (not much). That eventually evolved into sharing them with my friends, then on the internet... and now here we are!

As far as my fluency, I'm certified JLPT N1 and have worked both as a freelance translator and an in-house translator in the past. I can understand most books, TV shows, etc. without trouble! I just haven't spoken Japanese out loud in so long I'm almost afraid to call myself fluent, haha.

Part of why I enjoy translating is that it’s a learning opportunity for me too. I only speak Japanese when I talk to my parents, so it’s a very different, rewarding experience when you read and try to articulate more complex thoughts in Japanese expressed in like a personal essay or a song lyric. That’s what really got me into Ayumi Hamasaki, just discovering her emotional lyrics during a time I was familiarizing myself with the language in ways I didn’t really experience before. Were there any lyricists or artists in particular who really caught your attention and opened your mind when you started translating lyrics?

K: I really enjoy reading your translations since you delve into artists that aren’t as well-known in the international community! Ayu was definitely my biggest influence and first love in J-pop. Thanks to her, I spent a lot of time in the early to mid-00's listening to other female singer-songwriters/lyricists like Hikaru Utada, BONNIE PINK, Ringo Sheena, Kaela Kimura, YUI and aiko, trying to find someone else speaking their truth through music. aiko in particular caught my eye early on because her lyrics feel relatable almost in spite of how specific she can be about mundane details. I also remember being fascinated by Ichiro Yamaguchi’s repetitive, poem-like lyrics when I discovered Sakanaction in 2011, which is why aiko and Sakanaction were some of the first artists I started translating on my Tumblr.

You mention how songwriters like Aiko and Yamaguchi have their own distinguished styles. What are some struggles you face trying to retain those quirks and nuances while translating? 

K: I find Sakanaction lyrics challenging because for a while, Ichiro had a very specific ‘palette’ of words he liked to use. Lots of nighttime and ocean imagery, very specific adjectives, repeated lines as double entendres. I try my best to maintain the same English vocabulary across their discography, but that can be difficult to do while still making sure it flows well. Other artists who write from experience (like aiko) also pose interesting challenges because I’m not really sure what they’re referring to.

Do you ever think about how the translation would read rhythmically? It’s very tough for me to capture the meaning of a line in a verse but also not making it read so convoluted. That’s where I found a big difference between Japanese and English songs. The former can fit a lot of dense thoughts no problem, but for the latter, complex words just end up making the line feel bloated and rigid, which isn’t very appealing in a pop song that thrives from brevity.

K: Definitely! I try to keep things roughly the same length and feel by localizing wherever appropriate, especially when it comes to rap sections or songs. Compared to a lot of other Japanese culture fans, I think J-pop lovers are more understanding of loose translations. If the meaning or original intention is important, I usually leave things relatively intact. It just makes sense to have a throwaway pop song read like just that in English rather than translating word for word, and accidentally making it appear more formal than it’s treated in Japanese.

“Hanabi” by Aiko (1999)

You have quite the archive of translations, but which songs are the most frequently visited?

K: It seems like overall, people are often brought to my Tumblr for Gesu no Kiwami Otome (which I stopped translating a while ago), Sakanaction, and now Aimyon. Although recently, I was shocked to discover that “Summertime” by cinnamons x evening cinema was generating over a thousand hits a day! I’ve been told in the past that many Google a single song and are surprised to see the artist’s entire discography, then stay for the rest.

Gesu and Aimyon are artists who also have a signature lyrical style of their own too, so I’m glad people will get to read those. Does it seem like the newer artists, say, from the 2010s are getting the most attention from your lyrics page? I know you also translate older pop songs all the way to the Showa era.

K: I do think people are more likely to go searching for those newer songs, whereas fans of Heisei and Showa era artists (especially those of us who have been online since the ‘00s) are used to not being able to find a translation, haha. It’s also great translating something that is just picking up steam and helping international fans ride the same wave of popularity an artist might be experiencing in Japan!

Just thinking about the engagement from your site, it’s a really interesting look at what’s getting attention for overseas fans because it shows which artists generate a curiosity in a listener to find out more of what they’re about beyond catchiness or cool instrumentation. You take translation requests via Ko-Fi, but are there any types of artists or genres that stick out as a popular request?

K: Oh, absolutely. The alt-idol, counterculture and doujin community have been so welcoming to me ever since I started taking requests. I especially receive a lot of requests for Ziyoou-Vachi/QUEEN BEE, which tells me they truly appreciate Avu’s writing as part of her overall artistry. It’s funny to me because for a long time I was only translating mainstream pop music, but the more I did it, the more I realized what artists I was missing out on.

Are there any particular artists or songs you were glad to discover through translation requests?

K: “Suitei Sweetie” by KOTO is a recent one! That song is so adorable and fun, plus I’d been meaning to check her out anyway. Probably the most interesting one was a song from an old PS1 game called “Cocktail Harmony” that I could barely find any information on! It was a really nice Christmas-themed tune that I had stuck in my head for weeks. More generally, Codomomental artists and Ziyoou-Vachi.

It’s really great that you get to hear from audiences of all types of scenes because it’s easy to close myself off in a bubble just staying on Twitter and engage with only a certain sphere of J-pop fans. Circling back to the newer songs, have you observed any generational differences between the lyricists of now compared to the lyricists of the past, Showa or Heisei?

K: This is a fantastic question that I haven’t thought about before! Showa lyricists definitely tend to establish a very specific scene: a girl saying goodbye to her friends one last time on graduation day before summer begins, watching her crush on a date with another girl at a cafe, or flying through space in a UFO. They’re very episodic. I don’t really see many abstract lyrics up until Heisei, where singer-songwriters explored more vague, thematic lyrics and personal philosophies or experiences. And in newer songs from the mid-00’s onward, I notice they sometimes don’t have to mean anything at all. It could just be a stream-of-consciousness rant, purely aesthetic keywords, or literal nonsense. It’s interesting switching back and forth between all the eras because I have to approach them differently!

What you describe for the newest generation is what makes them so exciting for me. People like Etsuko Yakushimaru or Wednesday Campanella are really breaking away from the past traditions of narrative-based songs and making it OK to write a song devoid of meaning. Not that people don’t care about meaning anymore; we still have an artist like Aimyon becoming very huge partly through the content of her lyrics. This is going to be a broad question, I understand, but are there any things that stick out to you in a song or a lyricist that seems very… Japanese?

K: This is just a personal gripe, but Japanese lyrics love to use the phrase “biru no sukima (the gap between buildings)” which I’m sure doesn’t conjure up any specific mental image for people who don’t live in the city, haha. I also notice a heavy emphasis on seasonal keywords since Japan is so proud of their four seasons. Every music industry has songs dedicated to seasons but Japanese artists release them like clockwork.

Oh, yes, especially the graduation songs. Going off that city-specific lyric you mentioned, too, there are so many pop songs built around the jyokyo narrative of one moving to the big city, specifically Tokyo, in search of a better life. I mean, there’s an entire subgenre celebrating Tokyo and city life! I know, America also has the Big City Dreams narrative of moving to Los Angeles or New York or some other metropolitan city, but I think it’s very unique in Japan’s case mainly because there’s only one place of destination. There’s not, like, inaka songs in the similar rule of America’s country music that celebrates countryside life or at least without irony. Is that something you see too?

K: Yeah! It’s interesting how far back the “moving to Tokyo” theme goes, and yet the concept stays the same. From Hiromi Ohta’s “Momen no Handkerchief”, to YUI’s “Tokyo”, to Sakanaction’s “Eureka”. I honestly can’t think of any songs that mention the country without going right back to talking about Tokyo.

“Eureka” by Sakanaction (2014)

Going back to your translation process, are there any misconceptions of translating?

K: I sometimes see people comment that my translations are very “liberal.” Which is fine! Most people who haven’t tried it before probably don’t realize that even with languages that are more closely related (like English and French, for example), it’s never a matter of translating on a word-by-word basis. Like, I often substitute words like “me-ru” for “texting” since that doesn’t force you to stop and think about the English translation. Localizing is just part of a good translation, and that doesn’t necessarily mean being “unfaithful” to the original if you do a good job.

I also don’t know how many times I struggled because a word doesn’t have a direct translation in English. It’s always missing some nuance that I want to get across, but I have to make due with what I got. What are some things you’re mindful of while translating? Do you have any particular rules or standards you stick to?

K: To go back to the “gaps between buildings” example… One of my favorite things about publishing these translations online is that you can continue to use the power of the internet to your advantage. If that phrase ever pops up in a song, I’ve given up trying to make that clearer and will just link to a picture instead! When I encounter a specific word or concept that is so Japanese that it’s hard to fully convey in English without being too wordy (like wabisabi), I leave it as-is and provide a link to somebody else who explains it clearly. Other times you just have to pick your battles. Especially in a quick 5-minute song, sometimes an additional adjective or explanation could make it more accurate but doesn’t really contribute enough to agonize over.

Totally. Seishun is another word that I just gave up trying to translate and often leave as is. I also just could not find a great solution translating the onomatopoeia in Tricot’s “Makkuro” for a friend besides leaving it alone. (If someone has a better alternative for fuwafuwa, please let me know.) And there’s someone like Tsunku who just loves making up words for a Morning Musume song—but all those hard-to-translate nuances is what makes Japanese songs so unique and great in my opinion.

Speaking of Morning Musume, they do have an English version of their old song “Summer Night Town,” and recently Gesu No Kiwame Otome put out English versions of new songs from their new album. Do you ever find yourself nitpicking two versions of the same song?

K: Recently thanks to Hikaru Utada, yes! Especially since she translated her songs herself, which is so rare and amazing. I almost never have official English translations or versions to compare to so it’s always a nice opportunity to see whether I understood the more vague lines correctly. Actually, more often than not I like to check how other translators handled the same song (if another translation exists)! It’s always helpful to see other perspectives and sometimes challenges me to rethink my approach.

It’s always interesting to see translations for someone like Enon Kawatani, whose personality really comes on a page, and the choices the translator made to bring that to life but in another language. I sometimes sense the opposite happening, where a Japanese songwriter thinks in Japanese first before articulating that into their English lyrics. I observe that from a band like One OK Rock or other pop-punk bands who regularly releases songs in English. I was curious if you ever sensed that from a songwriter at all, that they think in Japanese first before writing it down in English.

K: For sure! That’s definitely how we end up with very interesting English in some lyrics, haha. The bilingual songwriters I follow do seem to follow a more Western, story-driven approach to their lyrics even when writing in Japanese, though. Early Hikki or milet are good examples of that.

Yeah, the English lyrics tend to come out way too sentimental in many cases because that’s just not how a lot of American pop works. That’s something I feel is Japanese, too, this embrace of earnestness that makes singer/songwriter types still the bread and butter of the J-pop industry. Just to wrap up here, what scene of Japanese music do you want to see more interest from other people?

K: As somebody who’s been listening to Japanese music for a really long time, I feel like the general public still views “J-pop” as anime songs, Vocaloid music, cutesy idols… the “weird Japan” stuff, right? There are so many mid-tier artists in the Japanese music scene who might not be groundbreaking or wildly different from Western music, but are putting out decently good songs. My only hope in translating lyrics is to help expand that definition a little bit. Maybe if people understood more than the surface level they can’t crack due to the language barrier, they’d be more willing to explore songs that don’t immediately capture their attentionーbasically, more context to evaluate what the Japanese music industry has to offer. I have a bias towards singer-songwriter types, but that applies across the board! City pop has also brought a lot of attention to Showa-era singers and I hope that continues.

Next issue of This Side of Japan is out August 19. You can check out previous issues here. You can see K and her translations on Tumblr here.