Background information of songs we sing 私たちが歌う曲の背景情報

(Prepared by Ms Naomi Matsukawa)

Song's Background

This song is composed by the Japanese famous singer song writer, Yosui Inoue, and one of his best hit song in 90s. He wrote this music for the movie with the same title, “Sho-nen Jidai.”

The story of the movie is about friendships between a “city boy,” Shinji, who moved to countryside during the war and a local boy, Takeshi. Through their relationship and the beautiful nature around them, Shinji learns a lot of things…

This song can be heard at the end of the movie where Takeshi is running aside the steam train on which Shinji is, as if he were chasing it. There is no word among them, but they are gazing at each other. Then, the train enters a tunnel and the movie ends with the picture in which the two boys stand side by side. (See the youtube below)

This story is based on the true story. After their separation, “real Takeshi” was killed in a traffic accident. Therefore, this song implies Shinji’s yearnings for his lost friend and his own boyhood days.

Interpretation of the lyrics 

The image of this song is, according to the composer Inoue, “a boy who is still in the middle of his growing-up.”

This song sings about Shinji’s recollection of his summer. He, who may be around 10 years-old, spent his summer in countryside where he saw the beautiful blue sky, small fire lumps at night and played fireworks, and was impressed by the numerous stars in midnight.

It was a great memory for the boy, but the summer was already over and time is passing towards winter. This is the contrast; time is proceeding(natsu ga sugi…/nagai fuyu…/nagai kage…), but the boy’s heart often goes back to his summer(akogare ni samayou…/watashi no kokoro wa natsu moyou).

Although he knows he never get back to Takeshi or his own childhood, he cannot help recollecting them. All of us have the similar feeling as this for our own childhood, don’t we?

Plus

The difficulty in understanding this lyric is that some words are just created by Inoue himself; for example,

1)Kaze azami: Kaze=wind, azami=a kind of flower…but the flower named “Kaze Azami” doesn’t exist. Inoue said he thought it did, so this is a kind of his imaginary flower.

2)Yoi kagari: Yoi=evening, kagari=a fire…probably, he imagined a fire in a summer festival in countryside.