Toshiki Kadomatsu – Never Touch Again (English Translation)

And just like that, several months have flashed by without writing anything on this website that I’m paying for! Oh dear. I haven’t really felt like translating anything recently since my Japanese skills continue to decline and someone else has taken up translating most of Barbee Boys’ catalogue, but I recently started chatting to a Japanese lady online and decided I should try to finish this one that’s been languishing in the drafts for a while.

Toshiki Kadomatsu (角松敏生) wasn’t very well-known outside Japan until the sudden interest in 70s/80s Japanese music a few years ago, when he was rightfully crowned the King of City Pop. I first came across his music in the one-shot anime “Nineteen19”, which features some jazz fusion and funk-inspired tracks by him: “Change My Life and Love For Me”, “Lovin’ You” and “Desire”, all of which come highly recommended.

The film follows Kazushi Kubota, a 19-year-old guy who works at a bakery and has always been too busy concentrating on his hobbies to think about romance. One night, he’s at a club with friends when he happens to bump into Masana Fujisaki, his former high school classmate who went on to become a successful model. I remember first watching this when I was about 15 and being convinced that I’d be living a similarly glamorous life in the big city in four years’ time! Like California Crisis and To-Y, the plot is a little meandering, but it’s a sweet, uncomplicated love story that features a fantastic soundtrack. I do have the manga it was based on downloaded somewhere, but never managed to get very far with it – there are 12 volumes and the creator even added some new material in the 2010s, so I imagine it goes into a bit more depth than a 45-minute anime could.

Anyway, hearing the songs in Nineteen19 led me to seek out more of Mr Kadomatsu’s music, such as his fantastic 1984 album “After 5 Clash”. “Never Touch Again” is probably my favourite track from this album thanks to the brilliant funk bass line and horn intro. He wrote every track on the album and arranged almost all of them, as well as serving as producer. He has also produced for other artists, such as Anri, and still performs and releases music to this day. Please find my translation below.

Translation Notes

The song paints a picture of a city full of vain, materialistic people who won’t express their true feelings, which I think really encapsulates bubble-era Japan, or at least what I imagine it was like. I think when the singer talks about “never touching you again”, it’s because they’ve just broken up with someone.

I don’t really know if you should correct the English bits when you translate Japanese songs, but the grammar-nitpicker in me just can’t leave well alone. For the line “夜の街をmake up”, I had to change it completely as it “make up” in this context just doesn’t make any sense in English. In fact, I’m not 100% on what Mr Kadomatsu even meant here. Any attempts to search for the term give you “makeup” as in cosmetics. I suspect the intended meaning was something like “come together” or even “come alive” – i.e. the city isn’t really complete until it’s night time. However, feel free to take this with a grain of salt as I have mostly based on the fact that the girls in Sailor Moon say “make up” when they do their little transformation sequences.

奴らが笑う – 奴ら (yatsura) is a tough one to translate. It’s a slightly rude or familiar way to refer to a group of people. It’s usually translated as “those guys”, but this is pretty neutral in English and comes across as exclusively male, which I’m not sure fits. I really wanted to put “those cats” but then I remembered: we are not in 1950s New York. Would “those idiots” be going too far, perhaps?

To finish, it’s a little off-topic but I just love the imagery in this song – the buildings looming over the pulsing crowds of people, the light of the sun fading into a night lit up by neon signs – it really transports me back to some fun nights I had in megacities like Seoul and Tokyo.