Japanese pop musics are sometimes criticised for their lack of political or social interests. And these criticisms are far from unfounded. Even in the case of the tragic tsunami and the following accident of the atomic power station on March 2011, pop musicians hardly made songs for that; instead, you may find public refrainment to play a very famous song in Japan titled Tsumami, by reason of that a phrase in the song, "sensation rolling on like a tsunami," should remind the victims of the traumatic happening.
I may mumur too much so far, but what I want to do here is to introduce the exception. Ichiko Aoba (青葉市子) is one of the artists who tried to understand and react the happening of 2011 in their own ways, as show in her impressive cover of "The Song of 'Within the District'" (「圏内の歌」) originally written by Tabito Nanao (七尾旅人). At present we maybe can listen to it only in a video on YouTube.
Let me try to translate the song:
-----------------------------------------
Kennai no Uta (The Song of "Within the District")
The little town where we cannot depart from
The town where we grew up
After playing with the mud
When we looked into the water
There was the moon reflected
Torrential rain makes the roof wet
The radioactive one running along the drainpipe
Then wets the garden, wets the shoes
And now wets the ball for baseball of that boy
Even if children alone
To somewhere far from here
For years and years
A bed story told by grandmothers
Children around the town
All know the lovesome story
Even if children alone
To somewhere far from here
I wanna make them escape
The lovely town where I cannot depart from
The town where I decide to live in
As if there had been any matter happened
We smile a little at each other under the cherry blossoms
Even if children alone
To somewhere far from here
I wanna make them escape
To somewhere far from here
I wanna make them escape
The little town where we cannot depart from
----------------------------------------------
Fortunately, the situation about the accident and radioactive in Japan is getting better and had never fallen into any fatal state so far. Many people, including myself, almost forget the vivid impression of emergency and crisis at that time in 2011. However, is it indeed saner to feel ease in the state of affairs, than to have anxiety or a sense of crisis?
In the title of the song, "Within the District (圏内, Kennai)" refers to the districts in which the residents have been ordered by the Japanese government not to stay long or not to enter at all. The range of the designated district is shrinking, but there still is actually even in 2018.
