Wagakki Band II

Good evening! As I mentioned last time, today I would like to go back to Wagakki Band. This time I would like to add a few words about the instruments and write about some interesting songs from their repertoire.

First of all among the traditional Japanese musical instruments the most famous ones are :

Taiko -  Japanese percussion instrument, this term refers to any kind of drum and they are used often during festivals

Biwa - a type of Japanese mandolin, often used in narrative storytelling. The biwa is the chosen instrument of Benten, goddess of music, eloquence, poetry, and education in Buddhism.

Koto- is the national instrument of Japan, stringed, about 180 centimetres long, made from wood, and it have 13 or 17 strings

Shiamisen - a banjo-like three-stringed instrument, derived from the Chinese instrument sanxian. It is played with a plectrum called a bachi and is often used to accompany bunraku and kabuki.

Shakuhachi - a type of flute that consists of a bamboo pipe about 20 inches long, was introduced from China into Japan in the 8th century

Shou - a vertical bamboo flute, that was introduced from China during the Nara period , it consists of 17 slender bamboo pipes and two of them are silent

Koto

Biwa

I found a short video that shows two of the above mentioned instruments: taiko and shiamisen :)

Going back to Wagakki Band besides the well-known Europeans musical instruments such as : guitar, bass, drums, we can hear the sound of koto, shiamisen, shakuhachi and taiko drums (Wadaiko).

As for the most popular hits of Wagakki Band we can certainly include songs such as: Ikusa, Nijiiro Chouchou, Roku Chounen to Ichiya Monogatari and Senbonzakura. And today I want to briefly describe two of them.

Roku Chounen to Ichiya Monogatari

This song, like many others from the Japanese repertoire, can be interpreted as a metaphor, in this case, of life and growing up. Lyrics presents a nameless orphan that being isolated by the rest of the society did not know kindness nor he had a name.The child was persecuted and the only thing that the child knew was despair and loneliness, therefore, up to the point when he met another child, he did not have the will to live. It  is confirmed by a fragment which could be translated as:

"I can not die, can not die, why I can not die?

Although I can not have a single dream"

In the second part of the song the protagonist meets a child, whom despite being aware that this friendship can bring him a lot of suffering.The nameless child, instead of being happy still fears that kindness of his friend will lead to their death. The child dreams that the world would end and two friends would disappear from the world filled with hatred. 

As I mentioned this song could be seen as a metaphor of growing up, fearing the world, which is full of hate and selfishness, but also to emphasize the importance of friendship and the fact that loneliness is the greatest evil.

Senbonzakura

This song is much more difficult to explain and I can only try to sketch the main idea of it. Like many other Japanese songs, the text is very poetic and therefore can be interpreted in many ways. The song is very lively and expressive, in the video often they hide faces behind masks of Oni - Japanese demon. I want also mention that the title means: a thousand petals of cherry blossoms. In Japan, as I mentioned many times, cherry blossoms is associated with the transience of of life and inexorability  of dying. This song is about conflicts and refers to Second World War, but there are not enough evidence to say that it is only about Second World War. Senbonzakura talks about death, war, suffering and about how quickly our lives can end. The first 4 lines of this song can be translated more or less like this:

"Petals of a thousand cherry trees through the night

You sing and I dance

We have a real banquet in a steel cage

Come and shoot freely."

Personally, I think that this song not only glorifies the deaths of war's victims, but also calls for the senselessness of armed conflict. The protagonist feels trapped in a steel cage and the cruel war seems to be terrible and insane banquet full of blood and violence. 

"The world is immersed in eternal darkness

You will not hear any laments here."

At the end two other popular hits of this band:

Ikusa

Nijiiro Chouchou

See you nest time ! :)