Tag Archives: Japanese

I missed yesterday… oops! In my defense, it was the first day of English summer camp at school, so I was swamped, but I was also hit with the headache from hell, so I literally left school, came home, curled up in a ball and went to sleep…

Well… after I watched the teaser for JYJ’s Back Seat MV. Oh man… the sexiness… I was really wishing I didn’t have the headache so that I could watch it over and over and over again all afternoon/evening.

Anyway, back to my countdown and back to Japan in 2010 for the last song in JYJ’s A-Nation set in 2010, W: a beautiful ballad with some very moving lyrics. And there’s a story behind them… (It’s a bit of a long one, so I’ll share the video first and then the story.)

The songs  on JYJ’s album The… were the first ones released by JYJ after their injunction against SM Entertainment. In fact, they weren’t even called JYJ yet, they were marketed by Avex in Japan as Junsu, Jejung, Yuchun. This particular song is said to be a message to the 2 remaining members of DBSK, Yunho and Changmin; and that, although they didn’t write the lyrics themselves, they sat down with the lyricist, Inoue Shinjiro, who conveyed their feelings for them. (http://aozorajae.blogspot.ca/2011/06/meaning-behind-jyjs-w.html)

To my knowledge, however, JYJ themselves have never confirmed nor denied that the song is about Yunho and Changmin, and since Avex halted their activities in Japan and JYJ subsequently filed a lawsuit against Avex, they no longer sing, nor mention the 4 songs on the The… mini album. However, this may change, going forward, since Junsu sang a medley of some old Tohoshinki (DBSK in Japan) songs at a recent concert in Japan… time will tell, I guess.

Regarding the translated lyrics in the video, it should be noted that in Japanese the “I” and “we” pronouns are seldom required. If you are speaking about something, it is understood to be about the speaker, unless otherwise stated. So, the people who translated these lyrics used “we” and “us” in lines like “We are painting the W in the same way / We will shine more and more so that you can find us” When really, it could just as easily be “I” and “me.” So this could be a song about someone yearning and waiting for a lost love just as easily as a song about 3 bandmates who miss their other 2 members. They do say ‘bokutachi’ and ‘bokutachi no’ at a couple of points in the song, which means we/us and ours, but, again, I think it can be interpreted to be either we the singers, or we the singer plus the person being sung to.

Furthermore, at one point in the song, Yoochun is credited with singing the lyric “We love you both,” however, the official lyrics on the CD say “In love with love” for that line, though it does sound a bit like “we love you both” in this live version, so the idea of Yoochun changing it when singing live is possible, though, to me, it still sounds more like he’s singing the lyrics as they are in the official version.

One thing that people put forth as an argument against it being a message to the other two members is that whenever the song refers to “you” it uses “kimi” which is singular, instead of “kimitachi” the plural form. But it’s music, and people take stylistic liberties with grammar in music and poetry all the time. Also, if it was a message, they might not have wanted to be completely blatant about it either, so using “kimi” would keep the intended recipient(s) vague.

Those who aren’t fully familiar with JYJ and DBSK may wonder why people think it’s a message to the 2 members that stayed with SM Ent? Well, other than the blog post by Inoue Shinjiro, which I’m not actually sure is authentic – I’ve never been ambitious enough to search for his original post – there is one major reason. The W in the sky that the song refers to is the constellation Cassiopeia: the constellation after which Dong Bang Shin Ki’s official fan club is named. It was named after Cassiopeia specifically because of its 5 star W formation, representing the 5 members of DBSK. Because Dong Bang Shin Ki literally means “The rising gods of the east” and where else do the gods reside but in the heavens, right?

So, despite the fact that JYJ never confirmed it, and that the translators used their own interpretations in their translation I think it’s entirely possible that the song is a message to Yunho and Changmin. Releasing a song called W that specifically refers to the constellation that their fan club is named after is too coincidental not to mean something. Plus, their emotions seem so raw while performing it. And, I’m pretty certain that JYJ still believed that they would be back with the other 2 some day because of things that were said when Junsu had a rather infamous Twitter meldown in January of 2011, so the idea of them using a song to communicate with the former bandmates that they were cut off from by the lawsuit is completely feasible. But, I will leave you to make up your own minds… Thoughts?