~Deconstructing Rhyme Books~ Vol. 26 Tamaki ROY "Furukotobumi"
Song
This is "Furukotobumi" from the 2017 album "Nagi".
Produced by Aru-2, it is the ultimate grower of a song. I've chewed on this dried squid so much it's falling apart, but it's still delicious. How long will this song keep its flavor?
Watching the music video, Tamaki ROY's presence is also mysterious. Rather than hardcore hip-hop, it feels more art-oriented. Conversely, it might be more accessible to people who don't usually listen to hip-hop.
Rhyme
There are no rhymes that feel ostentatiously forced; he gently adds effortless end rhymes of one to three characters.
There are parts where the same vowels appear in places other than the end rhymes (e.g., "I-futa(ri)", "Ikutsu-Riyu", "Fuetsu(zuke)-Fureru" etc.), but this might be a coincidence rather than a conscious effort to rhyme.
By the way, this song only has one instance of rhyming nouns with nouns (Taiyo-Gaito).
The work that laid the foundation for rhyming in Japanese is King Giddra's 1995 release "Sora Kara no Chikara". By using inversion and ending sentences with nouns, they clearly presented the technique of rhyming.
Following that technique, it seems easy to rhyme by using nouns, but in this song, the absence of noun-to-noun rhymes takes on meaning.
In the interview below, Tamaki ROY says he wants to value the ambiguity inherent in the Japanese language (while also saying he wants to value a Western music feel). The interview is long, so I will quote the relevant part.
(Tamaki ROY) When I think about how Japanese rap has narrow margins and meanings that are singular, leading to low-abstraction expressions, I realized it's because I was unconsciously overusing Japanese-made Chinese compounds. (Interviewer) Japanese-made Chinese compounds are relatively new Japanese words created after the Meiji era, right? (Tamaki ROY) Yes. Two-character compounds, for example, time, space, subjectivity, objectivity, spirit—these are called Japanese-made Chinese compounds. After the Meiji era, when words and concepts that didn't exist before entered Japan, it seems they were created by assigning substitute kanji because they had to translate those concepts. I thought those were
words whose functions were predetermined. Or rather, rational words without any margin. For example, "moving to the station" and "going to the station" have the same meaning, but the former has a stiffer impression, and it feels like you're heading straight to the station in a business-like manner. But with the latter, you might buy coffee or pass by a dog on the way to the station. (Interviewer) Indeed, the former has clear outlines of meaning. It gives the impression of being used in academic papers. It has the convenience of being able to convey things accurately by eliminating ambiguity. -Omitted- (Tamaki ROY) Japanese has the characteristic of sharing ambiguous expressions, with a lot of information outside the areas put into words
, yet Japanese-made Chinese compounds were created for the purpose of functions opposite to those characteristics. I think it's because they tried to translate concepts from Europe and eliminate ambiguity. Thinking from that perspective, I thought
Japanese-made Chinese compounds are not suitable for the wide margins and multi-layered lyrical expressions I envision.
The title of this song is "Furukotobumi," which refers to the "Kojiki," the oldest book in Japan. As he mentions in the interview above, this song is a song that "attempts to depict the story up to the point where Izanami stays in the land of Yomi and Izanagi cleanses himself of defilement on earth".
I don't know the details of the Kojiki either, so I don't know if the content is really like that, but I feel I understand the reason for the ambiguity in this song's lyrics.
However, this ambiguity is not something that is vague and incomprehensible, but rather something you understand precisely because it is ambiguous. In other words, I think it is an expression that would fall apart if it were made any more concrete.
I called it a grower of a song at the beginning, but perhaps it is because of that ambiguity and abstraction that I end up listening to it over and over again.
Summary
Noun rhymes are easy to perform, but there is also poetry lost because of that.