Yaso Saijo's 'Butterfly' and Fujii Kaze's 'Hana'.
Poet and lyricist Yaso Saijo (1892-1970) was a genius poet who wrote numerous nursery rhymes familiar to our ears, including 'Tokyo Ondo' and 'Soshu Yakyoku'. Because he possessed not only songwriting ability but also exceptional skills as a 'copywriter', he was also made to write war songs to boost national morale during the war.
Lyrics to delight children. Lyrics to highlight famous singers. Lyrics to raise the morale of citizens heading to war. Lyrics to make people dance... It seems he responded to countless requests, and his range of work was so broad that one wonders where the core of this person truly lay.
The following is a poem by Yaso Saijo titled 'Butterfly'.
When I eventually descend to hell,
what shall I bring to the parents
and friends waiting for me there?
Perhaps I will take from my pocket
a pale, torn
corpse of a butterfly.
And as I hand it over, I will say,
My whole life,
like a child, lonely,
I spent chasing this.
A 'butterfly' that flutters beautifully, which I had been chasing all along to fill the hole that opened in my heart. By the time I obtained it, its form had changed from what I had sought, and it was already dead.
It was a life spent 'only' obsessing over a 'butterfly' I believed would fulfill me if I just had it.
And the place where one looks back like that is, perhaps, hell.
That 'butterfly' might be fame, parental love, eternal youth, an unfulfilled desire, or an ideal version of oneself.
I think the impressions one receives from this poem vary, but in the past, I felt an unfathomable sorrow from this piece.
Before I knew it, I had forgotten that sorrow, and 'Butterfly' had sunk to the bottom of my memory, but when I heard Fujii Kaze's 'Hana', I remembered 'Butterfly' for the first time in a long while.
I think I felt a link between the 'corpse of a butterfly' that 'should have' been fluttering beautifully and the 'withered, wrinkled bouquet' that 'should have' been blooming beautifully.
That said, the aftertaste of the former is sorrow, while the latter is a faint hope.
At the very least, it gives the hint of an 'inner flower' that releases us from our obsession with 'things that shine unchangingly'.
There surely does not exist anything that miraculously fits the hole opened in one's heart.