2001.07.06.
Ambiguous and connotative nature of the Japanese lyrics:
Language, imagination, and strategy.
International Association for the Study of Popular Music:
Looking Back, Looking Ahead: Popular Music Studies 20 Years Later
Eleventh Biannual IASPM Conference, July 6-10, 2001,
Turku, Finland.
[ABSTRACT]
Ambiguous and connotative nature of the Japanese lyrics:
Language, imagination, and strategy.
YAMADA, Harumichi
Analysis on lyrics has been a basic part of the tradition of the popular music studies. Focii of the discussion on lyrics have been put in varied ways. Although the methods and approaches of analyses are still in challenging discussion, charm of understanding the deeper implication of lyrics attracts larger attention from popular music scholars.
Academic discussion on lyrics of Japanese popular songs, however, has been scarcely presented in non-Japanese languages, and thus hardly known by the rest of the world. In this presentation, some examples of in-depth interpretation of Japanese lyrics will be presented with sufficient background explanation on Japanese language.
Taking examples from the lyrics of songs by 'globe', a preeminently successful Japanese group in the late 1990's, ambiguous and connotative nature of the Japanese lyrics is examined through understanding on the language. Particularly, gender related expressions in Japanese lyrics are carefully analysed, for linguistic idea of gender in Japanese is quite different from that in European languages.
Focus of the analysis will be put on the structure of a lyric which allows varied interpretations based on the charactersitics of Japanese language. Same song may sound differently to different people.
日本語による関連論文
山田（1999）：globe：小室哲哉の歌詞が描き出す世界．
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