Mukai Shutoku Acoustic & Electric - 自問自答 3.13 2022

向井秀徳アコースティック & エレクトリック - 自問自答
Mukai Shutoku Acoustic & Electric - JIMON-JITO (Self-Questioning)

Live at Tokyo Yurakucho Yomiuri Hall 13th march 2022

All songs and lyrics by Mukai Shutoku
Movie director: Okubo Yoshiyuki
Live sound engineer: Itoga Takashi
Audio mixed by Mukai Shutoku
Lyrics translation: Leo Imai

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JIMON-JITO (Self-Questioning)

A Shinjuku rambling-ballad
I died, slept, and awoke to a morning-glow Red Fuji
Escaped a nightmare play Before I knew it, on a meat-mattress I lay This pressure I’m feeling
I’ve been resigned to a life of permissive degradation Feeling the limitations of bipedal walking
So I get on all fours Wild-animal style
KAZEKIRI KABUKIMACHI (Kabukicho that cuts like a sword)
Men ready to kill at the flick of a switch Anyone, anywhere
And me, moving forward with a dull and weary head
The swarm of people rushing into my vision
The anger that my eyeballs see
But my eyeballs pretend not to see a thing
Rows of buildings In all that order he goes into hiding And all of a sudden he’s missing

Frozen City ruckus Parasites causing trouble and fuss
The gleaming gun-grey tip of a barrel blows a hole in the back of the head
A picture of misery Misshapen beyond recognition
Idle bystanders flock to stare, cold and expressionless
At a loss, I quickly leave the scene Back to the beginning Over and over again
Urges return, that carnal feeling Life repeating, all things are fleeting
Goddamn Flashback phenomenon
A vague and blurry video reflection
The blackest black at 5:30AM A sense that something’s wrong all over my brain

A thick student’s notebook seeped in lead-etchings
An illusion that my spirit’s been cleansed
My innards doing flips and spinners A total mess
A shade of clean concrete sheath my mind’s colour-sense
Glorified memories of that jet black hair Do you really want to see this moratorium vision of hell?
Flaunting what’s juvenile Nothing clever or cute about the ramblings of this man-child
In a gathering of creeps A graveyard of pallid, bluish, emotionless faces
The howls of restless ghosts now but a whimper I’m so tired of my own nonsensical chatter
Roaming around a lonely abyss Feeling like I’ve seen DONZOKO (rock bottom)

But still I keep on, out of spite if nothing else
And still, and still, and still, and still I keep on looking
Keep on looking, keep on looking
Looking for that feeling like my brain’s been shaken, like white-noise in my head
Where can I find it? Where the hell do I find it all?
I’ll rip my heart out of my body and record its beating with a microphone or something
I’ll practice with the band while playing to the sound of its rhythm
I’ll record the images in my head onto a Blu-ray Disc and watch it back in the middle of night with some red wine
That’s my self-liberation coated thick and hard with lies
I’ll question if I am who I really think I am

It’s like JIMON-JITO

Sunday noon I slipped into a crowd
The glaring sunshine mixing with the whitest white inside a diner
A young father and a little girl were biting into something that looked good
She was laughing The kid was laughing
Oblivious to everything in this world
The kid was just laughing

The peacekeeping arms in Shinjuku 3rd District
The odour from a one-eyed street cat
Abortions
30min mistakes at 25000yen a pop
Backbiting drunks getting their fix
Factions secure in their cliques
Casual URAGIRI (betrayals)
The stupidity of isolationists like me
The inflated self-consciousness and self-regard
The empty consolatory words
The shame we carry a lifetime
The promises abandoned
The nothingness

To everything in this world
Oblivious to everything in this world The kids just laugh

That glaring light
In 1945, August 6th, at 08:15

Those clouds and hues of black and red
In 1945, August 9th, at 11:02

Fighter jet explosions, echoing in the skies of a faraway distant land

The body temperature, holding a burnt-up baby to your breast

A young soldier far from home, sent against his will to fight in a foreign country
Crying out for his mother
Just as he’s about to die from a rifle shot through the right eye

And so lives are born again Only to die just the same
Life repeating, all things are fleeting

The kids just laugh
Oblivious to everything in this world

Missing
All of a sudden he’s gone into hiding

Life in the Frozen City He’s gone into hiding

Life repeating, all things are fleeting Urges return, that carnal feeling…