From the Yamato With Love (ヤマトより愛をこめて) by Kenji Sawada (沢田研二) - Star Blazers 2202 (2017) - English

Translating the song "From the Yamato With Love" (ヤマトより愛をこめて) from Star Blazers 2202 which was released in 2017. The original Japanese song is by Kenji Sawada (沢田研二).

As a kid, I watched the "Space Battleship Yamato" series and loved it. It was a late 70's cartoon series imported from Japan. The ending to the second feature length film was devastating, with many beloved characters dying during and at the end of the film. The final battle included the death of the much loved Yuki Mori who sacrificed herself to save the main character, Susumu Kodai. He in turn would crash the Yamato into the enemy ship thereby sacrificing himself to save the earth. It was so heroic but so devastating watching as a kid, as you don't expect characters to die in a cartoon.

I read there was plenty of backlash in Japan and other Asian countries where the show was distributed. So you can imagine what the Western countries thought where cartoons are generally more innocent in content. I remember being sad for months after seeing the ending. The backlash caused the producers to change the ending when they developed Season 2 of the series. Now the Yamato timeline ignores the second film like it didn't exist which is a shame. Although the live action adaptation of "Space Battleship Yamato" released in 2010 kept the sad ending where it belongs.

At the end of the original series was a song called "From the Yamato With Love". It played right as the Yamato crashed and exploded to save the earth. The internet was not around back in the early days so finding information about this song was non-existent at the time. It was not until "Star Blazers 2202" which remade the second season did I hear the song again. But there was no English translation of it on my copy. So I decided to take a break from my standard song translations to translate this song as I wanted to know what it means. So enjoy... I hope you all love the song as much as I.

Japanese, like Cantonese, Mandarin, and Korean are similar in that a particular "character" from that language can mean a number of things depending on the context. So I translated this song from the point of view that the singer's voice is Susumu Kodai and the content of the song is his last thoughts and message he wanted to leave the people of earth with prior to crashing the Yamato into the enemy ship to save the world... That helps me to select the meaning when the words or sentence can mean more than one thing.

So please enjoy. If any Japanese folk sees this clip, I would be interested to see how I went.

The lyrics to From the Yamato With Love by Kenji Sawada:

その人のやさしさが
花にまさるなら
その人の美しさが
星にまさるなら

君は手をひろげて守るがいい
からだを投げ出す値打ちがある
ひとりひとりが思うことは
愛するひとのためだけでいい
君に話すことがあるとしたら
今はそれだけかもしれない

今はさらばといわせないでくれ
今はさらばといわせないでくれ

いつの日か唇に
歌がよみがえり14
いつの日か人の胸に
愛がよみがえり

君は手をひろげて抱くがいい
たしかに愛した証(あか)しがある
遠い明日を思うことは
愛するひとのためだけでいい
君に話すことがあるとしたら
今はそれだけかもしれない

今はさらばといわせないでくれ
今はさらばといわせないでくれ

今はさらばといわせないでくれ
今はさらばといわせないでくれ