English Translation of Ongaku to Hito 2013. 01. 音楽と人2013年1月号英訳
This is what I translated in 2013 on Perfume City Forum.
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Perfume
Starting Over again
Perfume's first world tour took place at 4 cities of Asia and finished with a huge success. What did the 3 have learned and retrieved from this journey? There are clear answers for that. In this article, we report the concert in Hong Kong held on November 7. In addition, the release of the new single "Mirai no Museum" in the next spring has already been decided for Perfume.
Perfume
Maybe what the 3 wanted to recall was that tension and rush of excitement you feel when you start something new
Text by Hirofumi Kanemitsu
I have watched many world tours held by various J-rock bands. But they were clearly extraneous. They were so serious about having communications including the language, and they were trying to share something with audiences properly.
Perfume’s 1st world tour took place in 4 cities of Asia, Taiwan, Hong-Kong, Seoul and Singapore. I visited Hong-Kong where they held the 2nd concert. It seemed that same thing had happened in Taiwan as well, a lot of fans welcomed them at the airport. And that scene made the headlines of local newspapers 2 days later. You might find it pretty Asian that it wasn’t a day later when it was reported, but it shows the high-profile attentions they drew over there. On the day of the concert, I walked around the town. At HMV records on Nathan Road, the busiest downtown street in Hong-Kong, and a area called Sino Centre, where they specialize in selling Japanese magazines and CDs (you might find this place similar to Nakano Broadway in Japan), I saw large posters advertising the concert. And of course in the stores, I could find DVDs and the global compilation album released recently. The fan base here in Hong-Kong seemed to be similar to that of Japan.
It took about 10 minutes by car from city center to the venue in Kowloon bay International Trade & Exhibition Centre (aka KITEC), the complex facility of several halls & restaurant. The most approximate place in Japan would be International Forum. “Rotunda3” in the complex was where they performed. When I got there, fans in Perfume T-shirts had already gathered. Few of them had even cosplayed like fans in Japan, and almost all of tour goods sold at the venue were sold out.
The circle venue has a capacity of roughly 3,000 people. But I heard that due to the restriction, only 1,500 were allowed to enter. Of course, all tickets were sold out. At the back stage, they were having a ceremony that is always held whenever there’s a big event in Hong-Kong. In the ceremony, they make an offering of a whole roasted porket to wish success of the event. Holding concerts abroad, you can often encounter these kind of customs unfamiliar to Japanese. I heard some screams from them, though, LOL!
After the opening of the venue, precaution statements were announced alternately in Japanese & Cantonese. Audiences chanted back to each of them. At 19:40, the Google front page was displayed on the screen placed on the stage. At first, I thought it might be a some kind of bug. But after an Internet search, screen changed to Perfume Official Site. Then, various online videos based on motion capture data available at the Perfume Global Website. Creators around the world spread their images and create videos. Those videos were spread around the world via Youtube. That was how Perfume were spread around the world. The opening direction reminded me that.
Show started at 20:00 with “Night Flight”. Audiences started to heat up extraordinary. Personally, I felt so choked up listening to “Electro World” that they brought down after “Computer City”. Lining the tracks that can be considered as the origination of The "Perfume" of now up at the first part of the world tour setlist, that should mean to indicate their will to start over again. “The world will change soon, something about us will change soon” the line from “Computer City” perfectly suited for the beginning of this show.
The first MC started with a bumbleheaded Cantonese greeting from the 3. “Wow, you guy are so gentle” said Kashiyuka, but A-chan innocently answered “Maybe half of them didn’t understand what we said. LOL!” A same old scene seen in Japan made me feel relieved. But when they started to talk how they went out to have some "dim sum" in Japanese, A-chan might have felt anxious whether they really understand what they talked. She suddenly asked “Is there any Hong-Kongese audience who speaks Japanese?” At that moment, I wasn't sure what she was going to do. Then, she handed a microphone to a girl at the front low who raised her hand to the question, and went on “Okay, could you please be our interpreter?” And even more surprisingly, Kashiyuka remembered her and said “Oh, we met at the airport yesterday, didn’t we?”. However, this is the way Perfume does. After the sudden designation, A-chan actually asked her to translate their MC. What they talked was mainly about their questions about laundry situations in Hong-Kong, LOL! In Hong-Kong, people often stick out long laundry poles from windows and hang laundries out to dry. A-chan went on “Even if you hang them out at window side like “Su, Su, Shaaa”, when the wind blows like “Byu-, Byu-”, your laundries would be blown out like “Waaaa”. Then, you would be like “Oh my goodness, my shirt!”, wouldn’t you? …… Okay, can you translate it?” I’d like to show my biggest appreciation to the girl who struggled so hard to translate A-chan’s speech full of onomatopoeia. Good work! In conclusion, they settled that Hong-Kongese uses the toughest clothes-pins in the world. Then, for the familiar team dividing event, they divided audiences into team “Sen(lau)”, team “Taku(nd)” and team “Mono(ly)”. I could see that those laundry stuffs sure stuck out in their minds.
But the stuffs like that is what's in the bottom of their performance. They try to connect with every single audience. It’s just same as their concerts in Japan where they talk to every single audience to come close to them. It’s just their attitudes became clearer abroad where they don’t understand language. Even if they don't understand or speak the language, they desperately try to find ways to communicate. That desperate-ness was expressed well in the show.
The most impressive performance of the show was “Edge”. A very cool staging including effective use of 3 screens on which good old close up visions of the 3 were shown. They looked totally opposite from who they were when they relaxingly talked about laundries. It had been a while since I watched them playing this song, but it was so devastating as expected. It must have been an imperative track for the show abroad.
The most moving scene was when they played “Dream Fighter” after A-chan’s speech saying “We’ll sing this song with the appreciation of being able to sing it abroad!” Yes, going global was a “Dream” for Perfume. And this first tour was their first step toward that "Dream". What kind of emotion crossed their mind? I guess it was not a sense of achievement, but some kind of determination which told them that “the endless journey searching for the best” would start from here. This again reminded me that this tour was not the culmination. This was where it started.
In the latter part, they had “P. T. A. corner” familiar in Japan. The fever of the audiences was higher than I expected. Local fans must have learnt it via DVD and youtube. Just like they do in concerts in Japan, they started with “Hamigaki-no-Uta (Teeth Brushing Song)” (They used a bit of translations such as changing “Oku-ba(back teeth)” to “Oku-teeth”), then went on to “Survival Dance” & “Ultra Soul”. And since it was an oversea live, they chose to add one more track and played “We will Rock You” by Queen. They said “Our spirit is ROCK!” and stirred up audiences for hand claps. It was kind of fresh and weird to see them doing that.
The last tune of the show was “Polyrhythm”, the song that brought them great chances. I felt as if their emotions and audience’s emotions had united in this concert.
When the audience seats were lit up for the encore, fans putting on gloves of various color shook hands to salute them. Local fans planned a surprise for them and handed out gloves of different colors in tribute to “MY COLOR” The fact that this kind of surprise was naturally planned by local fans is a proof that Perfume has already been rooted in here. “Spring of Life” & “Kokoro no Sports” performed under such warm atmosphere touched my heart..
After the show, I visited them in the back stage. They poked out their head from the door of a dressing room which was decorated with a curtain presented by staffs and I was able to make a brief conversation with them.
- Congratulation on your great performance!
A-chan: Thanks! Have you noticed that there was an accident?
-Yeah, lighting at “Dream Fighter”, wasn’t it? They were all dimmed and there were only border lights.
A-chan: Yes. But I felt that accident made our performance even more dramatic. With the accident happening at that timing, the lyric resonated with us even more. During the dance routine, I couldn't see the audiences at all because the lightings were off. Various emotions came to my mind at that moment, like "No, I want to dance without mistakes!", "Wow, I'm standing on the foreign stage!", "Our staffs must be working desperately for us right now" and things like that.
- I think you showed those emotions on your own shoulders in this concert.
A: We can feel the bond with our team in this tour.
N: When the lighting turned on, the cloud went like "WHOOOOOAA!"
K: And we also went "WHOOOOOAAA!", LOL!
- So you could get excited with the audiences.
K: I realized we can communicate each other, even through the language barrier.
The short conversation had ended there. However, I could see that the fulfillment and actual feeling that they could communicate their thoughts to the fans seemed to mean a lot to them.
The girls needed a new goal as Perfume. For that, they took one step ahead to their dream. The beginning of this journey was a big success, we can say. Now the 3 is coming back to Japan with the original motivation they felt during this tour.
Maybe what the 3 wanted to recall was that tension and rush of excitement you feel when you start something new. Only the shake and warmth of their hand they felt when they put their hands at the back stage before the show knows it. And the 3 will never forget it.
-End of Translation-
