This time I would like to share the 5th song of the Angelo’s 2010 album “FAUST“. The name of the song is “JIHAD“, please enjoy this beautiful lyrics, honestly this is a piece of art in my opinion, Kirito is a genius. This song was composed by Giru. All lyrics by Kirito.
Kanji:
苦難の業をくぐり抜けて 魂が還り行く場所
懐かしい風に抱かれながら
どれだけ傷を受けたのだろう そのたび感情削られ
永遠の眠りを求めていた
優雅に羽広げ宙（そら）の果て どこまでも突き抜けてみよう
哀しい記憶も 朽ちる肉体も 輪廻の渦に飲み込まれ昇華していく
祈りを捧げ目指していた 全てが報われる浄土
肯定の光に迎えられて
どれだけ罪を重ねただろう その度正義は揺らいで
旅立つことだけを夢見ていた
自由に思うがまま この宇宙の理（ことわり）を眺めるみよう
捨てたい記憶も 無残な屍も 脊髄走る快楽に流されていく
この肌裏蠢く 血流が生の現実を突きつけ 目覚めさせる
夢から突き放され
終わらない絶望も理不尽も背負いながら生きていこう
刻んだ傷跡が 増えていく数だけ 痛みと向き合えるだろう
焦がれたあの場所はまだ遠く 優しく突き放すように
この世にまだ潜む 胸昂ぶらせる 現象を創造して君にまた捧げよう
ROMAJI:
Kunan no gou wo kugurinukete tamashii ga kaeriyuku basho
Natsukashii kaze ni dakare nagara
Doredake kizu wo uketa no darou sono tabi kanjou kezurare
Eiein no nemuri wo motomete ita
Yuuga ni hane hiroge sora no hate dokomademo tsukinukete miyou
Kanashii kioku mo kuchiru nikutai mo rinne no uzu ni nomikomare shouka shite yuku
Inori wo sasage mezashite ita subete ga mukuwareru joudo
Koutei no hikari ni mukaerarete
Doredake tsumi wo kasaneta darou sono tabi seigi wa yuraide
Tabidatsu koto dake wo yumemite ita
Jiyuu ni omou ga mama kono uchuu no kotowari wo nagamete miyou
Sutetai kioku mo muzan na shikabane mo sekizui hashiru kairaku ni nagasarete iku
Kono hada no ura ugomeku ketsuryuu ga sei no genjitsu wo tsukitsuke mezamesaseru
Yume kara tsukihanasare
Owaranai zetsubou mo rifujin mo seoinagara ikite yukou
Kizanda kizuato ga fuete iku kazu dake itami to mukiaeru darou
Kogareta ano basho wa mada tooku yasashiku tsukihanasu you ni
Kono yo ni mada hisomu mune takaburaseru genshou wo souzou shite kimi ni mata sasageyou
Translation:
The place where the souls return to after getting through the trials of karma
While being embraced by the nostalgic wind
I wonder to what extend will I be hurt? each time, my emotions are diminished
I was wishing for the eternal slumber
Elegantly spreading the wings let’s try to pierce through the limits of the sky
The sorrowful memories and the rotting bodies are deeply swallowed by the vortex of the endless cycle of rebirth, as they go on sublimating
I was aiming to offer a prayer for the paradise where everything gets rewarded
So that I could be welcomed by a light of affirmation
I wonder to what extend will I continue to accumulate sins? Each time, the sense of what is right wavers
I was just dreaming of departing from this life
Freely and to one’s heart satisfaction, let’s try to admire the moral principles of this universe
The memories I want to throw away and the miserable corpse too are washed away by the pleasure that runs through the spinal cord
The blood flow that wriggles in the inner side of this skin is the reality of life that is thrust at me and forces me to come back to my senses
Detaching myself from the dream
Let’s continue to live on while being burdened by the never-ending despair and the irrationality
Maybe I will be able to confront the pain by merely increasing the number of carved scars
That place that I yearned for is still far away, hoping to gently detach from it
Creating the heart-arousing phenomenon that stills lurks in this world, I’ll dedicate it to you
Translation notes: From the events we can see in this song, our protagonist (Faust/the representative of humanity) is at death’s door, maybe we can interpret this as the purgatory; his will to live is diminished, and his soul is being pulled into the realms of death, he sees how the souls are absorbed into the cycle of life and death, and Kirito describes beautifully how this looks like, he uses the term 昇華 which means “sublimation”, so we can imagine when a soul leaves a body, it sublimates because the gas matter (the soul) separates from the body and dissipates into the air according to what is believed.
The protagonist also expresses that he has no will to live, he is hurt and has accumulated many sins throughout his life, his emotions are drained, he’s at a point where he cannot distinguish what’s right from what’s wrong and he remembers that he accepted this fate because he thought he will get to a paradise land where everything is forgiven , this is the expectation he had in his fantasy world that was filled of pleasure and hid the cruel reality from his eyes, and now he realizes the consequences.
But then, we see that he stills the blood in his vein, which represents the fact that he’s still alive, and he begins the detachment from this dream land slowly in order to come back to the reality, while realizing that because he is alive, he must continue to go on living.
This is what Kirito explained in his video about the FAUST concept, that humans, no matter how low they fall, if they are still alive, they will find the strength to continue going forward, while carrying all the multiple burdens they may have, because, as the protagonists expresses in the song, maybe the amount of scars will help him get stronger to face what lies ahead.
About the title “JIHAD”, I can see that Kirito did his homework very well, and this has nothing to do with what people might have thought about initially when they saw the title of this song. According to what I investigated, within the Quran (Islamic religion) teachings, this term is widely used and it refers to the inner struggles that a person faces against their own lusts and evil/immoral desires; and this is exactly what Faust is going through at this point of the story in this song, truly brilliant.
This is really a beautiful song that describes how humans can come back from the depths of darkness and move forward if they are able to find the will to do so, I was honestly touched while working on the song.
JAPAN MUSIC SEKAI ~ Jrock & Jpop talk ~ 