Why must she manipulate my emotions like this? (or, Help me, Japanese Dopers!)

I’ve been a fan of a Japanese pop singer named aiko for six or seven years. No, that’s not right. I’ve been in love with aiko for six or seven years. (Is it possible to find a soul mate in somebody you’ve never met, and probably never will meet?) I discovered her quite by accident in 2000 or 2001, when I stumbled upon somebody’s personal Web site that had three or four MP3s of aiko’s music. I’d never listened to J-Pop before, so I listened out of curiosity.

It was love at first listen. She had this “little girl” voice; not in the sense of the anime-character-like voice that is so common among J-Pop “idol” singers, but a “natural”, young-sounding voice. It was far from the best voice I’d ever heard — I could go on all day listing singers with better voices. But there was something … I have to say it was her delivery. Simply put, despite not understanding a word she was singing I could literally feel, with every bone in my body, the emotions behind the songs. Among those first songs were Hanabi, which filled me with happiness. Another was Kabutomushi, still one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard. Listening to it made me feel deep sorrow, but also an undercurrent of hope; a few years later I finally found an English translation, and the lyrics mirrored the emotions I felt listening to the song. Both of those songs were from her 1999 debut album. She was 23 or 24 when that album came out; I learned that she writes all her own lyrics and music.

Watch her perform live, and try to tell me you don’t smile a bit. Here’s a woman doing what she loves and loving what she does:

2000 live performance

Working the crowd (and her band) in 2005: Part I and Part II

I have been accused of liking her simply because she’s “cute”, but those accusations are wrong. I was in love long before I knew what she looked like. I found her early in her career, so photos were scarce on the Internet; in any case, aiko is a common name in Japan, and the fact that she uses only her given name made searching for photos an exercise in futility (there were a number of other, more famous Aiko’s at the time - in fact, that’s how I originally stumbled onto those first MP3s: I was searching for photos of an actress named Aiko Something-or-other).

Anyway, having said all that, I’ll get to my point. I need some help from the Dopers who live in Japan and are fluent in speaking and reading Japanese. In late August she released two songs, with accompanying videos, apparently simultaneously. In a way, these two songs are similar to those first songs I heard all those years ago. The first new song, Yokogao is a fun, happy song, like Hanabi, and the video tells a cute story that is pretty self-explanatory without needing to understand the lyrics.

The second song, Hoshi no Nai Sekai, is a whole 'nother story. I’m a grown man. You know that saying, “grown men don’t cry”? It’s wrong. This song/video left me in tears, and I don’t freaking know why! I could maybe find a translation of the song lyrics eventually (translations of aiko songs are pretty scarce, unfortunately), but I think understanding the story in the video depends a great deal on being able to understand aiko’s spoken parts at the beginning and end, as well as being able to read the handwritten kanji that appear prominently throughout the video.

Are any fluent Dopers willing to help me out with this? I don’t need a detailed transcription, just a basic outline of the story being told. I think the young girl and the older woman in the video are supposed to be the same character, but beyond that …

The bookends of the video are a radio announcer reading postcards that have been sent in (though the music starts and we can’t actually hear the postcard).

The part of the postcard we see at the beginning:

こんにちは。初めてお手紙を
Hello. It’s the first time I’ve written…
ねぇ。生きてると辛いこと
It’s hard to go on…

わたし大切な人を失くしまい
I’ve lost the person dearest to me…
また1人だね
I’m alone again.

Here are the various messages written on the paintings:

星がない世界
A world without stars (the title of the song)

星がない世界なら… きっと
if it’s a world without stars, then surely…

ほんとはずっと一緒にいたい
いつか 今は約束できないけど
I truly want to be with you forever
someday… but I can’t promise that now

昨日よりも君を想う
I think of you more everyday

あの絵を描きあげたら
If you paint that for me

ありがとう
Thank you

The words that appear on the postcard at the end:

本当の恋を初めて知ったよ
I knew true love for the first time.

At the end the announcer reads the last part of the postcard:

でもね。彼はわたしにたくさんのメッセージを残してくれました。
But he left behind many messages for me.

この葉書が届く頃。わたし今よりもっと幸せになっている気分がある。
I have a feeling that by the time this postcard arrives I’ll be happier.
彼はどうなのかな?幸せになのかな。突然の手紙ごめんなさい。
I wonder how he is? I wonder if he’s happy. I’m sorry for sending this so abruptly.

お元気で
Take care.

The announcer then thanks everyone for listening to all of her show and says that she hopes they all have a nice day.

The final frame shows that the postcard is dated 1957.

Make of that what you will.

Hmm. That lends credence to my idea that the young girl and the older woman are the same character. I take it the date is using a non-Western calender (since it says 32-8-22). As a side note, the song and video were released on August 22 of this year - 50 years after the date on the postcard. Also, I noticed that the old woman is listening to the same radio that is seen in the attic where the young girl finds the paintings.

I see a couple possibilities. The girl wrote and mailed the postcard in 1957, but somehow it wasn’t delivered until fifty years later (Isn’t NHK sort of Japan’s “national” radio station, and perhaps only radio station in 1957? So that if the postcard was mailed and then lost for 50 years, it could still be delivered when it was eventually found? It’s not unreasonable to assume that the woman would still listen to the same station she listened to as a girl) -or- she wrote it in 1957, but held onto it for fifty years before finally mailing it. The postcard itself looks too well-aged to have been made recently, and the writing appears to have been done with a brush or fountain pen. If it was written in 1957 but not delivered for 50 years, it adds a bit of irony to the apology for sending it “so abruptly”.

I’m going to guess that the girl’s boyfriend or fiancee died before they could get married, and that she is still grieving 50 years later. It seems fairly obvious that the boyfriend/fiancee made the paintings. One of the paintings is very interesting, as well. The large painting on the easel appears to depict a woman and a Japanese-looking Jesus, with a staircase in the background leading up to a door with a cross on it – Jesus carrying somebody to Heaven?. (That painting strengthens the “suspicions” I already had that aiko might be a Christian.) The girl seems to cry harder at this painting than any of the others.