- Lyrics: Kazuya Yoshii
- Music: Kazuya Yoshii & Hideaki Kikuchi
- Arrangement: The Yellow Monkey
Original Lyrics
雨の中を傘もささず名前も知らないあの男の
青いコートはびしょ濡れになり僕の所へ近寄って……
「昨日触れた人でもいい」彼の目には涙の滴
なぜか僕は目の前が暗くなるのも恐れずに
数をかぞえ君の体に何度も爪をたてる
やがていつもの歌が聞こえて
ドアを開けて粗末な首をなめらかな右手が
今夜の君を眠らせる……
In the rainy day 降り続く雨の夜にちぎれても
冷静なポーカーフェイスの
My sweet darling, this is for you
こうすれば夜は長い 君の好きな Coke & Beer
飲み干したら目が回るようなこの歌を君に
This is for you
別に君を傷つけるつもりはない
人にとやかく言われる筋合いもない
君と出会った雨の日さ 1975
Rainy day, silly boy
憂鬱さ意味もなく Crazy
In the rainy day 降り続く雨の夜にちぎれても
冷静なポーカーフェイスの
My sweet darling, this is for you
My sweet darling, this is for you
My sweet darling, tonight, this is for you……
Romanized Lyrics
ame no naka wo kasa mo sasazu namae mo shiranai ano otoko no
aoi coat wa bishonure ni nari boku no tokoro e chikayotte……
“kinou fureta hito demo ii” kare no me ni wa namida no shizuku
nazeka boku wa me no mae ga kuraku naru no mo osorezu ni
kazu wo kazoe kimi no karada ni nando mo tsume wo tateru
yagate itsumo no uta ga kikoete
door wo akete somatsu na kubi wo nameraka na migite ga
konya no kimi wo nemuraseru……
In the rainy day furitsuzuku ame no yoru ni chigirete mo
reisei na poker face no
My sweet darling, this is for you
kou sureba yoru wa nagai kimi no suki na Coke & Beer
nomihoshitara me ga mawaru you na kono uta wo kimi ni
This is for you
betsu ni kimi wo kizutsukeru tsumori wa nai
hito ni toyakaku iwareru sujiai mo nai
kimi to deatta ame no hi sa 1975
Rainy day, silly boy
yuuutsu sa imi mo naku Crazy
In the rainy day furitsuzuku ame no yoru ni chigirete mo
reisei na poker face no
My sweet darling, this is for you
My sweet darling, this is for you
My sweet darling, tonight, this is for you……
Translated Lyrics
A man whose name I don’t know, with a blue coat sopping wet
From walking in the rain without an umbrella approaches me……
He says “I don’t care if you’re messed up”, with tears in his eyes
And for some reason I’m not afraid of everything going dark
I count the number of times that I dig my nails into you
And soon enough I hear that same old song
Opening the door, I touch my smooth right hand to your disheveled head
I’ll let you sleep tonight……
In the rainy day, even though it’s broken up by a night of continuous rain
Always with a calm poker face
My sweet darling, this is for you
The nights are long like this now, and finishing off of one of
Your favorite Coke & Beers, this dizzying song goes out to you
This is for you
I never really mean to hurt you
And other people don’t really have the right to judge either
I met you on a rainy day in 1975
Rain day, silly boy
The depression is meaningless, crazy
In the rainy day, even though it’s broken up by a night of continuous rain
Always with a calm poker face
My sweet darling, this is for you
My sweet darling, this is for you
My sweet darling, tonight, this is for you……
Notes
This is a song about love between two men, and is an very respectful song about the subject. It isn’t about the relationship being homosexual so much as it is the relationship being complex, and full of some amount of pain. The lyrics are constantly in present tense, starting out from an early point in the relationship and ending in a later one, which in of itself is rather unique. Each verse is presented as a sort of time capsule, containing details that make them feel just personal enough without telling a full story, leaving the listener to fill in gaps themselves along the way.
This is the second song on the album that Emma (Hideaki Kikuchi) helped write the music for, the first being Neurotic Celebration. That may be why the music and arrangement prove to be an essential part to creating the mood of this song. You get to hear both Emma and Yoshii playing guitar both on the recording and live version (Yoshii always plays the acoustic part), and the interplay between them is understated but very good. The 12 bar blues bridge before the guitar solo and last chorus is also a very nice touch, adding a little bit of a rock-y feel before ending on Yoshii playing the acoustic part on his own. The live arrangements handle this even better though, with Emma playing some quiet guitar licks behind the acoustic outro for accent (you can hear that in the clip below). Yoshii ending this song with a series of a “lalala”s also doesn’t particularly annoy me here, since it’s done over that acoustic outro that feels different from the rest of the song before it. This is also one of their first song that features a significant amount of orchestral strings, and Mekara Uroko 7 (the clip below is the performance of This is For You from this concert) was the first concert that brought in an orchestra for some songs during. They would repeat this with pretty much every Mekara Uroko concert that they did afterward.
The beginning of the third line in the first verse, “kinou fureta hito demo ii” would literally be translated as something like “I don’t care if you’re the person I touched yesterday”. However I translated it as “I don’t care if you’re messed up”, because I strongly believe that this lyric was word play. I think it was meant to be “ki no fureta hito demo ii”, but was changed into something that closely resembled the sound of it. My guess is that he was probably told he couldn’t use this lyric, since it’s used as a slightly derogatory way to describe someone who’s mentally ill. I have no proof of any of this, but it makes a lot more sense in the context of the rest of the lyrics, so I’m going to go stick with it.
This is a very highly regarded song by fans, and it deserves it. Not only is this the best song on Night Snails And Plastic Boogie, it’s also the best Yemon song that we’ve heard up until this point in their career. It’s the best example so far of one of my favorite things about Yoshii’s writing, which is his ability to use unconventional phrases to create vignettes that give you little pieces of stories. And even going much later into their career as a band, it still stands as one of my favorite Yemon ballads. This is For You also starts the long running theme of having a lot of songs that heavily feature rain in the lyrics (and sometimes even titles), which Yoshii has joked about. He even introduced it as “a song for a rainy day” just before their performance of it as Mekara Uroko 27.
In terms of recorded performances, Yemon played this during the Experience Movie (second album) and Four Seasons (fourth album) tours. But after those, This is For You seems to only ever be performed at the aforementioned Mekara Uroko concerts, which have the specific purpose of them performing more of their older material.
