i write about stuff

Welcome to Vocaloid Lyrical Analysis, where someone with next to no official music credentials attempts to review the lyrics of a song to draw meaning out of it.

Don’t think of it as just a negative – I think as long as someone at all cares to analyze the meaning behind any piece of media, whether it be music, literature, or any thing that can produce any sort of derivative, that their opinion is relevant.

If nothing else, I’m fluent in Japanese, so I’m able to at least give a reasonable attempt into pointing out the nuances or deeper meaning behind some of the lyrics.

Anyway, for my very first analysis, I’ve chosen one that isn’t particularly long, nor one where the meaning is very difficult to interpret, but one that holds a particularly special place in my heart.

Remember, anyone can interpret a song any way they want. If the lyrics of a song provide you a different interpretation but similarly help you through a heart time with an ability to commiserate, then by all means, follow what you think. This is one human’s personal opinion on a topic that is too broad to meaningfully give a definitive answer for.

To my knowledge, there has been no officially confirmed interpretation of the song.

Links

Listen to the song if you haven’t yet done so.

As an Utaite enjoyer, my favourite cover of the song, by Kotoha:

Both videos already have the lyrics in their subtitles, but if you so wish you can read the lyrics directly here.

General

As with many MIMI songs, Kienai Ondo is entirely done through a single instrument. In this case, we have just the piano.

Quite directly from the lyrics, there’s an aching sense of loneliness and struggle being conveyed. It’s not a song that you fully enjoy from listening to it while staring outside the bus, rather one that you feel properly hits you while you stare at a wall reflecting about your own journey through life.

The lyrics themselves are relatively simple, and there isn’t really a need for very strong proficiency in the Japanese language to understand the meanings behind it, nor the intricacies or the nuances. Rather, the specific struggle being experienced isn’t ever directly stated, and I’d like to believe that regardless of the pains someone is going through, there’s something to be understood and appreciated here.

Title

Inextinguishable Temperatures is the official English translation of the song title.

Inextinguishable Temperatures is actually a very hopeful title in comparison with the general tone of the song. “Inextinguishable” or 消えない (kienai) isn’t simply stating that something isn’t able to disappear, rather that it will not disappear.

温度 (ondo) directly translates to temperature, so you can interpret that however you’d like. To me, the “temperature” in this scenario refers to the specific feeling evoked from the song.

Hearing the song first without looking at the title, you wouldn’t guess that’d be the name of the song. Conversely, looking at the title without having heard the song, you’d probably assume it to be a love song, assuming you don’t know MIMI’s general preference for songwriting.

That said, I do think this is a love song, but not in the romantical sense. Rather, it’s looking at the need to be or feel loved as a human, yet that feeling isn’t being delivered. Let’s take a look.

懸命に 生きてきました

The word 懸命 (kenmei) is much stronger than initial appearance/hearing would imply.

The full lyrics at this part of the song, right before the chorus, goes:

懸命に生きてきました (I’ve lived earnestly up to this point)
いつか愛をください (When can I please have some love?)

懸命 isn’t the same as 頑張る (ganbaru), which you usually hear when people are encouraging others to do their best. I translated it as “earnest”, but the intended meaning behind it goes beyond just general earnestness.

In normal society, people do say 一生懸命 (isshokenmei), but that’s taken a more colloquial definition of simply “let’s do our best”, although it still ultimately has a stronger implication than 頑張ろう (ganbarou), which means the same thing, in a weaker sense. You’ve probably heard both of these, if you watch any Japanese media and care to pick up the phrases.

On the other hand, you’ve likely never heard 懸命に (kenmei ni), which in a literary sense, doesn’t actually really differ much in meaning from 一生懸命, but you’ve taken out the colloquialism out of it and are using the raw meaning of the word, which we’ll now look at.

懸 itself means to hang/balance, although historically it means hang moreso in the sense of putting something on the line, or looking at it in English, “everything hangs on the balance”.

命, on the other hand, is the kanji for “life”. Although a bit of an exaggeration, it wouldn’t be too far off to say that 懸命 would then mean “to hang your life on the line”.

Let’s look at it again.

懸命に生きてきました (I’ve lived earnestly up to this point)
いつか愛をください (When can I please have some love?)

I’m sure we now see just how “earnestly” the life being lived has implied, yet only one thing is being desired in this situation after living to the best of your abilities – love.

知ってしまう忘れられない

Let’s now peek at this part, right after the chorus (don’t worry, we’ll get to that soon):

知ってしまう忘れられない (Once I’ve come to know it, I can’t ever forget)
この傷跡が、また… (That scar, again…）

しまう (shimau) is a bit of a hard concept to directly convert into English. To an extent, it’s a suffix to a verb that means “completely”, but it comes bundled together with a generally negative undertone. It’s also normally delivered in past tense しまった (shimatta), which is something you may have heard before, colloquially meaning “OH SHIT”.

For a quick example, やる (yaru) simply is a verb that means (to do). If you were to convert it into “shimatta” form, it’d be やってしまった (yatteshimatta), which would then translate to “you’ve gone and done it”, with the negative connotation.

In this case, however, it’s not being used in the past tense, but comes with the same undertone. 知って (shitte) means “to know”. In other words, 知ってしまう (shitteshimau) would mean “once you’ve learnt it”, but with a negative connotation. This is something that you would’ve been better off not knowing, yet something that you ended up learning anyway, to your detriment.

So what is this thing that you’ve learnt, and wish you could forget?

Love. Because now that you’ve lost it, all you can do left is crave it. And that’s left a scar on you.

でもこのイタミ も愛せるなら

This is the crux of the song.

でもこのイタミも愛せるなら (But if I can learn to love this pain)
僕はまだこの場所でに居れるかな (I wonder if I can still remain in this place)

The English lyrics you see is what they’re saying. The pain is ever present, but if you could, somehow, get used to it, maybe you could learn to live normally. “This place” not referring to the literal location you’re standing in, but rather the world of the living. This lyric is repeated twice; once in each chorus, but the final part of the song has a bit of a crucial spin on this lyric.

Something to note is the stylistic choice of writing the word for pain イタミ (itami) in katakana instead of kanji, which would be 痛み. There are numerous different reasons for this stylistic choice, but in this particular case, I think it serves two purposes.

The first is that words in katakana tend to jump out, especially if no other word on the screen is in katakana. The word “pain” is being specifically highlighted to the viewer of the MV.

The second is the it makes the concept of “pain” less abstract in the context of the song. “Pain” is something we feel in daily life. You stub your toe, that’s pain, and we don’t think much of it beyond a minor annoyance.

In this case, “pain” is less of a physical/emotional concept, but rather an entire entity in itself that is being struggled with. This isn’t the same “pain” we’re familiar with in our daily lives.

I don’t think this “pain” specifically has to refer to the concept of love that’s been discussed throughout the rest of the song, although I still choose to interpret that as the case. Rather, throughout all our lives, we live through many different types of pain, but there’s always one that sticks out.

Yet despite it all, we’re still here, you and I. It hurts, but we live through it, and the final lyric is the true message that I think MIMI wanted to convey.

嗚呼このイタミも愛せるなら (Ah, if I can learn to love this pain)
僕はまだこの場所で生きていたい (I still want to live in this place)

We live through hardships, some of which are scars that ultimately cannot leave us, and change us for better, or most of the time, worse, and leave us with a pain that lingers, perhaps forever. But you and me have remained here, because we still have reasons to continue. We still want to live in this place.

Overall Message

To take it at face value, Kienai Ondo is a song about someone who has felt the joy of love, went through a painful heartbreak, and is craving that feeling once again, yet is unable to. The word 愛 (ai) for love is quite explicitly used here:

いつか愛をください (When can I please have some love?)

Yet it doesn’t necessarily have to be strictly referring to the love we feel romantically. In my particular case, that may be what I’m struggling with, but there’s something to be taken away from other struggles too.

Remember the title. Inextinguishable Temperatures.

We don’t lose the opportunity to feel that feeling again forever. Perhaps we need to find it, or maybe it’ll come to us one day. That feeling remains in our heart somewhere, and even as it just sits there, the need to feel it again will never leave us, but our desire to feel it once again keeps us going, even if it hurts. That warmness that remains in our heart, is inextinguishable.