Minamikaze to Taiyou Translation

Original Lyrics | Romanji Reading | Translation | Annotations

I'm about... a year or soo late on this, but I figure I should translate it anyway seeing as no one else has yet. Especially when it's about one of my favorite Disney movies.

There are two things to be noted before I start the translation though:

1. Stitch is an anime version of the Disney movie, and it seems to be an alternate reality. Instead of landing in Hawaii, Stitch lands on a fictional island in Okinawa. There he meets Yuna, and finds a stone that could make him the most powerful creature in the universe provided he do enough good deeds. The series follows him doing good deeds. I think. I haven't really watched much of it, in any case.

If you're wondering why they decided to make an anime out of it, I do have a theory. When I arrived in Japan, Stitch was hugely popular. You saw him on key rings, pencils, blankets, clothing.... basically, everything! But the thing is, nobody saw the movie Lilo and Stitch. They basically just thought he was a character, which is not really all that uncommon in Japanese society. Hello Kitty, for example, was just a character created to sell. It wasn't until after she was used as a marketing tool (on everything!) that she was made into a television series which was used as a vehicle to create more characters and increase profits. I'm thinking that Disney saw that since the original movie was fairly unknown to the Japanese, that it would make an anime marketed to Japanese people to further hype the character Stitch to make more money.

2. The song "South wind and Sun" has an interesting title. Why? Because there is poem by James Whitcomb Riley by the same name. Riley, of course, is infamous author of the poem "Little Orphant Annie" that spawned a media treasure trove. Though the poem and the song seem to be unrelated, I find it far too interesting not to share!

And now, I'll stop jabbering on and on! On to the lyrics!


南風と太陽
モンゴル８００
スチッチ

ここホレホレ　ここもホレ
こころに　オハナ　咲かせましょう

太陽と南風と
おでかけですか？

燦々降り注ぐ
Sunshine ティダの光
颯爽と吹き抜ける

South wind 南の風


Minamikaze to taiyou
Mongoru Happyaku
Stitch Soundtrack

Koko HOREHORE Kokomo HORE
Kokoro ni OHANA Sakasemashou

Taiyou to minamikaze to
Odekakedesuka?

Sansan furisosogu
Sunshine TEIDA no hikari
Sassou to fukinukeru

South wind Minami no Kaze

The South Wind and the Sun
MONGOL800
Stitch Soundtrack

Hooray (1) for here, and hooray for here too!
Let’s allow family (2) to bloom in our hearts

Are you going with south wind and the sun?

Its brightness will rain down (3)
Sunshine is the rays of the sun (4)
And they nobly blow through

South wind, the south wind (5)


ANNOTATIONS:

1. Okay, I actually don’t know what the “hore” here means, though I’m reasonably sure that it’s one of the nonsense exclamations that are made during Japanese traditional songs, and enka. They tend to mean encouragement, praise and enjoyment, so I just decided to translate it as “hooray”. It could very well be wrong.

2. I love how clever Kiyosaku is with words. “Ohana”, if you’ve seen Lilo and Stitch, is explained as being family. “Ohana”, however, in Japanese, is the word for flower. So, it’s really quite ingenious that he uses the verb “to bloom” here :)

3. No note here. It’s just cool that he’s using a rain metaphor to describe the sun.

4. He says sunshine in English here, and then uses the Okinawan word for the sun (“teida”) so I had to try and mix it up a bit.

5. Here, he sings the same thing in English as he does in Japanese, hence its repetitiveness.