龍人秘抄 || Secret Notes of Humans and Dragons

初番目物「龍人秘抄」
hatsubanme-mono “ryuujin hishou”
The First Play: Secret Notes of Humans and Dragons

Vocals: nayuta
Lyrics: RD-Sounds
Arranged by: RD-Sounds
Album: 伝 (Tsutae) [Official site]
Circle: 凋叶棕 (Diao ye zong)
Event: C91
Original theme: Love-Colored Master Spark [恋色マスタースパーク]

Requested by: Kaori Hanayama

The first play in a typical Noh performance is the kami mono (神物) or waki noh (脇能). In it, a deity takes on human form in the first half, before revealing their true nature in the second. This song is about a dragon, but it’s easy to draw parallels between the two after reading through the lyrics. See if you can pinpoint the point where the dragon’s true nature is revealed.

The original text is quite archaic, so my translation ended up being quite liberal. Still, I’m quite sure that I conveyed the main message of the song, though it’s open to interpretation.

The title is curious. It follows a similar pattern to old-fashioned literary works such as 連理秘抄 (A Secret Treatise of Renga Principles), 隣忠秘抄 (Secret Notes of Chikatada), and 梁塵秘抄 (Songs to Make the Dust Dance on the Beams). I decided to follow the style of the first two.

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Unofficial translation/非公式の英訳

O, freshly-woken dragonchild!
Your appearance is yet unseemly.
Without wings,
You crawl upon the ground and suffer.

Though the small dragonchild
Wept and wept,
Nobody listened to their cries.
Now, who will reach out to them?

O, wise human child!
By nature, you invite trouble.
Chased from your dwelling,
You live a solitary life and suffer.

Because the human child’s voice
Was so faint,
Nobody lent them an ear.
Now, who will reach out to them?

Living in such a sad world,
Both endured hardships.
Thus, the human and the dragon met…

The earthbound dragonchild
And the human child, unable to even walk on the ground,
Were subjected to slander
By all, with dreadful voices.

But they looked up at the heavens,
But they glared up at the heavens.
They left their lives on the scales, which became a curse…

O, wise human child!
You are still utterly ignorant.
In your hands,
You grasp something small and weak, which crawls along the ground.

In the deepest darkness,
They lurk within your hands.
They gaze into the darkness
And secretly smile…

O, freshly-woken dragonchild!
Thus, you deceive the humans.
You listen to their voices
And pursue the source of their power.

Such a wicked thing.
They once sealed you away
For your countless deeds…
Do they all know why you did what you did?

While living in this sad world,
While facing any sort of misfortune,
The dragon and human met and parted…

The freshly-woken dragonchild
Raced toward the heavens.
Though this world is so sad,
There are still voices noting how wonderful it is.

But they swam through the heavens,
But they hollowed out the earth,
Both swearing that they would meet again.

O, child left on the earth!
When you reach your dying hour,
They will surely fall from the heavens and come to you.
That is your unmistakable vow.

And so, the dawn came
When the grown dragonchild returned.
Repaying their countless debts,
They took the human’s body upon their back.

Now, they aim for the edge of the heavens,
Parting from this sad world.
The human rode upon the dragon,
Their figures visible in the sky.

Rise to the heavens! Climb, ascend, without end!
All who saw the pair wrote this, the secret notes of humans and dragons.