–Note: This blog post uses fake names for real people to protect their privacy.–
A few days ago, I woke up and scrolled through my music library for a song I felt like writing to.
I landed on Fukai Mori, or “The Deep Forest” by Do As Infinity. As I listened to the lyrics, I realized that this was the first time in seventeen years that I was letting myself enjoy this song without shaming or judging myself for it.
Not because there’s actually anything wrong with the song—but because of something that happened in school when I was eleven years old, and the way that I interpreted it.
I was in fifth grade, and was required to join a school committee. There were several, including the health and gym committee, the environmental committee, the student council, and the announcement committee. The idea was that each committee had certain responsibilities, but also a certain leeway to choose what they wanted to do, as long as it was somewhat in the purview of their committee.
I joined the broadcasting committee. I didn’t care at all about broadcasting, but I very much was an indoor child. Most of the other committees had responsibilities that involved going outside (such as the health and gym committee, or the environmental committee). But most of the broadcasting committee’s responsibilities were limited to sitting at the soundboard in the broadcasting room. We got to play the designated good morning song at 8 every morning, and the designated goodbye song at the end of school hours ever afternoon. During lunch hour, we got to play DJ and broadcast whatever music we felt like. When necessary, we would make announcements. At the end of the school year, we broadcasted live interviews with individuals of the graduating class during lunch hour.
The point is, I liked the idea of responsibilities that were largely limited to sitting in a room, playing music.
Now, one of the first things on the agenda that year was to change the designated goodbye song, which hadn’t changed in the last 6 years. Being a recent transfer, I was disappointed—I very much liked the existing goodbye song.
Ever the opinionated child, I voiced this thought. I was immediately overruled, though not unkindly.
“We get it—it’s new to you. But the rest of us have been listening to this song every single school day since the first grade. We’re sick of it.”
We nominated songs we liked and took a vote. Being that it was the goodbye song, the nominations tended to be songs that were on the slower, more subdued side of the spectrum.
The song that won with an overwhelming majority was Fukai Mori: the song that started off this blog post.
As our president declared that decision made, the two teachers chaperoning our meeting started conferring in low voices. Shortly after, the vice principal stepped forward.
“Listen,” he said gravely. “I’m sorry, but I have to object that song. Normally, I wouldn’t do this. We want you to make your own decisions for yourselves, and we want to respect the choices you make. But Ms. Yokohama and I think that maybe you don’t understand that song, and why it’s inappropriate as the daily goodbye song. So I’m going to explain why we think you should choose something else.”
He proceeded to write out the lyrics of the first verse on the blackboard.
| 深い深い森の奥に 今もきっと | In the depths of the deep, deep forest |
| 置き去りにした心 隠してるよ | Lie the abandoned hearts hidden there |
| 探すほどの力もなく 疲れ果てた | The exhausted people have no strength to search |
| 人々は永遠の闇に消える | And fade into eternal darkness |
Having written this out, he turned back to us and asked, “Can anyone here explain what the word ‘abandoned’ means?”
We were silent. I knew the word from a book. It had been about a girl who’d met a man who promised to marry her, then “abandoned” her. It just meant left behind, I thought.
Now, under umbrella of the teacher’s disapproval, I tried to understand if I’d misunderstood the word. Did it mean that something “inappropriate” had happened before the man left? I wondered. My mind exploded into possible stories, based on what I assumed to be “inappropriate”: I assumed that the word meant toilet stuff, violence or sex.
The teacher went on to define the word, and explain the lyrics. I’m pretty sure I was only half digesting what he was saying, already lost as I was down the rabbit hole that is my single-minded brain.
It was only the other day as I listened to the song that for the first time, I realized that the word I didn’t understand wasn’t abandonment. It was the word inappropriate.
Fukai Mori a nice enough song. There’s no “bad language” or rudeness or meanness in the lyrics. It’s simply that they’re a little fatalistic and depressing.
The teacher wasn’t telling us we shouldn’t listen to it, or even broadcast it. We’d played it during lunch break before—probably several times, given that this was during the height of that song’s popularity—and no one had ever said anything about it. We didn’t play it again after this—but maybe that was because we were all a little embarrassed by having to be lectured by our teacher about why a song about how life takes everything away from you, leaving behind nothing but deception and lies, is inappropriate as a daily goodbye song, especially considering the impression it might leave on the first and second graders.
I got caught up in the rabbit hole of my own mind, and misunderstood the problem. I thought in absolutes, and if a song was inappropriate as a goodbye song, then I thought it must be inappropriate in general. But I believe I might have been the only one with that hang-up.
The teacher didn’t even veto the song. He explained to us why he thought it was a bad idea, and asked us to vote again. It was the president of our committee, a serious bespectacled sixth grader whom I couldn’t help but admire, who stepped up after the teacher was done and vetoed Fukai Mori before taking a new vote on the remaining songs.
To be completely honest, I don’t even remember what song we did vote for. I only remember that for years afterwards, I couldn’t enjoy Fukai Mori because I was convinced that it was this shameful thing, even though I couldn’t exactly explain why.
It’s interesting to think that I understood exactly what the lyrics meant on a surface level, but it never occurred to me to look deeper, and consider the dark implications and the impressions that might leave on young children if they heard those words everyday and internalized them. So what if small children hear that life takes everything away and just leaves you with lies and emptiness? I thought. It’s true. That couldn’t possibly be the root of the problem—there must be some weird violent or sexual subtext to the word “abandonment.” (I was a precocious child, already diving headlong into the teenage angst phase.)
Now, seventeen years later, letting go of that weird, misunderstood hangup and simply permitting myself to enjoy the song, I think…
It’s okay. Nothing amazing. A little too teen-angst-y for me now. But there’s nothing wrong with some good angst. It’s certainly nothing to be ashamed of. It never was.