Nobuyasu Okabayashi, "Wish Backlight" -- "What We Want" and the Soul of 1970

Nobuyasu Okabayashi, "Wish Backlight" -- "What We Want" and the Soul of 1970

In 1970, Nobuyasu Okabayashi's "What We Want" sent a tremor through the Japanese folk world. It was a prayer that erupted as words from the soul of an individual crushed by the system.

In the same year, Okabayashi temporarily took a break from his music career due to overwork and pressure, and embarked on a journey to reexamine himself and society. There he encountered the words of Bob Dylan, Wilhelm Reich, and the French May Revolution. His poems were re-invoked by absorbing the ruptures of these eras.

The song proceeds with a structure of negation and desire: "It is not me for society, but society for us. It asserts that labor is not a duty but a pleasure, and that art is not a means to a living but the purpose of life. The repeated "What we want" is both a poignant plea and a promise for the future.

Eventually, the syntax is inverted, and a series of affirmations are followed by the words "education for us," "labor," and "ideology. What emerges in this backlighting is not despair, but the outline of a heart that still hopes.

Even after half a century, this song still quietly shakes up "something" that sinks deep within us.