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

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

Released by JVC on July 5, 1970, Nobuyasu Okabayashi's "What We Wish For" is a message song that shoots through the cracks of the times, and was also included on the album "Jump Before You See" that same year. The song, for which Okabayashi himself wrote the lyrics, contains a quiet but deep and heavy poetic sentiment that fundamentally questions the relationship between the individual and society.

In 1969, Okabayashi temporarily took a break from music, weary from his overburdened schedule and the pressure of being the "god of folk music. During this period of silence, he encountered the music of Bob Dylan, Wilhelm Reich's "Sexual and Cultural Revolution," and "The Wall Speaks," a collection of graffiti from the 1968 French May Revolution. In this time of isolation from the outside world, he found the light of a fresh start by sinking deep into his own inner world.

On April 24, 1970, this song was performed live at the "Nobuyasu Okabayashi send-off party" held at Shibuya Public Hall, accompanied by "Happiendo. The recording was later made into an album as "What We Want is the Music House Harujo Live Recording. Here, the sounds of the times are enclosed, where the inclination toward rock and the purity of poetry jostle with each other.

The structure of the lyrics is thoroughly contrasting. The repeated phrase "What we want" alternately illuminates a denial of social conventions and a desire for new values.

What we want is
Not me for society
but a society for us.

The range of these words is profound. It speaks plainly of the pain of the undermining of essential human aspirations in every aspect of the system: education, labor, politics, ideology, and art.

What we want is
Not labor as duty.
Not labor as pleasure.
Not art for a living.
But life for art.

This is not just an anti-establishment poem. Rather, it is a quiet poetic exercise in rethinking "what it means to live as a human being" to all intents and purposes. Toward the end, the phrase is inverted, and "It is not a negative, but an affirmation," is repeated. It is a structure that digs hope out of pain.

What we want is.
It is education for us.
Labor for us
Politics for us
Ideology for us

The song was enthusiastically supported by the youth of the time and influenced a later generation of musicians, including Chiharu Matsuyama and Toshihiko Takamizawa of THE ALFEE. 2021 saw a renewed interest in Japanese society, shaken by the earthquake and pandemic, and a wave of re-evaluation as a restoration of lost hope.

What We Want" is neither a mere protest song nor a satire. It is a poem of universal "wish" that rises from the depths of human beings who are still trying to move forward in spite of the backlighting of the times.

--What is it that you want?