Under the cut, a weak stab at the lyrics, with some help cribbed from Rainy Moon and the official forums. And liner notes!

荒は相続

あらはそうぞく

Ara wa souzoku

Violence is my inheritance

身脱ぎ感じても

みぬぎかんじても

Minugi kanjitemo

Even as I feel I’ve been stripped bare.

定めしが嘆いても

さだめしがなげいても

Sadameshi ga nageitemo

Though my fate has already been decided,

立ちぬ慣れして

たちぬなれして

Tachinunareshite

I’m used to standing [against it]

Blessed moonlight, flee toward the east

Wayward daughter, step into the night

Blessed stars, climb o'er the peaks,

Errant daughter, give in to the night

寄る辺の月が

よるべのつきが

Yorube no tsuki ga

The moon that I relied on

夢見に冴えて

ゆめみにさえて

Yumemi ni saete

Was clear in my dreams,

残せしは荒神の

のこせしはあらがみの

Nokoseshi wa aragami no

But the only thing left is the memory

名残の御代

なごりのみや

Nagori no miya

Of the vengeful goddess’s reign.

Blessed moonlight, flee toward the east

Wayward daughter, step into the night

Blessed stars, climb o'er the peaks,

Errant daughter, give in to the night



OKAY SO SOME POINTS:

I am absolutely shit at poetic Japanese so this is the literally roughest possible thing I could have done, why am I like this, there are all kinds of fiddly archaic conjugations I don’t know so if you happen to be an actual scholar of such things, I am so sorry, my knowledge is modern conversational fluency-focused, and this ain’t that. I’m probably going to be 90% wrong when the official translation does come out but y’know, them’s the breaks, these things are hard to do.

Not sure on the line “minugi kanjitemo” honestly, it…scans, kinda makes sense, minugi isn’t strictly speaking a ‘real’ word that I’ve been able to find, but it does work. If that’s right, there’s an element of having possibly stripped herself bare.



I can’t speak for “tachinunareshite” at all. It sounds like that to me and fits but I also have sensory processing difficulties, especially with music lyrics, someone remind me why I did this. cry.

Personally I feel like “flee towards the east” is what the English refrain sounds like, but you’d think the moon would come from the east since it rises there, but see/gleam are the other current candidates and I’m not feeling those much either.

The first two lines of the 2nd verse I am pretty solid about. Rainy Moon heard it the same way, it’s actually fairly clear, it makes sense, scans great, I’d put money on those being right if I had to pick any part of the song.

The last verse taken together is really heart-breaking. The ‘moon’ she ‘relied on’ was Gosetstu, but now all she’s got left is ‘the vengeful goddess’s reign’ and it’s not Tsukuyomi, it’s herself. Yotsuyu and Tsuyu are fundamentally incapable of coexisting.

“Aragami” is super literally “violent kami” and means specifically a wrathful or powerful spirit. I’m pretty sure that’s what I’m hearing here, anyway. It is a very fitting term for how Yotsuyu carries herself.



Regardless of whether or not I’m hearing it right it’s interesting that the lines all seem to have either five or seven syllables, not unlike a tanka or haiku, although not quite in the order that they’d have to be for it to actually be one. Specifically, tanka are 5-7-5-7-7 but the lyrics to this are 7-7-5-5-7. It might not actually be significant but I like it (and she does speak a tanka at her ultimate, as Rainy Moon points out here in the appendix at the end. To take a stab at it that isn’t the Koji translation, “The red spider lily / in the reality of the darkness / blooms forth / fallen further than humanity / come forth, dark goddess!” which isn’t particularly pretty but you get the idea.)

If you have any other ideas on what’s going on with this or corrections or anything hit me up, and please remember this is NOT canon lyrics, this is some fucko doing their best with three years immersion total and a BA in Japanese from 2006 (oh my god has it been that long I’m old someone shoot me but stay off my lawn while you do it).

ETA: David Molina from YouTube adds,

The item description for Wind-up Tsukuyomi is “Barren waters, heed unto the tide.” This may be the actual verse instead of “Errant daughter, return to the night."﻿



Thanks David!