The first line of "Yawara" seemed familiar--Katsu to omou na, omoeba make yo- -, so I consulted Ivan Morris' The Nobility of Failure: Tragic Heroes in the History of Japan---the last chapter in the book about the WW II Kamikaze pilots.
Sure enough, there again was the first line of the song: Never think of winning! Thoughts of victory will only bring defeat... from a popular song of the kamikaze.
Puissent tous les hommes se souvenir qu'ils sont frères!
Sorta like that Persian dude Omar Khayyam: all he needed was some bread, some wine, some poetry, some shade, and a chick with a good singing voice with him out in some secluded spot. ;)
A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread - and Thou Beside me singing in the Wilderness- Oh, Wilderness were Paradise enow!**
Puissent tous les hommes se souvenir qu'ils sont frères!
Omar Khayyam wrote some .. well interesting poetry.. kinda like the Persian Barry White? :P
Kinda hedonistic...kinda "this world-ly"... Lots of references to wine in his verses.. :P
Of course, we owe a lot of our impressions of Omar Khayyam to his Victorian era translator Edward Fitzgerald, who admired Khayyam as a fellow non- conformist. His translation is itself a work of art.
Puissent tous les hommes se souvenir qu'ils sont frères!
I can certainly understand what her voice meant to those conquered people. She is a source of great pride even now I'm sure.
Watch her as a child singing and dancing in war devastated Tokyo in Tokyo Kid in 1950, and as a fun- loving teen-ager in 1955 in Janken Musume (the one on the left with the yellow top; "janken" is sort of like our "Rock, Paper, Scissors" and "musume" means "girls").
Puissent tous les hommes se souvenir qu'ils sont frères!