LEARN LYRICS

"白日" (Hakujitsu, "broad daylight") is King Gnu at their most guilty. The narrator opens by admitting that sometimes you hurt people without noticing, and only learn "犯した罪を知る" (you learn the sin you committed) once the damage is done. No villain, no big scandal. Just the slow realisation that you were the problem.

The snow is the image to watch. He begs "降りしきる雪よ" (oh, falling snow) to cover everything, "今日だけは全てを隠してくれ" (just for today, hide it all). He even sings "真っ白に全てさよなら" (goodbye to everything, pure white), which ties back to the title. Then he admits the fantasy fails: even if he is reborn and starts life from zero, the past is "へばりついて離れない" (stuck to me, won't let go).

Learner tip: "首の皮一枚繋がった" (hanging on by one layer of neck skin) is a real idiom for barely surviving, holding on by a thread. And "正しいことばかり言ってらんないよな" (you can't just keep saying the right thing, can you) shows casual spoken Japanese: らんない is a squashed form of られない. The bridge gets bitter fast, with "後悔ばかりの人生だ" (a life full of nothing but regret) and a tired "うんざりするよ" (I'm sick of it). It is a bleak song, but I find the honesty oddly comforting.

King Gnu is a Japanese band formed in 2013, first under the names Mrs.Vinci and Srv.Vinci before settling on King Gnu in 2017. The lineup is Daiki Tsuneta on vocals and guitar, Satoru Iguchi on vocals and keyboards, Kazuki Arai on bass and Yu Seki on drums.

After early releases through Perimetron, they made their major label debut on Ariola Japan in January 2019. That year their single "Hakujitsu" took them to NHK's Kōhaku Uta Gassen, and they returned in 2022 with "Stardom". Their 2020 album Ceremony sold over a million copies, and later singles include "Chameleon", "Specialz" and "Aizo". Tsuneta is also part of the creative collective Millennium Parade.

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