Bob Dylan’s lyrics have been the subject of university literature courses and countless scholarly discourses, but now they are attracting a different form of attention.
Did the singer songwriter, who has inspired generations with his free-wheeling language, use the words from a little-known translation of a Japanese book as lyrics on one of his albums?
There are remarkable similarities between the 2001 Dylan CD, Love and Theft, and the English translation of a 1991 book called Confessions of a Yakuza by a Japanese writer, Junichi Saga.
The discovery was made by Dylan fan Chris Johnson (29) from Minnesota, who teaches English in Japan and who found the book while browsing in a shop in Fukuoka. He had been looking for a book about gangsters in Japan and was pleased to find one in translation.
The first page of the translation by John Bester contained the line ”My old man would sit there like a feudal lord” which reminded Mr Johnson of the Dylan song Floater, which runs: ”My old man, he’s like some feudal lord.”
”I’ve probably listened to that album at least 100 times,” Mr Johnson told the Wall Street Journal, who ran the story on its front page this week, ”so the matching phrases just jumped right out at me. They might as well have been printed in red ink.”
Intrigued, he started scanning the book for other similarities. His theory is that the singer chanced across the book on one of his frequent tours of Japan and incorporated the phrases into the songs he was writing at the time.
The phrases were posted on Johnson’s website, dylanchords.com, which soon generated intense interest from Dylanologists around the world.
Junichi Saga’s reaction seems to be very much along the lines of ”Don’t think twice, it’s all right”. He had never heard of Dylan before but went out and bought the CD after he learned of the debate. He told the Journal he was flattered someone he had never heard of should possibly have found his words inspiring.
”I like this album,” Dr Saga said of Love and Theft. ”His lines flow from one image to the next and don’t always make sense, but they have a great atmosphere.”
Saga is not planning to make a fuss about the lyrics, although he feels it would be ”honourable” if there were some credit on future liner notes.
He also hopes it will help the sales of his book, which has jumped more than 20 000 places on the Amazon.com list since the first whispers about the similarities started to appear on the internet.
Dylan’s manager and record company have not acknowledged any similarities so far. Their attitude might be contained in the lyrics of a line from the better known album Blonde on Blonde: ”You shouldn’t take it so personal.”
In perfect harmony?
My old man would sit there like a feudal lord (Confessions of a Yakuza, page 6)
My old man, he’s like some feudal lord (Dylan song Floater)
If it bothers you so much, she’d say, ”Why don’t you just shove off” (page 9)
Juliet said…”Why don’t you just shove off if it bothers you so much” (Floater)
My mother…was the daughter of a wealthy farmer…died when I was 11…my father was a travelling salesman…I never met him. [My uncle] was a nice man, I won’t forget him (pages 57-58)
My mother was a daughter of a wealthy farmer,/My father was a travelin’ salesman, I never met him./When my mother died, my uncle took me…He did a lot of nice things for me and I won’t forget him (Po’ Boy)
I’m not as cool or forgiving as I might have sounded (page 158)
I’m not quite as cool or forgiving as I sound (Floater)
I don’t know how it looked to other people, but I never even slept with her — not once (page 208)
Don’t know how it looked to other people, I never slept with her even once (Lonesome Day Blues) – Guardian Unlimited Â