I recently came across a translation of Maeda’s production diary included in the Long Long Love Song album. The diary is very personal and has some shocking details. I wonder if anyone has done an English translation of it? If not, would it interest anyone that I do one?
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I would be very interested! Just curious, but where is that diary from? Never even heard of it before 
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I think it’s the diary mentioned in our news article here: https://kazamatsuri.org/jun-maedas-new-album-long-long-love-song-announced/
“The limited edition will be sold for ￥3,740 and comes in a digipack including all the songs and pamphlet together with Jun Maeda’s production diary”
But just to clarify I don’t own a copy of the limited edition album, nor do I have the original text of the diary (which I can’t read anyway). All I have is a (presumably) complete fan translation of the diary in a third language (Chinese) which I could read and translate into english.
Althought it can be done, and is definitely worth doing, I will be translating a translation, you see 
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I remember someone reading it and finding it too loaded to want to post a translation, eheh…
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I had it, now go guess where it is, I would have to find it. I know Helios has it too and he told me how Maeda was just too tired of his “famous” life and how at times it looked as if he just wanted to quit. There’s mainly stuff about how he wrote the songs and parts of his life that influenced those songs.
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I have a copy and have translated about the first quarter of it, but who knows if it’s any good since that was half a year ago when I knew a lot less Japanese. I haven’t gotten around to reading or translating the rest of it, but you can compare with what I had so far if you want.
I felt the entry about Maeda’s hospitalization and recovery was very well-written. It explained his mindset through the whole ordeal and how lucky he was to recover as well as he did.
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Absolutely! I would love to see the part you have translated so far, it could help to crosscheck with your work whenever I have a doubt about the other translater.
I personally felt terrible and worried after reading that part, I didn’t fully realize how serious his illness actually was.
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Here’s what I have so far. I looked over what I had translated so far and tried to fix any mistranslated sections. I’m going to try to translate some more, so I’ll keep it updated with my progress. Please let me know if anything seems incorrect.
June 6 update: Sorry for disappearing for a long time. I finally got back to working on this after several months and have added the rest of November’s entries. The HTML and Markdown files are definitely up to date; the ODT and PDF may have some remnants from older versions.
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I’ve always thought it was a real shame that they didn’t make a Promotional Video for the secret track “Kimi no Airplane (Your Airplane)” , like they did for the other tracks of the Owari no Hoshi no Love Song Album.
So I have made one myself…
Should I post it here or in the MAD/AMV discussion?
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[LLLS]
So back in podcast #1 Pi explained how the predominantly male pronoun “Boku” doesn’t necessarily mean a narrator is male because of poetic conventions. I’d argue that is definitely the case in LLLS though. You see, in this album, if a 1st person pronoun is used it’s always either “Boku” or the predominantly female “Atashi.” You’re never forced to read the Love Songs as narratives, however, I read this one as a story of a guy and girl getting together. It gets told in a very roundabout way, and it probably was a very roundabout relationship. We get both perspectives on their time together and what could be multiple separations–romantic or not–but Love Song no Tsukurikata seems to strongly indicate that they end up happily married eventually.
Summary of pronouns used in each track
1 - The guy uses boku. Narrator uses atashi
2 - Narrator uses boku in hiragana
3 - Narrator uses atashi
4 - Narrator uses atashi
5 - Narrator uses atashi
6 - Narrator uses atashi
7 - Narrator uses boku
8 - Narrator uses atashi
9 - Narrator uses no pronoun
10 - Narrator uses boku in hiragana
11 - Narrator uses Papa (Technically more of a proper noun than a pronoun)
12 - Narrator uses boku in hiragana
13 - Narrator uses no pronoun
2nd person pronouns are pretty much always the relatively neutral “Kimi.”
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