Up and Down = 1 and 2
Some people do all their thinking in the shower. I do all my thinking when I’m walking my dog and waiting to scoop poop. Random thoughts come to me and even full on conversations happen. My Western brain and my Japanese brain were having a conversation and I thought, maybe there’s some Westerners who don’t know this about Japan and as small and silly a tidbit it may be, I can connect it to Buck-Tick so I will share.
In 1991, Der Zibet released a two part album called 思春期 I -Upper Side- and 思春期 II -Downer Side-. (思春期 = shishunki = puberty). Think of this as Japan’s “Use Your Illusion 1″ and “Use Your Illusion 2″ if it helps frame it, but these were released on separate dates and had less songs. Atsushi and Hisashi were guest members on songs on Downer Side.
The cover art doesn’t have the titles but these are the albums:
The titles are on the spines:
Now, my Western brain would think “upper side” and “downer side” must refer to drugs because all the musicians I like were junkies at one point and clearly these are the two sides of drug-infested songwriting. My Japanese brain is thinking, “Fucking gaijin! It’s clearly just part one and two.”
上 = ue = up = part 1
下 = shita = down = part 2
If you only listen to Japanese music or watch Japanese movies, you may not have come across this because it’s usually written on books, especially textbooks. To make things easier to carry (perhaps), books in Japan may be split into 2 parts to purchase. Sure, the up/down notation limits you to only 2 parts but that takes care of most books. (Poor Tolkien had to have his books split into 上1 and 上2!)
We had to buy the textbooks in Japanese public school. I don’t have any of those books anymore but I think a couple classes had the text split into 上 and 下. Here’s some high school mathematics textbooks I found online as an example where I point out (with funky arrows) the upper side and downer side, or part one and part two.
