Yoko Songs: Higa Noboru
(Between My Head and the Sky, 2009)
By Madeline Bocaro ©

 

What was the inspiration for the song: “Higa Noboru” on Between My Head and the Sky?

The rising of the sun I saw during the second world war. Sun rises over dead bodies as well.  – Yoko, Twitter 2014

‘Higa Noboru’ is a delicate transcendent song in which Yoko communicates the wisdom divined via her telepathy with nature. I strongly believe that she hears the voices of birds and of fish. In this song, she communicates this alternately in Japanese and in English.

‘Higa Noboru’ means ‘The sun is rising.’ And it starts when the sun is down, and it’s just after you wake up, and you proceed with all the sort of earthly daily things that you go through, and the awareness you draw from it — and then, I’m going away smiling. In the end, the sun bites the dust.”

…this time several of these songs came out in Japanese, and I thought, That’s good, too. I didn’t sort of plan it. You know, I do think there was a point in my life that I was just dreaming in English. And then several years ago I started to go to Japan every year to do this charity concert for Africa, and I started to get more acquainted with the new Japanese, the new Japan, so to speak, and it was really very mind-boggling. And so now I find the Japanese language coming out.

– Yoko to John Payne, L.A. Weekly Sept. 21, 2009

Higa Noboru
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnEN0JL9sOU

The sun is rising / The sun is rising

A thousand days / in a single instant

My piano has melted
The room and the walls have also melted
and the ceiling

Something- a shining thing-
I know that it’s in the sky

(Transcend falsehood / Transcend falsehood)

I am surrounded by green (grass and trees)
I am sitting in a room with no walls or ceiling

I am here again.

Higa noboru / Higa noboru

Issen no hi ga ichidoki ni

Watashi no piano wa
toketeshimatta
Heya mo kabe mo
toketeshimatta
Tenjō ga

Nanika
Hikatteru mono ga
Sora ni aru no wa wakaru

Higa noboru / Higa noboru

Midori ni kakomarete
Watashi wa
kabe mo tenjō mo nai heya de
suwatteru

I write, I light
my message on the invisible wall
Fall of my prison cell Hell

Higa noboru / Higa noboru

Watashi wa
kage mo tenjō mo nai heya de
suwatteru

I hear the fish calling from the ocean
I hear the birds warning in the sky

Higa noboru / Higa noboru

Issen no hi ga
ichidoki ni

Ahhh, why is it- why is this life so beautiful, so interesting?
Why, this planet…

Ah, higa noboru
Higa noboru / Higa noboru / Higa noboru

Watashi wa mada koko ni iru