Intending to write about this song, I couldn't help but post this photo of Tom Cruise by Gage Skidmore. Indeed, Cruise has played plenty of mavericks from IMF operative Ethan Hunt to US Navy ace pilot Pete Mitchell and he's going to play another very different sort of maverick in "Digger".
First off, I have to say that I had never encountered the expression hamidashi（はみ出し）before. According to Jisho.org, it means "sticking out" or "protruding" and with the longer expression hamidashi mono（はみ出し者）, it means "maverick" or "nonconformist" which fits the images of "a person who sticks out". Initially from what I could glean of the expression in hiragana and kanji, I'd thought that it meant "teeth sticking out", so just imagine all of the definitions given in this paragraph, implied or otherwise, and the ever-smiling Tom Cruise would be the sample picture in the Japanese dictionary.
And so, we come to the late Hiroyuki Okita's（沖田浩之）third single from August 1981, "Hamidashi Champion" (Maverick Champion). Just out of a sense of whimsy and curiosity, I wanted to check out what singles were being released at the end of August (which is when I'm writing this one) back in 1981, and sure enough, this was the only one. Written by Yoko Aki（阿木燿子）and composed by Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）, having the rock guitar flailing away was the appropriate thing for a song about a lone wolf winner. One would think that "Hamidashi Champion" was used for some sort of high school drama or a commercial about motorbikes, but it was actually utilized for a Morinaga confection ad.
J-Canuck’s translation, “Maverick Champion,” captures the spirit of the song well. The word “Hamidasu” (はみ出す) literally means to stick out, spill out, or go outside a prescribed boundary. Dictionaries also provide examples of someone who falls outside an established mold. This creates an interesting tension: it’s a carefully crafted commercial idol pop song written by two of Japan’s most accomplished hitmakers, yet it sells the fantasy of not being controlled by anyone. This contradiction might just be part of its charm. As far as I can tell, Okita already had a television persona associated with a somewhat tough, rebellious youth. The result sounds less like the polished princely idol model and more like an attempt to package delinquent cool as pop stardom. This makes the title smarter than it first appears: the hero isn’t merely someone who has “fallen outside” society’s boundaries. He’s proud enough of it to call himself the champion.
ReplyDeleteThen I think putting up that Tom Cruise photo was the right decision...especially when it comes to his Pete "Maverick" Mitchell.😊It's interesting because Japan and America have had different attitudes to the maverick in the past.
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