NICO Touches The Walls - Diver

NICO Touches The Walls never fails to surprise us with an awesome song! Premiered as eight opening of Naruto Shippuuden, Diver tells the story of ups and downs in a life and shines a new ray of hope for those who they lost it all. I found this song extremely catchy, so might pick up a few words from it easier.

Naruto Shippuden - Opening 08

I've decided that it's gonna be a good idea to take a look at the whole chorus. Since things know to get out of control and become way to long, I've tried not to go into huge digressions.

息をしたくて　ここは苦しくて

闇を見上げるだけの夜は

もがく減圧症のダイバー

生きているんだって　確かめたくて

深い海底を目指してもう一度　呼吸をしよう

I hope you'll find it useful!

息をしたくて　ここは苦しくて

iki o shitakute koko wa kurushikute

First, let's take a look at the whole first part of this line, 「息をしたくて」iki o shitakute. This comes from a verb 「息をする」iki o suru, and it means to breathe. If you're asking yourself how can three words for a verb like that, you're actually asking a pretty good question. This is because 「息をする」iki o suru is a verb derived from a noun, 「息」iki which means breath with added suru which means to do (very common and important verb in Japanese).

Now let's take a look at why the ending is different. We'll drop the 「息」iki o from further explanation now because the only part of the verb that conjugates is 「する」suru anyway. Firstly, 「～たい」-tai was added. When you add this auxiliary verb, you state that the verb before it is wished for. 「する」suru is irregular verb, so it becomes 「したい」shitai, and this means want to do. So, 「息をしたい」iki o shitai means I want to breathe.

However, it was conjugated further, to its conjunctive form. Since 「たい」tai changes its forms just like adjectives, the rule for conjugating it to its continuative form is dropping the 「～い」i and adding 「～くて」kute. And that's how we've got 「息をしたくて」iki o shitakute which means the same, I want to breathe, but implies that there's something more to be said. It works similar the way you connect verbs with and in English. For example, I go to school would be 「学校に行く」gakkou ni iku and I study would be 「勉強する」bekyousuru. However, I go to school and study would be 「学校に行って勉強する」gakkou ni itte bekyousuru.

Next up is 「ここ」koko. It means here. There are two more words which are usually learned together with it: 「そこ」soko and 「あそこ」asoko. They both mean there but 「そこ」soko used when the place you're talking about is near the person you're speaking to (or he's at that place), and 「あそこ」asoko is used when it's far away from both of you.

「は」wa is the usual subject-making particle. It means that the previous word (or whole relative sentence) is the subject of the sentence. This means that the subject of the sentence we're currently analyzing is 「ここ」koko. So, we're going to get some information about the place near the person who's singing this song.

That information is 「苦しくて」kurushikute. The standard form of this adjective is 「苦しい」kurushii, and it means painful. Here, the adjective is changed to its continuitive form by replacing 「～い」i with 「～くて」kute (just like it happened with 「したい」shitai up there).

闇を見上げるだけの夜は

yami o miageru dake no yoru wa

We'll speed things up a bit here. 「闇」yami means darkness, 「を」o is object-maker, 「見上げる」miageru is a verb which means to look up (the first kanji 「見」 means to look and the second one 「上」 means up; this word can't get any more shallow). 「だけ」dake is a particle which means only or nothing but. So, this relative sentence 「闇を見上げるだけ」yami o miageru dake means only looks up at darkness. Notice that there is no subject here?

That's because that whole sentence acts as an attributive. We see that because it's followed by auxiliary particle 「の」no. After 「の」no, there's 「夜」yoru which means night. So, you could translate it as night which only looks up at darkness. Notice how the order of words is reversed up to some point? This is very common when translating from Japanese to English because the two languages have completely different structure.

By the way, did you notice that 「闇を見上げるだけの夜」yami o miageru dake no yoru isn't a sentence anymore, since it doesn't have a verb, i.e. it is "trapped" inside the relative sentence? Also, at the end we've got 「は」wa, which means that this is all just a topic we're talking about. So, either something's going on with that "night", or something else is happening during it. The rest of the sentence is in the next line.

もがく減圧症のダイバー

mogaku gen'atsushou no daibaa

The first word is written in hiragana only. There is a proper (ateji) kanji for it 「藻掻く

」【もがく】 mogaku, but it's rarely used. It means to struggle.

The next word is extremely uncommon. 「減圧症」【げんあつしょう】gen'atsushou means decompression sickness, and I had no idea what it was. It's followed by 「の」no and 「ダイバー」daibaa. It's obvious that 「減圧症のダイバー」gen'atsushou no daibaa means diver with decompression sickness.

It's obvious from the context that the singer is talking about himself, so these two lines mean something along the lines of At the nights when I can only look up at the darkness, I'm just a diver with decompression sickness who struggles. You've gotta turn your intuition and take a look at the context and the wider picture in order to properly translate something.

生きているんだって　確かめたくて

ikiteirundatte tashikametakute

Just two words here. The first word was originally actually just 「生きる」ikiru, but it went through numerous changes and a lot of suffixes were added. Some people might break it down in romaji as ikiteiru n datte because of it. Let's take a look.

Alright, so first it was just 「生きる」ikiru, which means to live. Then, it was changed to its continuative form 「生きて」ikite, so that 「～いる」iru can be attached to it. This is equivalent of adding -ing to English verbs. After that, we've got 「ん」n which doesn't mean anything, it just make the sentence more stressed and less formal. 「だって」datte is a colloquial form of 「でも」demo and it means but. So, our first long "word" can be translated as I want to live, but.

The next word is pretty similar to the words from the first line of this article. Verb 「確かめる」tashikameru means to make sure. Then it was changed to 「確かめたい」tashikametai by adding auxiliary verb 「～たい」tai to the stem of the verb. Then it was changed to its continuative form. Since 「たい」tai conjugates just like adjectives, we replace 「～い」i with 「～くて」kute, and so obtain 「確かめたくて」tashikametakute - I want to make sure (and...).

深い海底を目指してもう一度　呼吸をしよう

fukai kaitei wo mezashite mou ichido kokyuu o shiyou

This line is fairy simple and pretty straightforward. 「深い」fukai is deep, 「海底」kaitei is bottom of the ocean (the first kanji is sea/ocean, the second is bottom), followed by 「を」o, the object-maker particle. The verb that comes after that is 「目指して」mezashite, the te-form of 「目指す」mezasu which means to aim. 「もう一度」mou ichido is a phrase and means once again.

「呼吸をしよう」kokyuu o shiyou comes from 「呼吸をする」kokyuu o suru, which (also) means to breate. 「する」suru was changed to 「しよう」shiyou, which is the same as saying Let's~ in English.

I hope you found this article fun to read and learned something new from it. Stay tuned for more!