Concert Memories: Vow to the Future

As with every concert, fans have offered all sorts of interpretations of this event’s set list.

Day 1 closed with ‘Bye Bye de Sayonara (Farewell with a Bye-Bye)’, and Day 2 with ‘Tsuioku no Fanfare (Fanfare of Reminiscence)’: two songs that mourn a loss while praying for renewal.
Several theories are going around. Some see the choice as a message of support for the victims of this summer’s devastating floods in Chiba Prefecture. Others believe it was a tribute to the former mayor of Chosei Village, who did more than anyone to bring this concert to the area but passed away in August, before he could see it come to fruition.

We will probably never know the true intention. For us, though, the most moving moment was ‘Chikai Mirai (Vow to the Future)’, the thirteenth song on Day 2.
At its heart, the song is a message of encouragement: draw strength from the pain of the past, and keep running towards the future with your head held high, because we are cheering you on. Yet it also seems to resonate with the interpretations above.

Near the end of the song comes a chorus in which the lines ‘After the tears, a shining smile once more’ and ‘Like a flower that nestles close to someone’s heart’ are sung twice.
Because this part follows straight on from the members’ vocals, it is left to us, the Mononofu, to sing.

At this point in the show, the members were riding around the venue on a cart (in fact, a kei truck, or ‘K-Tora’), and happened to be right behind us, at the side of the rear of the general seating area.
So we turned around to face them and sang that part with everything we had.
It was pure coincidence, but just beyond them lay the section reserved for village residents. For a moment, it felt as though, without meaning to, we were sending a message from the Mononofu to the people of the village.

Once the MCZ memorial hall is built, Mononofu will surely return to this village again and again, each time hoping to be ‘like a flower that nestles close’ to it.