What "Jidai" (Time) Taught Me — From a Twenties That Believed in Cycles, to Sixty-Six Now

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I first began paying real attention to this song in my twenties. Around the time I made a major decision about the direction of my life and moved to London to work at a Japanese restaurant, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't carrying a good deal of anxiety about what lay ahead. Back then, Miyuki Nakajima's "Jidai" was a song you simply heard everywhere — on television, out and about in town. Its message — that no matter how hard things are now, time itself keeps turning — was something I listened to at the time almost as if it were someone else's story, not really my own.

What strikes me now is that Nakajima wrote this song when she was only twenty-three. To already hold a perspective broad enough to look down on life's ups and downs as if from a distance, at such a young age, feels remarkable in hindsight. That sorrow and joy both return in their own time — to have grasped that so early speaks to an extraordinary kind of sensitivity. In my twenties, I simply didn't have the room to view my own life across that kind of long horizon.

Photo by Aivars Vilks on Unsplash

An Idea I Couldn't Have Held in My Twenties

Of the "four sufferings" in Buddhist thought — birth, aging, sickness, and death — there was another one I kept at arm's length in my twenties: sickness. Good health felt like the default, and falling ill seemed like nothing more than bad luck. At sixty-six, I see it differently. The ebb and flow of health, I've come to feel, turns in its own cycle, just like the seasons, just like the times themselves. There will be a downturn, and there will, just as surely, be a recovery. Coming to see illness not as a departure from life to be feared, but as part of a larger cycle, feels like a perspective I've only gained through the years.

A Small Question About Living

I built Japanese food businesses across several countries, worked in acupuncture and herbal medicine, gained experience investing in property and stocks, and in 2025, at sixty-five, I retired. Splitting my time between the outskirts of London and Osaka now, I spend far more of my time than before thinking about how to extend healthy life expectancy. In my twenties, I only vaguely understood what it meant for things to "come around again." I understand it differently now. The periods when business didn't go well, the losses of people close to me, the changes in my own body — all of it, I can say with real conviction, has turned in its own cycle and shaped who I am today.

Having spent time in the world of investing, I notice something in the phrase "markets turn in cycles" that overlaps with the message of this song. Living in the UK, I often sense a fairly measured, unruffled acceptance of economic ups and downs, a willingness to simply wait for the next turn. In Japan, people seem to respond a little more emotionally, a little closer to the wave itself. Neither approach is more correct than the other, but I find it interesting how even our relationship to what turns and cycles carries a distinct national character.

Honestly, since entering my sixties, I've had to start managing numbers like blood pressure and cholesterol, and I pay far more attention to health check-up results than I used to. Since retiring, there are moments when life starts to feel like "every day is Sunday," and I nearly lose my sense of daily rhythm. Still, I think there's value in putting these changes into words rather than hiding them. Connected to someone whose face and name I'll never know, through shared experience alone — that kind of quiet solidarity feels worth having, to me.

What I Hear Now, at Sixty-Six

One more thing I find personally interesting about this song is where, at only twenty-three, Nakajima might have found this sense of cycles in the first place. Learning about her background — raised in a household with a grandfather who chaired a city council and a father who was a physician — suggests someone who, from childhood, watched the lives of her elders closely. The wisdom of turning times, I suspect, doesn't only come from having lived long oneself; it can also be inherited, even at a young age, from paying close attention to those who came before. Seen that way, this song feels less like Nakajima's own lived experience and more like a crystallisation of observation passed down across generations.

I happened to be rereading "Owarinaki Taiwa" (An Endless Dialogue), a collection of conversations between the poet Shuntaro Tanikawa and Miyuki Nakajima, around the same time I was thinking about this song. In the words each of them brings — one a poet, one a singer — there's a quiet way of looking at "turning" that echoes what this song is about. Kindle Edition　Print Edition

Closing

What "Jidai" sings about, I now realize at sixty-six, isn't simple comfort — it's the very structure of a life. After a sad season comes a season where we can laugh again. That isn't optimism so much as a quiet certainty that only comes from having actually lived long enough to see it happen. My body and memory will keep changing from here. And yet, knowing now — in a way I didn't in my twenties — that both good and bad things turn in their own cycles gives me a kind of steadiness I didn't have back then. Every time I hear "Jidai," I'm reminded of this. Life is worth living. Quietly, but unmistakably, this one song keeps telling me so.

Reference Links

• "Jidai -Live 2010~11-" (from Tokyo International Forum Hall A), Miyuki Nakajima Official Channel
• Miyuki Nakajima official site
• Miyuki Nakajima's official YouTube channel

Listen to the Song

Read the Lyrics (Uta-Net): https://www.uta-net.com/song/2416/Note: please enjoy the full Japanese lyrics on the external lyrics database site linked above — they are not reproduced here.

About Miyuki Nakajima

Miyuki Nakajima was born on February 23, 1952, in Hokkaido, Japan. She grew up in a family whose grandfather served as chairman of the Obihiro City Council and whose father was an obstetrician-gynecologist trained at the Hokkaido Imperial University School of Medicine. After graduating from Obihiro Hakuyo High School, she studied Japanese literature at Fuji Women's University, and as a student she was known for repeatedly entering — and winning — folk song contests.

In 1975, at age 23, she made her debut as a singer with the single "Azami Jo no Lullaby." Her second single that same year was "Jidai" (Time), which won the grand prize at the World Popular Song Festival held at the Nippon Budokan and brought her name to national attention almost overnight.

She went on to produce a string of era-defining hits, including "Wakare Uta," "Akujo," "Sora to Kimi no Aida ni," and "Chijo no Hoshi." Nakajima is the only solo artist to have reached No. 1 on the Oricon singles chart across four separate decades, from the 1970s through the 2000s — and, counting songs she wrote for other artists, she holds the rare distinction of topping the chart across five decades.

Since 1989, she has written, composed, directed, and starred in her own stage production, "Yakai," which she has continued as a lifelong body of work. Beyond her music career, she has also worked widely as an actress, radio personality, and essayist. In 2009, her achievements were recognized with the Medal with Purple Ribbon.

Now, fifty years after her debut, she continues to perform actively, and "Jidai" is still sung and passed down across generations.