What's significant about a full moon on the fifteenth?


In _Joshiraku_ , Marii enters the room dressed as a
[Yankee](http://yanki.urbanup.com/2909634), proclaiming that she's gonna break
a load of windows since it's a full moon. Tetora responds with:

![Tetora, with motorcycle in the background; subtitled "Marii, it might be a
full moon night, but it's not the
fifteenth."](https://i.stack.imgur.com/ltDpIl.jpg)

What's the significance of the 15th and why would she break a load of windows?




The dialogue here goes:

> で、窓硝子はどこだい？  
>  So, where are the windows?
>
> なぜ？  
>  Why do you ask?
>
> 壊して回るんだよ。  
>  I'm going to go around breaking them.
>
> 魔梨威さん、十五夜と十五の夜は違うから。  
>  Marii, it might be a full moon night, but it's not the fifteenth.

The last quoted line is the one depicted in your screenshot. There's a
difficult-to-capture joke in this sequence, which I will nonetheless try to
capture below.

Here, 十五夜【じゅうごや】 (character-by-character "fifteen-night") is translated as
"full moon night". It literally just means "full moon". This originated as a
reference to the lunar calendar, but now is just an ordinary synonym for "full
moon".

十五【じゅうご】の夜【よる】 (the same thing with the genitive particle の interposed) is
translated as "the fifteenth". A more direct interpretation of this, however,
would be "a night at the age of fifteen" (an age when people are prone to
["Yankee"](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JapaneseDelinquents)
antics).1 The joke, then, originates from the fact that 十五の夜 ( _Juugo no Yoru_
) is also the name of [an 80s
song](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pshjQzqGynE), the debut single of popular
singer OZAKI Yutaka, and one that has great affection for the Yankee
ideology/ethos. The song's chorus reads:

> 盗んだバイクで走り出す 行き先も解らぬまま  
>  暗い夜の帳りの中へ  
>  誰にも縛られたくないと 逃げ込んだこの夜に  
>  自由になれた気がした 15の夜

Translated loosely as prose:

> Riding the bike I stole, I dash off into the curtains of the dark night,
> knowing not where I'm headed. I don't want anyone to chain me down as I run
> off into the night, feeling free at last - the night of the fifteenth.

This is why Tetora's backdrop changes from a full moon (十五夜) to a guy riding a
bike when she says 十五の夜.

* * *

Alternate possibility (and probably a more likely one): Marii's lines could be
a reference to a _different_ Ozaki Yutaka song: 卒業【そつぎょう】 ( _sotsugyou_ ,
"Graduation"; [lyrics](http://j-lyric.net/artist/a000ee6/l004f70.html)), which
contains the following line:

> 夜の校舎 窓ガラス壊してまわった  
>  I went around the school building, breaking all the windows.

* * *

Note also that Gankyou's line a few seconds later may be related:

> つまらない大人にはなりたくないね。  
>  I don't want to become a boring adult.

This is an almost-direct quotation of the penultimate line from the song
ガラスのジェネレーション ("Glass Generation"), by [SANO
Motoharu](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motoharu_Sano), on his album "Heart
Beat" ([lyrics](https://www.moto.co.jp/works/songs/HeartBeat.html)).

> つまらない大人には なりたくない  
>  (same as above, but without the concluding interjectory particle ね)

* * *

# Notes

For more information about Joshiraku obscurata, see [vale's translation
notes](http://notredrevie.ws/2012/08/09/joshiraku-04-notes-and-the-like/).

1 This is probably an elision of the construction 十五歳【じゅうごさい】の夜【よる】, and is
literary or poetic in nature.




The dialogue here goes:

> で、窓硝子はどこだい？  
>  So, where are the windows?
>
> なぜ？  
>  Why do you ask?
>
> 壊して回るんだよ。  
>  I'm going to go around breaking them.
>
> 魔梨威さん、十五夜と十五の夜は違うから。  
>  Marii, it might be a full moon night, but it's not the fifteenth.

The last quoted line is the one depicted in your screenshot. There's a
difficult-to-capture joke in this sequence, which I will nonetheless try to
capture below.

Here, 十五夜【じゅうごや】 (character-by-character "fifteen-night") is translated as
"full moon night". It literally just means "full moon". This originated as a
reference to the lunar calendar, but now is just an ordinary synonym for "full
moon".

十五【じゅうご】の夜【よる】 (the same thing with the genitive particle の interposed) is
translated as "the fifteenth". A more direct interpretation of this, however,
would be "a night at the age of fifteen" (an age when people are prone to
["Yankee"](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JapaneseDelinquents)
antics).1 The joke, then, originates from the fact that 十五の夜 ( _Juugo no Yoru_
) is also the name of [an 80s
song](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pshjQzqGynE), the debut single of popular
singer OZAKI Yutaka, and one that has great affection for the Yankee
ideology/ethos. The song's chorus reads:

> 盗んだバイクで走り出す 行き先も解らぬまま  
>  暗い夜の帳りの中へ  
>  誰にも縛られたくないと 逃げ込んだこの夜に  
>  自由になれた気がした 15の夜

Translated loosely as prose:

> Riding the bike I stole, I dash off into the curtains of the dark night,
> knowing not where I'm headed. I don't want anyone to chain me down as I run
> off into the night, feeling free at last - the night of the fifteenth.

This is why Tetora's backdrop changes from a full moon (十五夜) to a guy riding a
bike when she says 十五の夜.

* * *

Alternate possibility (and probably a more likely one): Marii's lines could be
a reference to a _different_ Ozaki Yutaka song: 卒業【そつぎょう】 ( _sotsugyou_ ,
"Graduation"; [lyrics](http://j-lyric.net/artist/a000ee6/l004f70.html)), which
contains the following line:

> 夜の校舎 窓ガラス壊してまわった  
>  I went around the school building, breaking all the windows.

* * *

Note also that Gankyou's line a few seconds later may be related:

> つまらない大人にはなりたくないね。  
>  I don't want to become a boring adult.

This is an almost-direct quotation of the penultimate line from the song
ガラスのジェネレーション ("Glass Generation"), by [SANO
Motoharu](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motoharu_Sano), on his album "Heart
Beat" ([lyrics](https://www.moto.co.jp/works/songs/HeartBeat.html)).

> つまらない大人には なりたくない  
>  (same as above, but without the concluding interjectory particle ね)

* * *

# Notes

For more information about Joshiraku obscurata, see [vale's translation
notes](http://notredrevie.ws/2012/08/09/joshiraku-04-notes-and-the-like/).

1 This is probably an elision of the construction 十五歳【じゅうごさい】の夜【よる】, and is
literary or poetic in nature.

