Ekiden (駅伝?) is a term referring to a long-distance relay running race, typically on roads. The Japanese term originally referred to a post-horse or stagecoach which transmitted communication by stages.
The term originated in Japan, although the concept of a long distance relay race is not unique to any country. The first ekiden race was sponsored by the Yomiuri Shimbun in 1917, and was run over three days between the old Japanese capital of Kyoto and the modern capital of Tokyo, a distance of 508 km, to celebrate the anniversary of the moving of the capital to Tokyo.
As written in Japanese, Ekiden combines the characters for "station" (駅) and "transmit" (伝). This name was coined by the poet Toki Zemmaro (1885–1980), who was head of the Yomiuri Shimbun's Social Affairs Department at the time. The original concept of the race hearkens back to Japan's old Tōkaidō communication and transportation system in which stations were posted at intervals along the road. In the race, each runner on a team runs the distance from one "station" to the next, and then hands off a cloth sash, or tasuki, to the next runner.
Defaced you stand
A single nobody in a mindless crowd
Surrounded by a system
Where corruption triumphs
Here every suspended solid
Rests on top of our affliction
Grieving silence
A lament to our own death!
Shut down your eyes and ears
Protect them from the truth
Avoid reality to suit your pitiful life
An alliance of deception
A conformist masterplan!
Grieving silence
A lament to our own death!
Ignorance pawn
You care for nothing, but your self
Just for what prosperity demands
But you can smash their greed for power
Theories of superior existence
An ancient relic of human vanity
A trigger for abnormal social behaviour
Faith is a mind disease
An instrument of torture
Forcing man to suppress his own instincts
The nature of Cain
Was the final design
For the creation of man
Lurking in the most secret paths
Of the human subconscious
The Dogma of Cain
Faith in God killed the trust to man
As Cain did to his own brother
The best seller of cheap hope
In a sick bargain of life denial
The nature of Cain
Was the final design
For the creation of man
Lurking in the most secret paths
Of the human subconscious
The Dogma of Cain
And there...
Within the silent vertigo of Babel's fall
Arose the fear for the uncertainty of demise
And upon it were built
Churches and temples
The nature of Cain
Was the final design
For the creation of man
Lurking in the most secret paths
Of the human subconscious
Noir and moments of change
Shadows swim in the lakes of chaos
As I redeem the hopes in my grasping hand
I feel my glacial prison quiver!
Questions? Swarming through my mind
These words descent from desolate realms
Seeking ways to reach my devastation
Forlorn I have foreseen the dark
Shall dwell in the fortress of past
Whispering n your ears
Holding the back of your neck
Judging their infinite lies
Tempting your self for the end
In my moments of faith
My aura kneels to embrace me
I subtracted life with my grasping hand
As I perceive my prison... Shatter!
Forlorn I have foreseen the dark
Shall dwell in the fortress of past
Forlorn I have foreseen the dark
Whispers in the dark
A window with no view
The Lies they told you were true
Their love gave birth to a spark
In fathomless depths
There where logic dissolves
into the obscurity
of instinct-driven behaviour
One challenges oneself
to defy
From non-canonical patterns
Randomly picked from endless streams
Massive figures are formed to recreate
Facts that already exist
or not...
In fathomless depths
One's dreams are manufactured
One shall silently surrender to them
For dreams are the most
Kafkaesque manifestation
An essence drawn beneath the surface
Coiled into human form a Human Serpent
Craved it's form for human flesh
But still inside a rigid reptile
Until we die
Force fed we swallow
A vicious way of living
Born from the seed of deception
Came this unexpected guest,
A human serpentine
Initiation to an eerie convention
The feelings unfaithful
And unable to feel the change
Until we die
Force fed we swallow
A vicious way of living
No escape from materialistic frontiers
Now everything gets a whole new meaning
Hunted but still straw
Initiation and grinding infestation!
Encounters between those who stand for faith
As everything shatters,
Blood gives a warm flow
Terror but nothing to fear
The thirst finally won the test
No hope to stand against
Until we die
Force fed we swallow
A vicious way of living
Venomous serpentine and evil
Struggling upon the Threshold that leads from sanity to nightmare
Not knowing that your altered perception blackens the Freedom
Of your Terrible Mind
Of the very existence
You're fighting to deny
Haunted by murderous demons and guided by your own fears
You seek haven between the shadows of your true enemy
Of your only enemy
The one that lies
The images are all the same
A moving spiral that devours
All consciousness and truth
An altered state of mind
Experiment on mass hypnosis
Your own inescapable inertia!
Go on and spit your lies
Seduce / Provoke / Defile
Every precious truth...
A rosebud in your dangerous hands
Under a storm of information
Minds succumb to gradual possession
To be used and then reformed
A passive service for the "righteous"
A place for the void to rest
A means for the incapable... to rule!
Go on and spit your lies
Seduce / Provoke / Defile
Every precious truth...
A rosebud in your dangerous hands
Entertainment through torture
The infliction of psychosomatic pain
Deifying every suspended solid
A basis for corruption to spread
A method to discard all guilt
What a marvelous beauty that is
That of an incomprehensible abyss
As astonishing as the sun,
Yet so hideous in it's vagueness
What an agony to exist
Balancing between matter and nihil
As simple as the feel of the wind
Yet vast like a cosmic ocean
How the subconscious is able to provide
A layer that severs perception from nothing
An amalgam of incoherent entities
That form the essence of life
Dwelling on the brink of void
In the shade of the eyelid
A scarlet shape crawls
Inside the eyes a projection
An organic machine
Slowly molding reality
The pendulum demands
To cherish the relentless pace of time
Amidst eleven dimensions
Matter collapses to the glint of a moment
The failure of the abyss
It's inability to judge
Beyond the terms of it's likeness
Bound to it's very being
An eagle untethered in it's cage
Pondering upon the human potential
The social reflection of the abyss
Condemned to be biased against it's own existence
Still meant to transcend it's natural limits
In the shade of the eyelid
A scarlet shape crawls
Inside the eyes a projection
An organic machine