Neko-Yashiki Shinjuu Jiken
Lovers' Suicide at the House of Cats

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The parts of the lyrics in which the teacher or the  dead woman are supposed to be speaking are mostly in somewhat archaic language, while the parts from the point of view of the schoolgirl detective are not.

The "house of cats" of the title is not a specific real place, but rather a term that refers in general to any house with a lot of cats in it.

See here for a translation of the letter shown in the video.

[1] Kundalini is, in Hinduism, said to be a form of primal energy that is located at the base of the spine.

[2] Nankin Tamasudare is a type of street performance in which the performer recites a poem and illustrates it by manipulating a bamboo screen into various shapes. "Nankin" has here been replaced by "kankin," meaning "confinement" or "imprisonment."

[3] "Oni-san kochira" is the start of a traditional chant that accompanies the (now not commonly played) game "Mekakushi-Oni"--a variant of tag where a blindfolded child attempts to catch their friends, similar to Blind Man's Buff or Marco Polo. In full, the chant usually goes "Oni-sama kochira, te no naru hou e" ("Come here, demon, toward the sound of clapping hands"). Marunouchi is a district of Tokyo (the first of several referenced in this song).

[4] "Nekoze" refers to a stoop or hunchback but literally translates to "cat back."

[5] A neighborhood of Chiyoda district in Tokyo.

[6] Literally "cat-stroking voice"

[7] The laughter here is, unusually, written out in kanji. The character used for "a" here has a number of meanings and is also not infrequently used just for its phonetic value, but the "ha"s are written with a character meaning "destruction."

[8] References the concept of "maneki-neko" or lucky cats, statues of a cat with one paw up that are supposed to beckon some kind of good fortune.

[9] Sonezaki Shinjuu, or The Love Suicides at Sonezaki, is a well-known bunraku play about a young man and woman who commit suicide together after the man is betrayed and ruined by a friend who wishes to take the woman for himself. Shinagawa is another district of Tokyo.

[10] Historically, in Japanese literature, the image of a woman's hair being tangled or in disarray has been generally understood as a sexual reference.

[11] Wagahai wa Neko de Aru, or I Am a Cat, is the title of one of 19th-century author Natsume Soseki's most famous works--it is social satire from the point of view of a cat who finds human social mores baffling. The title contains some untranslatable humor, as "wagahai" is a personal pronoun that implies that the speaker is a very important person (or thinks they are).

[12] Ningen Shikkaku, or No Longer Human, is one of early 20th-century author Dazai Osamu's most famous works. It is semiautobiographical and suicide features heavily in it. Dazai himself died in a lovers' suicide with his mistress shortly after its publication.

Translated and transliterated by EJTranslations
http://ejtranslations.wordpress.com

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