PLEDGE WEEK: “Sukiyaki” by Kyu Sakamoto

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Run and roll and roll and run your

Today we're going to look at one of the very few records to become a US number one hit despite being sung in a language other than English.

A record that was also the first record by an Asian person ever to make the US number one.

But it's also a record that shows how deeply embedded racism was in the Anglophonic countries.

Today we're going to look at Ue o Muite Aruko by Sakamoto Kiu, or, as it was titled for English-speaking markets, Tsukiyaki by Kiyu Sakamoto.

Before we start, I'd just like to apologize in advance for my extreme mangling of the Japanese words in this episode.

I only speak English, and while I can usually guess at the pronunciation of terms in Romance or Germanic languages, and not be too far off, I'm aware that Japanese is a very different language to any I've had any experience of before.

Sakamoto Kiyu started his career when he was 16 in a comedy music group called The Drifters, yes, yet another Drifters, or Dorifutazu, as they were called in Japan.

This particular group would go on to have the most popular comedy show on Japanese TV, but Sakamoto was only with them for a brief period.

He was upset that he was only the second vocalist, rather than the lead, and so he joined a band called Danny Ida and Paradise King as their lead vocalist.

Their first record, Kanashiki Rokujisai, became a hit in Japan, but sadly I've not been able to find a copy of that record anywhere online.

However, they had a string of other hits in its immediate wake, including versions of American hits like Neil Sadaka's Calendar Girl.

And Jimmy Jones's Good Timing.

Oh, you need time.

Mena Tama Goro Goro nasata,

kosh no meno waide

Kanyinasubayaku yaro noya.

Liro no tai ka.

Sakamoto went solo at the end of nineteen sixty-one with his first solo record, Ue o Muite Abuko.

Ue ho mu hij

par

go

ni jin da o shi ho

kato he

That went to number one in Japan for three months, but for a while it did nothing anywhere else.

And Sakamoto continued his previous career of making cover versions of American hits for the Japanese market with records like his cover version of Del Shannon's Hats Off to Larry.

But then in 1963, Louis Benjamin, an executive with Pai Records, made a trip to Japan and he heard Ue o Moite Aruko and thought it had hit potential in the UK.

Rather than license the record, he decided to get a cover version made by Kenny Ball's Jazzman, one of the biggest threat groups in Britain.

But he had one problem, the song's name.

He didn't think that British people would be able to pronounce Ue o Moite Aruko, and he was probably correct, but he didn't choose to use a translation of the title either.

The title in English means I Look Up as I Cry, and was about crying at loss and trying to hide your tears.

Specifically, in this case, crying after a political protest against American troops in Japan, which the writer knew would be unsuccessful, though he took that emotion and turned it into a more general one.

I Look Up As I Cry would be a perfectly good title for a song, of course, but what Benjamin wanted was something that would highlight the fact that the song was Japanese, but would be recognisable and pronounceable to English people.

So he renamed the song Tsukiki, which is actually the name for a type of beef hotpot, and that's the name under which Kenny Ball's version of the song came out.

Bull's version of the song was a hit, and so HMV in England rushed out the original, also under the title Sukiyaki, and it made number six in the charts.

Because of that success, it was also released by Capital in the US, which was owned by the same company as HMV, and there it went to number one for three weeks.

In both countries, it was released as by Kiyo Sakamoto, rather than Sakamoto Kyu.

In Japan, one says the family name first and the given name second, and swapping them round for Western countries is commonplace.

Sakamoto went on a world tour, appeared on the Steve Allen Show, and released an album which went top 20 in the US.

He only had one other Hot 100 hit, though, Shina no Yoru, China Knight, which went to number 58.

Sakamoto continued to have a successful career in Japan, but had no further hits in the Anglophone world.

But he was still the first Asian artist ever to have a US number one, and his record was one of the biggest hits of the pre-Beatles 60s in the States.

According to some sources, it has sold 13 million records worldwide, making it one of the 20 biggest-selling singles of all time.

Sakamoto died in 1985 in a plane crash.

He was 43.

roll and roll your way

up and down, round and round.

We'll sway with the swell

in the spell of the rolling rock and rhythm of the sea.