So, as I wrote the last couple - days, with the wife and kids out of town, I'm taking advantage of my free time to blog more about Japanese music.
Which brings me to Sakamoto Kyu.
Actually, I've written about Sakamoto Kyu twice before on this blog.
First up is "Ue o muete Aruko" by Sakamoto Kyu, better known in the US as "The Sukiyaki Song". If this song sounds familiar, it is because it was the only Japanese song to chart on the US Pop charts. Not only that, it made it all the way to #1 in 1960, pushing out "It's my Party and I'll cry if I want to." (There was also a really lame English cover of this song in the 1980s by the American group 4PM-which might also be why the tune sounds familiar).
(The link no longer works. None of the old links work.)
I also wrote about Sakamoto Kyu in this 2007 post:
Sakamoto Kyu: Actually Sakamoto Kyu is the one person on this list who needs no introduction. If you’ve been in Japan for any length of time, you’re probably already heard his famous “Sukiyaki Song” several times by now. And you already know that this song has nothing to do with Sukiyaki, but that the Japanese title “Ue o muite arukou” was too difficult for American DJs to remember. So I won’t patronize you by recounting how Sakamoto Kyu was not only the sole Japanese artist to break into the US pop charts, but that his song made it all the way to the number 1 slot for two weeks in 1960, edging out “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to.”
But I never made a "Sharing Music I Like" post about Sakamoto Kyu. Partly because he seemed too obvious. I mean, the whole point of these posts is to share music that people might not otherwise be familiar with, and everyone already knows Sakamoto Kyu, right?
...or do they?
Let me start at the beginning.
The first time I heard of Sakamoto Kyu was very shortly after I had first arrived in Japan. Some of the older men from the office took me out drinking, and they mentioned Japanese music, and they said, "Of course, you know the Sukiyaki song."
I said I did not.
"Of course you know it. Everyone knows it. It's very famous in America."
Nope, I'd never heard of it before.
And then they played it for me.
"Ah, yes, yes, I have heard this song before. I didn't realize this was a Japanese song."
To me, the song was immediately recognizable as something I had often heard before on oldies stations, but I had never thought much about before, and never realized what it was.
I suspect the same is true for you as well, but, I don't know, give it a listen and let me know. Have you heard this song before?
The history of this song is that for a brief time in 1963, it got all the way to number 1 on the U.S. Billboard charts. It is, to the best of my knowledge, the only Japanese song that ever made it onto the U.S. charts at all, let alone all the way to number 1!
It also topped the charts in many other countries, and became a global hit.
Now, if you've ever lived in Japan, you know that the Japanese are obsessed with Japan's image in the rest of the world. So they are extremely proud that one of their songs made it to number 1 on the global charts. And consequently, you hear this song a lot in Japan. It's kind of like an unofficial national anthem over there.
As for my own memories of this song, I grew up on oldies stations myself, but I feel like this song was played on oldies stations more in the late 80s and early 90s. I feel like by the late 90s, this song had dropped off of the oldies rotation.
I don't know. Take me with a grain of salt because my memory's not always that good. But I feel like in 2001, when I first heard this song in Japan, I had the feeling that this was an old song that had once been on the radio frequently, but that I hadn't heard for a few years.
Now, with the decline of oldies stations, I wonder if this song has completely disappeared from the pop culture consciousness.
A couple years ago, I was talking to a British colleague who was about 15 years my junior. We were talking about Japanese music, and I mentioned this song to him. He didn't know what it was, and I said to him, "You'd recognize it if you heard it. You'll definitely recognize it when you hear it." And then I pulled it up on Youtube, and played it for him, and he listened for a minute or so, and then said, "Nope, nope, I've definitely never heard that before."
So perhaps this song has just faded into the past.
For that matter, I wonder how this song is doing in Japan nowadays. It's been a long time since I've left Japan, and things have probably changed.
In 2001, when I arrived in Japan, this song was already pretty old, but the Japanese workplaces were dominated by people in their 50s who still remembered this song fondly. Now probably all of those people have long since retired. And since (as I wrote before) Japanese young people have no interest in older music, perhaps this song is forgotten in Japan as well.
Who knows?
If you happen to stumble across this blog post, dear reader, whoever you are, let me know in the comments what your experience with this song is.
...anyway, back to the song itself.
The Japanese title of the song is Ue o Muite Aruko. When the song got popular in the US, it was renamed The Sukiyaki Song. Sukiyaki is a Japanese food. The song has nothing to do with Sukiyaki, but it was thought that Americans wouldn't be able to remember Ue o Muite Aruko but they could remember Sukiyaki.
Also, and I just found this out just now while looking this song up on Wikipedia, it's connected to the student protests in Japan in 1960.
"Ue o Muite Arukō" (pronounced [ɯe o mɯite aɾɯkoꜜː]) was written by lyricist Rokusuke Ei and composer Hachidai Nakamura. The lyrics tell the story of a man who looks up and whistles while he is walking so that his tears will not fall, with the verses describing his memories and feelings. Ei wrote the lyrics while walking home from participating in the 1960 Anpo protests against the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, expressing his frustration and dejection at the failed efforts to stop the treaty. However, the lyrics were purposefully generic so that they might refer to any lost love.[3][4]
Interesting! I never knew that! (Wikipedia wasn't around when I first arrived in Japan, so there was no way of knowing these things.)
The American audiences for this song, of course, had no idea what any of the lyrics meant. It's a perfect demonstration that if the melody of a song is catchy enough, no one cares about the lyrics.
And, I myself admit to finding the song very catchy.
I mean, the melody of the song has early 1960s written all over it. It's a very simple song that probably couldn't have been composed in the second half of the decade. But for a simple early 60s song, it's really catchy. I had this song constantly on rotation on my mixed tapes while I lived in Japan, and I don't know how many times I sang along to it while driving through the Japanese countryside.
When my Japanese supervisor found out I was interested in old music, he gave me a copy of a CD of Sakamoto Kyu's biggest hits.
This was the first Japanese music I acquired, and for the first few months I lived in the Japanese countryside, it was one of the only CDs I had. So I listened to it over and over again.
Aside from The Sukiyaki Song, Sakamoto Kyu's other big hit was Ashita ga Aru:
Ashita Ga ArusaAshita ga aru is a really fun bouncy, joyful song. I heard this song a lot when I lived in Japan.
According to the Wikipedia article, in 2001, the year I arrived in Japan, there was a cover of this song which went to number 1 on the Japanese billboard. I didn't realize that until just now (amazing the things you can learn from Wikipedia!) but that probably accounts for why I heard this song everywhere during my first few years in Japan.
Namida-Kun Sayonara was another song off of that album that I found really catchy.
When I went through my phase of trying to sing Japanese songs at Karaoke, Namida-Kun Sayonara was one of my regular songs. (It was slow and simple enough that, I thought, I could manage it in Karaoke.)
Boku no Hoshi was another one of my favorites. I thought this song was really beautiful, and I used to love playing it while driving through empty dark roads in the Japanese countryside.
...there were other songs. Actually, I liked all the songs on the greatest hits album.
But, these 4 are my favorites.
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