A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs - PLEDGE WEEK: “Sukiyaki” by Kyu Sakamoto

Episode Date: June 17, 2021

This is a bonus episode, part of Pledge Week 2021. Patreon backers get one of these with every episode of the main podcast. If you want to get those, and to support the podcast, please visit patreon.com/andrewhickey to sign up for a dollar a month or more. Click below for the transcript. (more…)

This is a bonus episode, part of Pledge Week 2021. Patreon backers get one of these with every episode of the main podcast. If you want to get those, and to support the podcast, please visit patreon.com slash Andrew Hickey, that's A-N-D-R-E-W-H-I-C-E-Y, to sign up for a dollar a month or more. 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 Omuite Aruko by Sakamoto Q, or, as it was titled for English-speaking markets, Sukki-Arki by Kiu 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. Sakeamoto Kiu started his career when he was 16 in a comedy music group called The Drifters. Yes, yet another drifers, 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 Rokuji Sai, 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 Siddarker's Calendar Girl.

and Jimmy Jones's good timing. Oh, you need, that's, that's, steekinuroping, me of the troyo-golo, hikara kicker-a-kka-kka-o-i-day, Sakamoto went solo at the end of 1961, with his first solo record Ueo Moite Aruko.

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 Pye Records, made a trip to Japan,

and he heard Ue Omoite 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 Jazz Man, one of the biggest trad 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 Omoite Arouco, and he was probably correct, but he didn't choose to use the 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 a song. English people, so he renamed the song Sukiyaki, which is actually the name for a type of beef hot pot, and that's the name under which Kenny Ball's version of the song came out.

Ball'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 Kiu Sakamoto, rather than Sakamoto Kiu. 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 Yorou, China Night,

which went to number 58. Sakamoto continued to have a successful career in Japan, but had no further hit 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 hit of the pre-Beatles' 60s in the state. 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.