First, the song itself. Even if you think you’ve never heard it, you have. It’s one of those songs — like “Green Onions” or “Walk, Don’t Run” — that comes from the 60s and has probably been heard by most people who own a radio and a TV set. Maybe it’s in a commercial, maybe it’s incidental background music in a movie, maybe it’s s piped into the doctor’s office, or maybe it’s being sampled or covered or otherwise somehow incorporated into another song, but “Sukiyaki” gets played often enough that it would be tough to have had some awareness of popular culture without having heard “Sukiyaki” in some form.
In 1961, it was sung in Japanese, by Kyu Sakamoto, though it achieved popularity there under its original title “Ue o muite arukō” — or in English, “I Shall Walk Looking Up.” The song tells the story of a heartbroken man who looks up as he walks so that his tears will not fall — a touching idea that’s kind of lost to people who don’t speak Japanese.
Here’s the original:
And here are the lyrics translated into English (at least according to this site):
I look up when I walk so the tears won't fallIn its Japanese form, the song was already a hit. But when British group Kenny Ball and His Jazzmen released a cover, it was retitled it “Sukiyaki.” As Wikipedia notes, the band members were concerned that English-speaking audiences would find the original title too difficult to remember and pronounce. The name of the Japanese beef dish, on the other hand, was “short, catchy, recognizably Japanese, and more familiar to most English speakers,” according to Wikipedia. Newsweek’s take: The title made about as much sense as “issuing ‘Moon River’ in Japan under the title ‘Beef Stew.’”
Remembering those happy spring days
But tonight I'm all alone
I look up when I walk, counting the stars with tearful eyes
Remembering those happy summer days
But tonight I'm all alone
Happiness lies beyond the clouds
Happiness lies above the sky
I look up when I walk so the tears won't fall
Though my heart is filled with sorrow
For tonight I'm all alone
Remembering those happy autumn days
But tonight I'm all alone
Sadness hides in the shadow of the stars
Sadness lurks in the shadow of the moon
I look up when I walk so the tears won't fall
Though my heart is filled with sorrow
For tonight I'm all alone
Kenny Ball’s jazzy, instrumental take on the song:
Shortly thereafter, Kyu Sakatmoto’s Japanese-language version was released both in the U.S. and Britain, but the song unfortunately retained the name “Sukiyaki.” It stuck from then on. In 1981, the pop group A Taste of Honey popularized English lyrics for the song, though they were a reinterpretation rather than a literal translation.
See, here, A Taste of Honey performing their version on Solid Gold:
Finally, Tejano singer Selena released yet another version of the song in Spanish — with lyrics translated directly from Taste of Honey’s.
Other non-Godzilla, non-robotic, non-schoolgirl bits of Japanese culture:
- The astounding weirdness that is the 1980 NBC variety show Pink Lady and Jeff
- The delightful wonderment that is the wild west-themed Laserdisc game Badlands
- The onomatopoetic cuteness that is Pipo, mascot of the Tokyo police
- The vaguely unsettling strangeness that is Laura, the Prairie Girl, the anime based on Little House on the Prairie
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