![]() ![]() Internationally, the song is one of the best-selling singles of all time, having sold over 13 million copies worldwide. That was the last song by an artist from Japan to reach the US pop chart for 16 years, until the female duo Pink Lady had a top-40 hit in 1979 with its English-language song " Kiss in the Dark". Sakamoto's follow-up to "Sukiyaki", "China Nights (Shina no Yoru)", charted in 1963 at number 58. "Sukiyaki" also peaked at number eighteen on the Billboard R&B chart, and spent five weeks at number one on the Middle of the Road chart. It was the only single by an Asian artist to top the Hot 100 until the 2020 release of " Dynamite" by the South Korean band BTS. In the US, "Sukiyaki" topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1963, one of the few non-English songs to have done so, and the first in a non- European language. In Japan, "Ue o Muite Arukō" topped the Popular Music Selling Record chart in the Japanese magazine Music Life for three months, and was ranked as the number one song of 1961 in Japan. The song has also been recorded in other languages. Well-known English-language cover versions with altogether different lyrics often go by the alternative name or something completely different, including "My First Lonely Night" by Jewel Akens in 1966, and "Sukiyaki" by A Taste of Honey in 1980 (see below). ![]() A Newsweek columnist compared this re-titling to issuing " Moon River" in Japan under the title "Beef Stew". The word sukiyaki does not appear in the song's lyrics, nor does it have any connection to them it was used only because it was short, catchy, recognizably Japanese, and more familiar to English speakers. In Anglophone countries, the song is best known under the alternative title " Sukiyaki", the name of a Japanese hot-pot dish with cooked beef. It has been described as a metaphor for the emerging post-World War II global expansion of Japan onto the world scene. ![]() The song spent three weeks at the top of the American Billboard charts in June 1963. The English-language lyrics of the version recorded by A Taste of Honey are not a translation of the original Japanese lyrics, but instead a completely different set of lyrics arranged to the same basic melody. However, the lyrics were purposefully generic so that they might refer to any lost love. ![]() 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. 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. " Ue o Muite Arukō" ( pronounced ) was written by lyricist Rokusuke Ei and composer Hachidai Nakamura. The song grew to become one of the world's best-selling singles of all time, selling over 13 million copies worldwide. The song topped the charts in a number of countries, including the U.S. " Ue o Muite Arukō" ( Japanese: 上を向いて歩こう, "I Look Up as I Walk"), alternatively titled " Sukiyaki", is a song by Japanese crooner Kyu Sakamoto, first released in Japan in 1961. ![]()
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