It’s almost inevitable the Hiromi should cover it, no?
“Ue o Muite Arukō”/”Sukiyadi” is good material. Jazz musicians are always on the lookout for good material. And even if the song is older than she is, it has been performed and has remained in circulation from the time it topped the charts, though obviously no longer so popular. Why was Hiromi attracted to the song? Why not? It is, after all, an attractive melody. That film was occasioned in part by an American hydrogen bomb test yielding radiation by poisoned the crew of a Japanese tuna boat, the Daigo Fukuryu Maru (Lucky Dragon No. Between those dates Tomoyuki Tanaka (producer) and Ishirō Honda (director) filmed Godzilla (Gojira) thus starting the longest running film franchise in history. It was first signed in 1951 and was revised in 1960 and that’s what occasioned student protests. The Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security Between the United States and Japan is a legacy of World War II. Notice that the happenstance that gave rise to this song is about failed security negotiations between the United States and Japan. Admittedly that’s not much of a connection, but then that’s how the world is, no? Lots of things going on, some tightly connected, others not connected at all, and still others only loosely connected, more or less by happenstance. Notice the whistled sections – appropriate to the origin story, which I remember from my childhood.īut what does this have to do with Hiromi Uehara? Well, she is Japanese and has performed the song. “Sukiyaki” is a Japanese word that Americans would recognize as Japanese. As for the renaming in America, it’s about marketing. Many of the cover versions use different lyrics. I would imagine that is what propelled the song to international fame. However, the lyrics were purposefully generic so that they might refer to any lost love. Ei wrote the lyrics while walking home from a Japanese student protest against the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security Between the United States and Japan, expressing his frustration and dejection at the failed efforts. 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. Why “Sukiyaki”? Perhaps, you’re thinking, it’s a novelty song about the dish? No, it’s not. It was issued in the United States in 1963 as “Sukiyaki”, where it went to the top of the Billboard Hot 100. It became one of the world’s best selling singles of all time (13 million copies) and has been recorded countless times by singers all over the world. I’m talking about music, specifically, a Japanese pop song entitled “Ue o Muite Arukō” (“I Look Up as I Walk”) which was a hit by Kyu Sakamoto in 1961 in Japan, 18 years before Hiromi Uehara was born. You may or may not know that sukiyaki is a beef-based Japanese hot-pot dish.
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