Tokyo Festival Opens With Film on Japan's 1963 U.S. Chart-Topping Hit

The Tokyo International Film Festival's 2026 edition will begin with Sukiyaki, a drama about the song that topped the U.S. charts in 1963, with a Japanese theatrical release set for December 25.

Directed by Takahisa Zeze, the film follows composer and jazz pianist Hachidai Nakamura, played by Junichi Okada, and lyricist Rokusuke Ei, played by Tori Matsuzaka, along with singer Kyu Sakamoto, played by Taiga Nakano. Nakamura and Ei first worked together in 1959, when Toho hired them to write a rockabilly score for a film; Ei was a radio writer who had never written lyrics. The pair composed "Ue o Muite Aruko" in 1961, combining Japanese scales with jazz chords and American pop influences, and Ei wrote the lyrics after the mass Anpo protests failed to block a Tokyo-Washington security treaty.

Sakamoto got the sheet music roughly two hours before a July 21, 1961 premiere at Tokyo's Sankei Hall and performed it without rehearsal, shifting into a minor key during an ad lib and entering a beat late. Released as a single, the recording sold 300,000 copies and topped Music Life's domestic chart from November 1961 to January 1962. Louis Benjamin of Britain's Pye Records heard the melody in 1962 and passed it to Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen; their instrumental, titled "Sukiyaki," reached the British top ten in February 1963.

Capitol released the original Japanese recording in the United States under the "Sukiyaki" title on May 3, 1963, and it spent three weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 starting in June, making Sakamoto the only Japanese artist to reach the top and the first artist from Asia to do so. No other Asian act matched that until BTS's "Dynamite" in 2020. The single sold more than 13 million copies worldwide and reached charts from Australia to Norway.

In 1981, A Taste of Honey, led by Janice-Marie Johnson, took its version to No. 1 on the Billboard R&B chart and No. 3 on the Hot 100; Johnson's lyrics later appeared in Doug E. Fresh & Slick Rick's 1985 track "La Di Da Di." Sakamoto died on August 12, 1985, when Japan Air Lines flight 123 from Tokyo to Osaka crashed into a mountainside twelve minutes after takeoff, killing 520 of the 524 people aboard. The song was played at the closing ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics in August 2021.