Takahisa Zeze’s Sukiyaki Drama Opens Tokyo Film Festival
The film traces the story of the 1961 song that sold 13 million copies and became the first from Asia to top the US charts.
By Fatou Kim ·
The 2026 Tokyo International Film Festival opens on October 31 with a drama centered on the history of a global pop hit. The film, directed by Takahisa Zeze, is titled Sukiyaki.
The narrative follows composer Hachidai Nakamura, portrayed by Junichi Okada, and lyricist Rokusuke Ei, played by Tori Matsuzaka. It details how their collaboration with singer Kyu Sakamoto, acted by Taiga Nakano, created a song that defied expectations. The story begins in 1959 when Nakamura, struggling with debt and addiction after jazz fell out of fashion, partnered with Ei. Ei was a radio writer with no prior experience in songwriting. Together they wrote a rockabilly score for a Toho movie.
In 1961, the duo completed the song, originally titled Ue o Muite Aruko, which translates to I look upwards as I walk. Nakamura blended traditional Japanese scales with jazz chords and US pop influences. Ei drew his melancholic lyrics from the failed Anpo protests against the Tokyo-Washington security treaty. The act of looking up in the lyrics serves to hold back tears. Sakamoto received the sheet music just two hours before the premiere at Tokyo’s Sankei Hall on July 21, 1961. Unrehearsed, he altered the rhythm and key, adding unique imperfections to the performance.
The single released in November 1961 sold 300,000 copies in Japan. Its international journey began in 1962 when Louis Benjamin of Pye Records heard the track in Tokyo. He commissioned an instrumental version from Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen, titled Sukiyaki. That version reached the British top ten in February 1963. After initial US releases of the instrumental covers failed to gain traction, Capitol Records bet on the original Japanese vocal version under the title Sukiyaki.
The record hit US stores on May 3, 1963. By June, it had climbed to number one on the Billboard Hot 100, where it stayed for three weeks. This made Sakamoto the first Japanese artist to achieve a US number one and the first artist from Asia to do so. The song topped charts from Australia to Norway, eventually selling more than 13 million copies worldwide. Japan’s Toshiba record label reissued the single in 1963, adding the Romanized title to the packaging with the legend global hit! The success coincided with Japan’s double-digit economic growth and rising national pride following the postwar occupation.
Cover versions proliferated across Asia and Europe. In 1981, R&B group A Taste of Honey, founded by Janice-Marie Johnson, released their own version. Johnson contacted Ei for an English translation of the lyrics. Their track reached number three on the Hot 100. Elements of those lyrics later appeared in the 1985 hip-hop hit La Di Da Di by Doug E. Fresh & Slick Rick.
Sakamoto died on August 12, 1985, when Japan Air Lines flight 123 crashed after a mechanical failure. The disaster killed 520 of the 524 people on board. The song has since been played at annual memorial services. It also resurfaced in 2011 after the earthquake and tsunami, featured in a Ghibli film and a television commercial with 71 celebrities. The Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra performed it at the closing ceremony of the 2021 Tokyo Olympics.
The film Sukiyaki is scheduled for a wide release in Japan on December 25, 2026. It reunites the three central figures on screen, a combination Sakamoto reportedly wanted to see realized just days before his death.
