The Pop Corporation

Back in 1961, a young singer by the name of Kyu Sakamoto had a number one hit on his hands, Stateside. The song – a lilting ballad sung entirely in Japanese (thereby being one of a scant number of non-English sung hits in the US) – was called 上を向いて歩こう, or in English, ‘I Look Up as I Walk’.

Little did Sakamoto know, is that he was inadvertently becoming a pivotal part of hip hop… but first, some history.

Post WWII, the United States government had full control over Japan – a historic war-waging country, who had not too long ago attacked Pearl Harbour to enter the global conflict, and the US replied with two devastating atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Fearful of the threat of Socialism and Japan’s influence, the US government and the Allies were the first foreign body to rule the Japanese in it’s long history, and by the ’50s, Japan was no longer a source of worry, but rather, seen as a pivotal ally, and a tactical base amongst all the various scary commies.

In 1952, Japan would return to its own sovereignty, the USA somewhat pulling strings. Free market capitalism was introduced, Western ideals and of course, this resulted in a culture clash and riots and violence erupted throughout this whole process. While governments tweaked and meddled in a bid to stabilise the situation, the Americans steadfastly tried to extend military bases in the area. By the time 1960 rolled around, Japan saw the largest protest it had ever seen with the Anpo Protests, which saw the resignation of prime minister Nobusuke Kishi, with students and dissidents inspired by The April Revolution in nearby Korea in that same year.

In North America during this period, US born Japanese families and migrants were held in internment camps, stripped of bank accounts, homes and family businesses. To say that relations between Americans and Japanese people were strained is a drastic understatement.

However, something unusual was about to happen. Against the backdrop of violence, upheaval, the stripping of civil rights, political turmoil and the spectre of WWII still casting it’s long shadow over both countries, along came Kyu Sakamoto.

A former singer in a Japanese pop-group, Sakamoto was frustrated at playing second fiddle so after a fight with his bandmates at Nichigeki Hall, he decided to go it alone. He would eventually have a hit in Japan with ‘Kanashiki Rokujissai’ and a handful of others, also appearing in Japanese movies.

Then, everything started to change.

“I look up when I walk, so that the tears won’t fall,
Remembering those spring days – but I am all alone tonight.“

Such a melancholic, beautiful lyric and sung in his native tongue, the song somehow becomes a smash in the US, and yet, by a quirk of fate, instead of being referred to by a translation of the Japanese title, it was given a name that Americans would recognise – one of the few Japanese words in common parlance, perhaps one of the few without negative connotation.

It became known as ‘Sukiyaki’ – the name of a Japanese beef stew. The dish has no relevance to the song, does not appear in the lyrics, with one Newsweek writer comparing the title like someone calling ‘Moon River’, ‘Beef Stew’.

So popular was ‘Sukiyaki’ the song, that a version was played by NASA to astronauts on Gemini VII, making it one of the first pieces of music to be sent into space.

Fast-forward to the mid ’80s, and in 1984, Doug E. Fresh releases the seminal ‘The Show’ with the b-side, ‘La Di Da Di’. ‘La Di Da Di’ features a young MC by the name of MC Ricky D, who would later rename himself ‘Slick Rick’, and the track becomes one of the most sampled songs in history.

“La-di-da-di, we like to party,
We don’t cause trouble, we don’t bother nobody”

13th August 1985, and the world gets a beat-boxing, interpolated music, party masterpiece that creates a blueprint that hip hop would follow until present day. Just the day before, Kyu Sakamoto would die in on Japan Air Lines Flight 123 with 519 other passengers in the single deadliest aviation accident in Japanese history.

Just a few years earlier, Quiet Storm was transforming US radio, and DJs were looking toward softer, smooth R&B to fill late night airwaves, inspired by the Smokey Robinson LP, ‘A Quiet Storm’.

One popular track came from a group more know for dance tracks, A Taste Of Honey. Vocalist Janice-Marie Johnson remembers a summer in 1963 and begging her mother to buy her a record. She didn’t understand the lyrics, but the performance and melody moved her. That song, was ‘Sukiyaki’.

The song was on constant rotation and she taught herself to sing it phonetically, and then taught those same words to her sister. They would perform in local talent shows, singing in Japanese, with an interpretive dance to boot. When 1978 came around, A Taste Of Honey would have their own hit with ‘Boogie Oogie Oogie’ – a certified disco crossover banger. Pressured into providing more dance hits, by the time Johnson put forward ‘Sukiyaki’ as a song, everyone wanted an uptempo take on it – but this was a song that just meant too much to her, and a ballad it remained.

Inspired in part by Linda Rondstadt’s reading of Smokey’s ‘Ooo Baby Baby’, she felt a gentle reading of a ’60s hit was a smart move.

Johnson would get in touch with the original lyricist of the track, Rokusuke Ei, requesting an English translation. Between the two of them, a version that Western audiences would understand was created. It captured the spirit of Sakamoto’s original hit, even though there would be initial friction. The legendary George Duke produced the track, with a mixture of Japanese folk instruments and American R&B, but he didn’t think too much of it.

Cecil Hale – vice president of Capitol Records – from inception to release, was a critic of the track, keeping ‘Sukiyaki’ off late run master pressings, but two failed uptempo cuts and pressure from Johnson herself, he relented and in the February of 1981, ‘Sukiyaki’ crept up the charts and eventually, it became a number-one hit on the R&B chart, and number three on the Billboard Hot 100.

Thanks to the growth of Quiet Storm radio, R&B moving toward a slower, more sophisticated sound, Sakamoto’s song found a new life. And listening in you have to assume, somewhere was Slick Rick.

Sakamoto had literally just tragically died, on the flip of mega-hit ‘The Show’, he sang…

“I bumped into this home girl named Sally from the valley
This was a girl playing hard to get
So I said “what’s wrong?” ’cause she looked upset
She said uh;
“It’s all because of you
I’m feeling sad and blue
You went away and now my life is filled with rainy days
I love you so – how much you’ll never know
‘Cause you took your love away from me”

‘La Di Da Di’ easy, inventive flow made the track an immediate classic and it’s legacy was gigantic in no time at all. Sampled, referenced and resung variously by Big Daddy Kane, Ludacris, A Tribe Called Quest, Snoop, Biggie, ‘Here Comes The Hotstepper’, De La Soul, Mos Def, Junior M.A.F.I.A., Future, Beyonce, and hundreds more looted the track. By ’94, R&B group 4PM released a cover of ‘Sukiyaki’, reaching eight on the Billboard Hot 100, inspired by the version from A Taste Of Honey.

Right there, sung by Nancy Fletcher, on one of the biggest selling rap LPs of all-time, is That Hook.

Early versions of ‘La Di Da Di’ contained Rick’s verse of ‘Sukiyaki’, but in the wild west of early hip hop where people wouldn’t clear samples and the like, the track hit rocky waters, and CD versions missed the refrain, with early vinyl copies containing ‘it’s all because of you…’.

The earliest versions of course, becoming the definitive version. Between Rick and Snoop, Sakamoto had unwittingly become a cornerstone of rap.

And with all this in mind, the Queen of R&B Mary J. Blige – as much a fan of classic soul, hip hop, Quiet Storm, modern R&B and general scholar of music – channelled all of these things and by 1997, she released her brilliant ‘Everything’.

‘Everything’ took inspiration and sections from The Stylistics’ ‘You Are Everything’, James Brown’s ‘The Payback’, and ‘Sukiyaki’, crediting all with ace producers Jam & Lewis.

On her ‘Share My World’ LP, this would be one of the standout tracks and one of Blige’s most iconic, especially the “it’s all because of you” drop. Decades later, Sakamoto and A Taste Of Honey’s refrain is still in her set, showing the unique and lasting quality of the song itself.

And where did it all start?

Original lyricist Rokusuke Ei, who helped Janice-Marie Johnson to create an English version that would be instrumental in hip hop and future R&B, wrote the song to express his frustration with the ratification of the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between Japan and America.

This treaty, signed back in ’51, granted the United States the right to a military presence in Japan, which would light a fire under Japanese students, voicing the alienation and disappointment in a young Japanese man who has to look skyward to stop himself from crying. And despite the horrors of the political situation and actions of the two fractious governments trying to make it work, and the shadow of WWII, he sings that “good fortune is beyond the clouds.”

Soon after the release of the original song, Tokyo would host the 1964 Olympics, and the Japanese economy would boom, and the song became emblematic of a period of growth and the symbol for the re-emerging of Japan itself, still filled with melancholy, but optimistic.

But how did it even get into radio jockey hands in the first place? How did it find a way to American ears, and subsequently set the ball rolling for one of hip hop’s most identifiable hooks? It was an instrumental version by Brit combo Kenny Ball & His Jazzmen that was a hit in the UK – Ball who renamed the track after the Japanese dish – and that was heard by Washington DJ who wanted to find the original. Requests started flooding in for the song, after American high school student Marsha Cunningham got hold of the record after studying in Japan, because her father was a commercial pilot for Japan Airlines.

Cunningham said: “While enjoying a Japanese movie starring Kyu Sakamoto, I heard the most unbelievably beautiful song. I purchased the record at a local shop and brought it back to the states the next year when I attended a girl’s boarding school in Sierra Madre, California. I played it in the dormitory frequently; everyone liked it. One girl took my record home with her on the weekend so her dad could play it on his radio station, and the rest is history!”

It just shows that the legacy of a song can be long and take so many surprising turns. From lamenting US involvement in your homeland, through Quiet Storm, to hip hop and an enduring ’90s R&B anthem, in music, anything can happen.