Tokyo Opener ‘Sukiyaki’ Director Zeze Takahisa on the Protest Roots of a Global Japanese Pop Hit: ‘The Culture Used to Be Wide Open – Now It’s Become Narrower’ — SkimNews
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- Sukiyaki opened the 39th Tokyo International Film Festival with the story of its title tune’s 1963 rise to a worldwide hit, including foreign-language recordings that also topped charts.
- Nakano Taiga was cast for the feeling he projected rather than physical resemblance, and he voices Sakamoto Kyu’s singing; his show-business family’s roots in the period gave him an affinity for the role.
- Nakamura Hachidai and lyricist Ei Rokusuke joined forces on a string of 1960s hits before quarreling and splitting as Nakamura’s alcoholism worsened after the song succeeded, giving the film a rise-and-fall drama.
- Ei Rokusuke drew the lyric’s plea to “walk with their heads up” from the 1960 demonstrations against the Japan-US Security Treaty, whose failure to block ratification left the protesters defeated.
- Sakamoto Kyu’s early-rock roots and Elvis fandom sit alongside Nakamura’s New York jazz-piano work and Ei’s lyrics in the film’s account of creation; Zeze says the song’s energy crossed borders even when its words did not.
- Zeze Takahisa argues that foreign influences energized postwar Japanese popular culture, but Japan now absorbs fewer such influences, leaving its culture narrower than the wide-open Shōwa-era model.
Why it matters: Opening the 39th TIFF with “Sukiyaki” gives festivalgoers a political history for a song remembered as cheerful: its lyrics answered the failed 1960 campaign against the Japan-US Security Treaty, while the film tracks the 1963 hit and its makers’ conflicts.
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