13 million: the global sales figure behind the festival opener

More than 13 million copies of a single Japanese song sold worldwide, a commercial run that made it the first track from Asia to hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100. The record, known internationally as "Sukiyaki," is the central subject of a new drama titled Sukiyaki. The film will open the 2026 Tokyo International Film Festival. It is directed by Takahisa Zeze and tells the story of the people who created the 1961 hit.

The narrative follows composer Hachidai Nakamura, played by Junichi Okada. He partners with lyricist Rokusuke Ei, portrayed by Tori Matsuzaka, to write a score for a 1959 Toho movie. Rockabilly music was overtaking jazz at the time, leaving Nakamura in debt and struggling with addiction. Ei was a radio writer who had never written song lyrics before this collaboration. The resulting song, titled "Ue o Muite Aruko," blends traditional Japanese scales with jazz chords and American pop influences.

Lyricist Ei wrote the melancholic words after the Anpo protests failed to stop a security treaty between Tokyo and Washington. The lyrics describe looking upwards to keep tears from falling. Singer Kyu Sakamoto, played by Taiga Nakano, performed the song for the first time at Tokyo’s Sankei Hall on July 21, 1961. He received the sheet music only two hours before the show. Without rehearsal, he sang the four-beat song in an eight-beat rhythm and arrived a beat late, a style he borrowed from Japanese balladeers.

The single sold 300,000 copies in Japan between November 1961 and January 1962. Louis Benjamin of Pye Records discovered the track during a 1962 visit to Japan. He gave it to Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen for an instrumental recording titled "Sukiyaki." That version reached the British top ten in February 1963. Benjamin claimed he named it after eating a hotpot dish in Tokyo, though other accounts suggest Ball chose the title because the original name was difficult for Western listeners.

Capitol Records released the original Japanese version in the United States on May 3, 1963, under the title "Sukiyaki." It topped the Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks in June. This made Sakamoto the only Japanese artist to achieve a U.S. number one hit at the time. The song also topped charts in Australia and Norway. The success provided a source of national pride during a period of double-digit economic growth in Japan.

The track inspired numerous covers in Chinese, Spanish, German, and French. Janice-Marie Johnson, who later founded A Taste of Honey, was a nine-year-old fan of the 1963 release. In 1981, her band released an R&B version that reached number three on the Hot 100. Johnson contacted Ei in Japan for a rough English translation of the lyrics. Her version was used in the 1985 hip-hop track "La Di Da Di" by Doug E. Fresh & Slick Rick.

Sakamoto died on August 12, 1985, when Japan Air Lines flight 123 crashed into a mountainside in central Japan. The Boeing 747 suffered a mechanical failure twelve minutes after takeoff from Tokyo. It remained airborne for about half an hour before impact, killing 520 of the 524 people on board. The song is played at the annual memorial service for the victims. It was also featured in the 2011 Ghibli film From Up on Poppy Hill and sung by 71 celebrities in a commercial following the disaster.

The film releases in Japan on December 25. It reunites the three characters on screen, a combination Sakamoto reportedly wanted to see just days before his death. Toho is distributing the picture.