Ue o Muite Arukō (Sukiyaki) by Kyu Sakamoto set to Vintage Japan

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"Fan music video" for Ue o Muite Arukō (Sukiyaki) by Kyu Sakamoto. Clips are from historical archives and from the 40s-60s. I own nothing, I just clipped everything together.

"Ue o Muite Arukō" was written by lyricist Rokusuke Ei and composer Hachidai Nakamura. The lyrics tell the story of a man who looks up and whistles while he is walking so that his tears will not fall, with the verses describing his memories and feelings. Ei wrote the lyrics while walking home from participating in the 1960 Anpo protests against the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, expressing his frustration and dejection at the failed efforts to stop the treaty. However, the lyrics were purposefully generic so that they might refer to any lost love.

The song grew to become one of the world's best-selling singles of all time, selling over 13 million copies worldwide.

In Anglophone countries, the song is best known under the alternative title "Sukiyaki", the name of a Japanese hot-pot dish with cooked beef. The word sukiyaki does not appear in the song's lyrics, nor does it have any connection to them; it was used only because it was short, catchy, recognizably Japanese, and more familiar to English speakers. A Newsweek columnist compared this re-titling to issuing "Moon River" in Japan under the title "Beef Stew"."