Sukiyaki — a sizzling hit!
QUESTION What is the story behind the Japanese song Sukiyaki, a surprise Number One hit in the U.S. in 1963? Sukiyaki was a No.1 u.S. hit for kyu Sakamoto in June 1963. it stayed at the top spot for three weeks, displacing it’s My Party by Lesley Gore. The original title of the song was Ue O
Muite Aruko, which means i Look up When i Walk, but this was thought to be too complicated for English-speaking DJs to pronounce.
The name Sukiyaki was chosen because it is catchy and recognisably Japanese. it comes from the popular meat and vegetable main course served in a sizzling iron pot in Japanese restaurants.
Pye Records boss Louis Benjamin heard the song while on a business trip to Japan. He brought it back to the uk for jazz bandleader kenny Ball to record. it reached No. 10 in the uk charts in January 1963.
in the u.S., a DJ obtained Sakamoto’s original version and played it on his show. it was so popular that it soon received heavy airplay. Spotting a potential moneyspinner, Capitol Records gained the distribution rights.
The 45 was released under the uk title of Sukiyaki. Sakamoto’s version, sung in Japanese, also did well in the uk, reaching No.6 in June 1963 at the start of Beatlemania.
in 1981, a Taste Of Honey, the duo of Janice-Marie Johnson and Hazel Payne, released an English version of Sukiyaki. it climbed all the way to No.3 in the u.S., proving the song’s lasting appeal.
Steve Trump, Upminster, Essex. Sukiyaki must be one of the most unlikely u.S. No. 1s.
kyu Sakamoto was born on December 10, 1941, in kawasaki. He survived wartime bombing to become a jazz singer and star of film, TV and radio shows.
Lyricist Rokusukay Ei had penned the song as a bittersweet reflection on Japan’s
unpopular agreement to sign a security deal with the u.S., which resulted in mass street protests: ‘Walking along, looking up, so that the
teardrops won’t flow out of my eyes ‘I look back on a spring day on this
lonely night.’ The song ends on a hopeful note: ‘A good fortune is beyond the sky ‘So I’m looking up and I’m looking forward, imagining that good fortune in the future.’
Sakamoto met a sad end. aged 43, he was one of 520 people killed when Japan airlines Flight 123 crashed near Mount Osutaka on august 12, 1985. To this day it is the world’s deadliest singleaircraft accident.
Sophia Hayward, Horncastle, Lincs. QUESTION Why did the high-ranking Nazi Adolf Eichmann make a secret visit to Palestine in 1937? yEaRS before the Final Solution was conceived at the Wannsee Conference of 1942, the Nazis proposed to solve the ‘Jewish question’ through a policy of forced migration.
SS officer adolf Eichmann travelled to Palestine to meet a member of Haganah, a Jewish paramilitary organisation, to explore the possibility of moving large numbers of Jews to the region.
Eichmann had joined the austrian branch of the Nazi Party on april 1, 1932. Following Hitler’s accession to power on January 30, 1933, he made steady progress through the ranks.
He was an administrator at Dachau concentration camp before joining the
Sicherheitsdienst (security service) of the SS in 1934 and was assigned to study the Zionist movement.
in 1937, Eichmann met Haganah agent Feivel Polkes in Berlin to discuss the possibility of Germany supplying weapons for the Zionist fight against the British Mandate in Palestine and to make arrangements for Jews to be deported to Palestine.
Eichmann accepted an invitation from Polkes to visit the region. On October 2, 1937, he and his companion Herbert Hagen, disguised as a German journalist and a student, docked at Haifa in a Romanian steamship.
Their application to enter Palestine was denied. Eichmann and Hagan were given a temporary entry permit for only one night. They toured Haifa and spent the night on Mount Carmel.
in his report, Eichmann concluded that forced emigration to israel would not work. He feared that the expulsion of the Jews from Nazi Germany would contribute to the establishment of a strong and prosperous Zionist state that might eventually become a threat.
Eichmann, one of the architects of the Holocaust, escaped from allied forces, but was captured by Mossad agents in argentina in 1960.
He was brought to trial in israel, convicted and hanged on June 1, 1962.
James Kavanagh, Exeter, Devon. QUESTION What was the first full translation of the Bible from Latin to English: the Wycliffe or the King James version? TRaNSLaTiONS of the Bible from Latin into English were made by John Wycliffe between 1382 and 1395, while the version authorised by James i was published between 1604 and 1611.
Wycliffe wanted people of Christian faith to understand better the religious teachings in the common language.
This was against Roman Catholic ideals, hence the organisation known as the Lollards, ‘it helpeth Christian men to study the Gospel in that tongue in which they know best Christ’s sentence’.
Following this apparent outrage against the Catholic Church, Wycliffe established his Great English Bible.
after several different types of Englishlanguage Bibles had been published over the years by various European sources, James i held a conference with the Calvinists and Puritans to decide upon an accepted version.
This became the king James Bible, which updated those versions that the Puritans believed were problematic.
David Shelton, Worthing, W. Sussex.