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’

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The opening film of the 39th Tokyo International Film Festival, Zeze Takahisa’s “Sukiyaki” tells the story of how the title tune became a worldwide hit in 1963 as well as a beloved standard that has been recorded in foreign-language versions that have also topped charts.

The film goes beyond the song itself to delve into the lives and careers of its makers: lyricist Ei Roksuke (Matsuzaka Tori), composer Nakamura Hachidai (Okada Junichi), and singer Sakamoto Kyu (Nakano Taiga). They became known in Japan as the “689 trio” with the unusual moniker coming from the “number” characters in their names: Hachi (8), Roku (6) and Kyu (9). But as the film shows in scene after highly charged dramatic scene, their professional and personal relationships were not always harmonious.

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Interviewed at the headquarters of Toho, the film’s Japan distributor, Zeze stressed the film’s relevance, six decades after “Sukiyaki,” known locally as “Ue o Muite Aruko” (I’ll Walk with My Head Up”), first hit the charts. “Back then the country was recovering from the war and all sorts of influences were flooding in from abroad,” Zeze said. “Those influences created an energy that propelled the popular culture here. Now Japan is absorbing fewer influences from abroad. The culture used to be wide open – now it’s become narrower.”

But younger Japanese are now discovering that energy from the Showa Era (1926-1989), the period of Emperor Showa’s reign, when Japanese pop culture was at a fertile peak. Together with nostalgic Boomers, they could be found in the audience of “Godzilla Minus One,” the 2023 smash hit Godzilla series installment set in the early postwar period . The follow-up by director Yamazaki Takashi, “Godzilla Minus Zero” is also at TIFF as the festival’s Centerpiece screening, “It’s a kind of Showa boom,” joked Zeze.

In casting “Sukiyaki,” he says, the main criterion was not a physical resemblance to its main characters, though Nakano Taiga channels Sakamoto’s exuberant stage persona with an uncanny precision. “It was more about the feeling the actors projected,” Zeze explains. “But Taiga comes from a show business family with roots in film’s period so he had a natural affinity for the role. Also, when Sakamoto sings in the film, it’s Taiga’s voice you’re hearing – he has an amazing talent as a vocalist.”

The film’s drama, though, centers more on Nakamura and Ei, who joined forces to compose a series of hits in the 1960s but quarreled and parted as Nakamura spiraled into alcoholism. “ Nakamura went through a tough period after ‘Sukiyaki’ became a hit so we show that,” says Zeze. “If the film were just a success story, it wouldn’t be interesting – it has to have both ups and downs.”

None of this drama had much to do with “Sukiyaki” becoming a hit abroad, but the film also delves into the sources of its creation, from Nakamura’s mastery of the jazz piano, which he displayed in New York clubs, to Sakamoto’s roots into early rock – he was a big Elvis fan – and Ei’s composition of the poignant Japanese lyrics,

“Of course people abroad didn’t understand the lyrics, but the song’s energy came across to them,” says Zeze. “The lyrics reflect what was happening in Japan at that time.” Ei Rokusuke, the lyricist, was inspired by the demonstrations against the Japan-US Security Treaty in 1960. “ The demonstrators called for peace, but failed to stop the treaty ratification. “He wanted them to ‘walk with their heads up,’ despite their defeat,” says Zeze. “So the song has depth – it ‘s not just a cheery pop tune.”