About this episode
Memories of a prison camp in the Arizona desert, a tsunami and a plane crash are stirred by the bittersweet Japanese song Sukiyaki, a huge global hit of the 1960s. Originally released in Japan with the title 'Ue o Muite Arukou' ('I Look Up As I Walk'), the song was retitled 'Sukiyaki' (the name for a type of beef stew) for international release. It went to No 1 in the USA, Canada and Australia and placed in the top 10 of the UK singles chart. With melancholy lyrics set to a bright and unforgettable melody, it has since been covered hundreds of times in countless languages. California peach farmer Mas Masumoto tells the story of his family's internment in an Arizona relocation camp following the bombing of Pearl Harbor and explains what the song meant to him and many other Japanese-Americans in the years after the Second World War. Violinist and composer Diana Yukawa plays the song as a way to remember her father, who died in the same plane crash that killed Kyu Sakamoto, the original singer of 'Sukiyaki'. Michael Bourdaghs, author of 'Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon', talks about the songwriting team behind the song (Rokusuke Ei, Hachidai Nakamura and Kyu Sakamoto), and the surprising roots of the song in the Japanese protest movement of the early 1960s. Janice-Marie Johnson of A Taste of Honey talks about writing an English version of the song and how she interpreted the Japanese lyrics. While Gemma Treharne-Foose speaks about her experience of travelling to Japan from her home in the Rhondda Valleys, and what the song came to mean to her. And we hear the story of how Ue o Muite Arukou became a 'prayer for hope' following the devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan in March 2011 from musician Masami Utsunomiya. Producer: Mair Bosworth First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in July 2016