![]() ![]() He wrote it with his band mates, Bernhard Lloyd and Frank Mertens.Īnd the track was produced by two of their regular collaborators, Colin Pearson and Wolfgang Loos. “Big in Japan” was written by Alphaville’s lead singer Marian Gold. Moreover, “Big in Japan” was also moderately successful when it was covered by a German rock band called the Guano Apes in 2000. Ironically it seems “Big in Japan” didn’t chart in the Land of the Rising Sun itself (Japan). However, the song did top the Eurochart Hot 100, the Official German Chart (where it was also certified Gold), the Sverigetopplistan (Sweden), the Schweizer Hitparade (Switzerland) and Billboard’s Hot Dance Club Play list (USA). This is in addition to charting in 11 other countries. And in most of those nations “Big in Japan” also made it onto the top 10. Warner Music released “Big in Japan” in January of 1984. It was the lead single from Alphaville’s first album, “Forever Young”. In fact this track was an unexpected success that blew up before the band had even finished writing the rest of the songs that were eventually featured on that project.Īlphaville also dropped some remixes of this track in 1992. They both imagine how great it would be to love without the drug: no steal, no clients. And “the Zoo” is actually the colloquial name of a popular drug den in Berlin. And if they are to actually do so they would be “big in Japan”, as in being able to conquer their addiction in a foreign environment. But this is just a probable interpretation as once again the intended relationship between the title and the storyline of the track is not made abundantly clear. Big In Japan tells about a couple of lovers trying to get off Heroin. So all of this considered, perhaps what the singer is suggesting is that he and his romantic should perhaps flee “the Zoo”. It points to the idea of someone becoming a popular success in a foreign country while remaining relatively-irrelevant in their own homeland. And this type of phrase is commonly used in reference to entertainers, especially the likes of musicians. But stripped down to its most basic form, it means that a person is able to achieve something great away from home that they aren’t able to do in their familiar environs. And such would likely be the case in which Alphaville has applied that saying to the aforementioned narrative. So while "Sukiyaki" may have come out of a failed protest movement in Japan, that same song - with its hummable melody and sweet disposition - became an unlikely hit in an American summer of change: the summer of 1963.Now as for the title, “big is Japan”, simply put it is more or less an idiom. ![]() "In some ways, that also helps explain the timelessness of that kind of sentiment." "It really is a song about the sadness of looking back, but also being on the cusp of something being better in the future," Condry says. "Later he goes on to say, 'A good fortune is beyond the clouds / A good fortune is beyond the sky / So I'm looking up and I'm looking forward, imagining that good fortune in the future.' "'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,'" Condry says, translating the lyrics. And so, in Sakamoro's song, he says he hears the longing for a fresh start. "Nevertheless, the government went ahead and signed the security treaty."Ĭondry says that experience left many young people disillusioned about protests. "There was a virtual occupation of the Diet, which is the Japanese parliament, and student protests were happening all over - tens of thousands of people marching and chanting," Condry says. In the late 1950s, there had been huge protests against the continued American military presence. "The lyricist Rokusukay Ey was looking back on the failure of the protest movement in Japan," he says. But Condry says that underlying the song's sweetness was a story of sadness and loss. Kyu Sakamoto was the face of this new postwar Japan: a clean-cut, 21-year-old pop idol. And Japan's economy was expanding globally and so, in some ways, the song is kind of an interesting metaphor for that global expansion of Japan on the world scene." ![]() "1963 was when Japan was returning to the world scene after the destruction of WWII," Condry says. ![]() probably didn't realize was how it symbolized Japan's return to the world stage. The song spent three weeks at the top of the Billboard charts in June 1963 and was already a huge hit in Japan before its American debut. Ian Condry, who teaches Japanese culture at MIT, says "Sukiyaki" transcended language because it hit an emotional nerve. 1 song in America was an import from Japan: a song about young love called "Sukiyaki," sung by Kyu Sakomoto. Underlying the sweetness of Kyu Sakamoto's unexpected hit song "Sukiyaki" was a story of sadness and loss.įifty years ago today, the No. ![]()
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