"Ue o Muite Arukō" (上を向いて歩こう^?, literally "[I] will walk looking up") is a Japanese-language song that was performed by Japanese crooner Kyu Sakamoto, and written by lyricist Rokusuke Ei and composer Hachidai Nakamura. It is best known under the alternative title "Sukiyaki" in the Anglosphere. The song reached the top of the Billboard Hot 100 charts in the United States in 1963, and was the only Japanese-language song to do so. Also, it was and still is one of the few non-English songs, other than French and Spanish, to reached the top in the US chart. It is one of the best-selling singles of all time, having sold over 13 million copies worldwide. The original Kyu Sakamoto recording also went to number eighteen on the R&B chart. In addition, the single spent five weeks at number one on the Middle of the Road charts. The recording was originally released in Japan by Toshiba in 1961. It topped the Popular Music Selling Record chart in the Japanese magazine Music Life for three months, and was ranked as the number one song of 1961 in Japan.

Sukiyaki (Japanese: 鋤焼 or more commonly すき焼き) is a Japanese dish in the nabemono (Japanese hot pot) style.

It consists of meat (usually thinly sliced beef) which is slowly cooked or simmered at the table, alongside vegetables and other ingredients, in a shallow iron pot in a mixture of soy sauce, sugar, and mirin. Before being eaten, the ingredients are usually dipped in a small bowl of raw, beaten eggs.

Generally sukiyaki is a winter dish and it is commonly found at bōnenkai, Japanese year-end parties.

Thinly sliced beef is usually used for sukiyaki; although in the past, in certain parts of the country (notably Hokkaidō and Niigata) pork was also popular.

Popular ingredients cooked with the beef are:

Boiled wheat udon or soba (buckwheat) noodles are sometimes added, usually at the end to soak up the broth.

Like other nabemono dishes, each region has a preferred way of cooking sukiyaki. The key difference is between the western Kansai region and the eastern Kantō region. In Tokyo, the ingredients are stewed in a prepared mixture of soy sauce, sugar, sake and mirin, whereas in Osaka, the meat is first grilled in the pan greased with tallow. After other ingredients are put over these, the liquid is poured into the pan. The shungiku are added when all the ingredients are simmering. A raw egg is broken into a serving bowl, one egg for each person. Some prefer to add a bit of soy sauce and the egg is lightly beaten. The meat and vegetables are dipped into this sauce before being eaten.

In music, a song is a composition for voice or voices, performed by singing. A song may be accompanied by musical instruments, or it may be unaccompanied, as in the case of a cappella songs. The lyrics (words) of songs are typically of a poetic, rhyming nature, though they may be religious verses or free prose.

A song may be for a solo singer, a duet, trio, or larger ensemble involving more voices. Songs with more than one voice to a part are considered choral works. Songs can be broadly divided into many different forms, depending on the criteria used. One division is between "art songs", "pop songs", and "folk songs". Other common methods of classification are by purpose (sacred vs secular), by style (dance, ballad, Lied, etc.), or by time of origin (Renaissance, Contemporary, etc.).

A song is a piece of music for accompanied or unaccompanied voice or voices or, "the act or art of singing," but the term is generally not used for large vocal forms including opera and oratorio. However, the term is, "often found in various figurative and transferred sense (e.g. for the lyrical second subject of a sonata...)." The noun "song" has the same etymological root as the verb "to sing" and the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines the word to mean "that which is sung" or "a musical composition suggestive of song." The OED also defines the word to mean "a poem" or "the musical phrases uttered by some birds, whales, and insects, typically forming a recognizable and repeated sequence and used chiefly for territorial defence or for attracting mates."

Kyu Sakamoto (坂本 九, Sakamoto Kyū^?, born Hisashi Oshima (大島 九, Ōshima Hisashi^?), 10 November 1941 – 12 August 1985) was a Japanese singer and actor, best known outside of Japan for his international hit song "Sukiyaki", which was sung in Japanese and sold over 13 million copies. It reached number one in the United States Billboard Hot 100 in June 1963.

Kyu Sakamoto was born on 10 November 1941, in Kawasaki, Kanagawa Prefecture to the tender cargo officer Hiroshi Sakamoto and Iku Oshima. He was the youngest among nine siblings—his nickname Kyu, meaning 'nine', is an alternate reading of the kanji (九) for his given name (Hisashi). Iku had two sons from an earlier relationship and Hiroshi three sons and three daughters. Kyu was their third and last child together.

In the summer of 1944 during the air raids over the greater Tokyo area, including Kawasaki, Iku fled with the younger children, including Kyu, and his siblings Teruaki, Yachiyo and Azuma to their grandparents, Seri and Aou Oshima who lived on the countryside in Kasama. In the summer of 1949 the family was reunited and moved back to Kawasaki. Like many other Japanese companies, Hiroshi's office was disbanded by the American occupation forces. Shortly after that, he started a restaurant together with Iku.