This week marks the 50th anniversary of one of the most extraordinary songs to reach the top of the U.S. Billboard charts, a song named after a hot-pot dish that changed the perception of an entire nation for many, and set a bar that no other Asian act has yet been able to achieve. That song is Kyu Sakamoto’s 1963 classic “Sukiyaki.”

A year before Beatlemania and the British Invasion of the U.S. music charts, radio airwaves in the summer of 1963 were awash with upbeat summer songs, from the Beach Boys’ “Surfin USA” to Nat King Cole’s “Those Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer” and The Crystal’s “Da Doo Ron Ron,” a classic of Phil Spector’s “Wall of Sound” production style. But for 14 weeks a rather unlikely tune from across the ocean caught the ears of the public…