Simply sign up to the Life & Arts myFT Digest -- delivered directly to your inbox. In June 1963, a Japanese pop song soared to the top of America’s Billboard Hot 100 chart. More than 50 years later, ...

Growing up, family parties would wind down around our favorite special occasion appliance. My father clumsily ran cables from the karaoke machine into our television, transforming the living room into ...

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 Hot 100 launched in 1958, just 13 years after the end of World War II. The war was still well within living memory, and I have to imagine that it left deep psychic wounds all across the globe. And ...

New York, one of America’s most important business and cultural hubs, has been badly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. With over 200,000 reported cases and 10,000 deaths, medical personnel in the ...

Halie Loren re: Sukiyaki (You Took Your Love Away from Me) Sad lyrics set to happy music are my favorite kind of salty-sugary treat. The original version of this song ...