band BTS. "Sukiyaki" also peaked at number eighteen on the Billboard R&B chart, and spent five weeks at number one on the Middle of the Road chart. Sakamoto's follow-up to "Sukiyaki", "China Nights (Shina no Yoru)", charted in 1963 at number 58. That was the last song by an artist from Japan to reach the US pop chart for 16 years, until the female duo Pink Lady had a top-40 hit in 1979 with its English-language song "Kiss in the Dark". Internationally, the song is one of the best-selling singles of all time, having sold over 13 million copies worldwide. Charts Legacy An instrumental version of the song was played by NASA over the radio for the Gemini VII astronauts as mood music, thereby becoming one of the first pieces of music sent to humans in space. On 16 March 1999, Japan Post issued a stamp that commemorated the song. The stamp is listed in the Scott Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue as Japan number 2666 with a face value of 50 yen. In the summer of 2021, the song was performed during the closing ceremony of the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo (which had been postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic). Covers and variations (as "Sukiyaki") A Taste of Honey version Background A Taste of Honey vocalist Janice-Marie Johnson would recall how at age nine she had heard Kyu Sakamoto's "Sukiyaki" on the radio in the summer of 1963 and said: "Mom! Buy me this record!", as despite not understanding the lyrics she was deeply moved by the song. Constantly playing the single, Johnson phonetically learned its lyrics and taught them to her sister, with the pair participating in neighborhood talent shows singing "Sukiyaki" while performing their approximation of an Oriental dance number. Years later, after A Taste of Honey had scored their 1978 number-one hit "Boogie Oogie Oogie", Johnson heard the Linda Ronstadt hit remake of Smokey Robinson and the Miracles' "Ooo Baby Baby" on her car radio causing Johnson to realize that remaking a 1960s hit could be a good career move for A Taste of Honey, with Johnson's obvious choice for the remake being her beloved "Sukiyaki". Johnson contacted the song's Japanese lyricist Rokusuke Ei who provided her with a literal translation of what he had written: as this translation did not yield complete sentences in English, Johnson endeavored to write a new set of lyrics she