Uruma Delvi -- Oshiri Kajiri Mushi（おしりかじり虫）

Having lived in a megalopolis that has high heat and humidity in the summers, encounters with insects are pretty much a given, especially cicadas whose distinctive wail has become a sign of late summer. Entomophobes would not be too happy especially when it comes to the size of cockroaches in Japan.

Yep, that is indeed the sound of a cicada at full volume. I actually have quite a few stories about my meetings with the bugs. And perhaps those who are about to have a meal may want to wait a few hours before reading the following.

One such encounter was back in 1972 when as a (not-so-little) lad, I went to stay at my grandfather's farm in deep Wakayama Prefecture (an area where all sorts of huge bugs the size of a Toyota reside) for a few weeks. One night for several minutes, my butt was starting to feel really sore and pinchy for some reason. It turned out that some rogue scarab beetle had invaded my underwear when I wasn't looking. The fact that it actually survived the voyage was a minor miracle.

Of course, the Japanese cockroach is the big bugbear. It can get pretty big and shiny. One time in my Ichikawa apartment, I had a small infestation of the insect so I bought myself a roach motel to put on my kitchen floor. Went to sleep one night and then the next morning, I realized that the accommodations were full vacancy! Yup, twenty of the living tanks (yes, I did count them) managed to check in but not check out, to paraphrase an old commercial. The scary thing was that the motel was actually crawling by itself...yep, it was a mobile home.

All that grisly preamble to introduce an earworm that invaded Japanese pop culture in the year 2007. "Oshiri Kajiri Mushi" (Bottom Biting Bug) was one of the tunes in the long-running "Minna no Uta"（みんなのうた...Everyone's Songs）series on NHK that became a huge hit. I remember it being played on heavy rotation on TV as the cute little ass-gnawer did his little song and dance.

It was created and performed by a husband-and-wife duo under the name of Uruma Delvi（うるまでるび）. From what I've read on their J-Wiki article, songs on "Minna no Uta" typically get a 2-month run but "Oshiri Kajiri Mushi" ended up becoming the longest-running song on the show, going on for 5 months. For a nation that has often proclaimed its dread of its native cockroach, the song really had legs (6 of them, maybe).

In fact, after its release as an official single in July 2007, it crawled up the charts to No. 6 and became the 43rd-ranked single for 2007. On the Oricon Indies (!) chart, it even became the top-selling single for the entire year. by September that year, it had sold 220,000 copies. Although I couldn't remember it, the song apparently did get some representation on that year's Kohaku Utagassen with a comedic duo and a children's chorus performing it. The only similar songs that I could equate its success with are "Dango San Kyodai"（だんご３兄弟）and "Oyoge! Taiyaki-kun"（およげ！たいやきくん）.

And there has been an anime series featuring the bug and his buddies since 2012 on NHK. That's some lasting power there but I can't be too surprised since rumour has it that the cockroach can supposedly outlast all of us on the Earth.