Kumiko Ohsugi -- Rock River e（ロックリバーヘ）

(That 2018 video has been taken down

but did find a 2016 sighting in Tokyo.)

I remember last Thursday when I woke up and was watching "NHK News at 9", and the top news story was about a wayward raccoon that improbably found itself in the urban jungle of Akasaka, Tokyo. Raccoons are simply not seen in that fancy neighbourhood (and at those prices, I'm not surprised...ba-duh-bum!) unless "Guardians of the Galaxy" was playing at a theatre there. I was also rather amused and bemused by all of the excitement surrounding the capture of this brand of Procyon lotor, as if it had been Mothra or Godzilla in the nets.

My neighbourhood here doesn't have too many raccoon sightings although we've got plenty of squirrels and one time, I did manage to see a porcupine almost crossing a street one night before a truck tragically ended its life. Raccoons tend to be more of an issue where my brother lives quite a ways up north since they do tend to go after the garbage bins and leave brown land mines as parting gifts. I guess in Japan, they must be seen as rare novelties especially in the big cities.

The raccoon sighting in Tokyo last week reminded me of the time when I kept hearing about this old anime from the 1970s involving a rather intelligent raccoon named Rascal. In fact, I was wondering whether the Japanese started just calling the Procyon lotor a rascal in the same way that we here call any sort of facial tissue Kleenex.

Actually, the raccoon is still referred in Japanese as araiguma and the anime in question is "Araiguma Rascal"（あらいぐまラスカル...Rascal The Raccoon）.  Based on the novel, "Rascal: A Memoir of a Better Era" by Sterling North, the anime was brought to Fuji-TV in 1977 and had its run between January 2nd and Xmas Day. I only know the show through clips on retrospectives, and so I only got to know the theme song "Rock River e" (To Rock River) very recently.

And to show how little I knew of the song, I kept hearing the opening chorus done in English and initially assumed that this must have been a full English version of "Rock River e" done for the dubbed versions that went overseas. In fact, after the initial intro by the Sentimental Children's Chorus, singer Kumiko Ohsugi（大杉久美子）and another children's choir group, Columbia Yurikago Kai（コロムビアゆりかご会）, sing the Japanese lyrics.

"Rock River e" sure is a jaunty square dance-friendly tune (with a hint of disco) that was written by Eriko Kishida（岸田衿子）and composed by Takeo Watanabe（渡辺岳夫）who was in charge of the soundtrack for "Araiguma Rascal". It won the Golden Hit prize at Japan Columbia in 1977. Strangely enough, the song reminds me of the theme song from the far rowdier "Blazing Saddles".

As for Ohsugi, she has become even more famous for her rendition of the "Doraemon"（ドラえもん）theme song.