Emi Shindo/Mitsuko Horie -- Utsukushiki Challenger（美しきチャレンジャー）

You might say that I grew up with the pastime of bowling. In my early childhood, my father and his buddies used to bowl at the huge Thorncliffe Bowling Alley regularly so I used to watch him get his fair share of spares and strikes.

Being a frequent viewer of "The Flintstones" on CFTO-TV here in Toronto and then WKBW in Buffalo, I was very accustomed to seeing Fred and Barney roll the ball down the lanes.

Another Buffalo, New York affiliate WBEN televised weekly episodes of "Strikes, Spares and Misses", and then there were the Saturday-afternoon shows of "Pro Bowlers Tour" on ABC. You may have wondered if I ended up wearing Polo shirts, slacks and bowling shoes to go for multiple rounds at Thorncliffe.

The answer to that would be "No.". Not that I didn't enjoy the occasional rounds of bowling with friends now and then, but it never became a lifelong hobby for some reason. I think it was because it wasn't all that easy to access a bowling alley from home and none of my friends were all that crazy about the pastime either. And frankly, in the era of video game parlors which only required a small pile of quarters, bowling seemed to appear more and more as a luxury thing.

I would later find out during my studies of Japan in university that the pop culture over there experienced periodic bursts of interest in bowling as well. I guess one of those times was the late 1960s and early 1970s. And yep, during my two different times living in Japan, I did partake in bowling with students and teachers.

To capitalize on the boom of bowling for that turn of the decade from the 1960s into the 1970s, there was a TBS drama called "Utsukushiki Challenger" (Beautiful Challenger) which ran from April to October 1971. It dealt with the story of young Midori, played by Tokyo-born actress Emi Shindo（新藤恵美）, a high school student training in hurdles who somehow finds herself in the world of bowling finding her share of rivalry, competition and romance.

Shindo also sings the theme song "Utsukushiki Challenger", a bright and optimistic pop song punctuated by some sharp horns and an incessant bass thrumming away. There's also a fluttery flute and Shindo's vocals which might be representing the youth and innocence of Midori while those horns and bass may be hinting at the hustle and bustle of life in the big city. Tokiko Iwatani（岩谷時子）was the lyricist here with Kyohei Tsutsumi（筒美京平）handling the melody.

Apparently, the song "Utsukushiki Challenger" was a fairly hot commodity since a number of singers recorded their own versions. That would also include Mitsuko Horie（堀江美都子）, who has since become a singer of anison, including "Fly Away ~ Yume no Hikouki"（夢の飛行機）, a tune that has been transformed into a popular example of Future Funk. Horie's cover isn't all that much different from the Shindo original except for an epic French horn helping out.

In any case, all of the bowling establishments that I used to know, including my childhood Thorncliffe Alley have all come down thanks to the wrecking ball instead of the bowling one.