Yoko Maekawa/Kumi Koda/GO!GO!7188 -- Cutie Honey (キューティーハニー)

https://www.flickr.com/photos/breville/8723949838

It's possible that I may be coming down with a cold or some hay fever today. My nose has been running like a faucet and there's a cough coming in. A cup of some hot honey & lemon would be quite nice right now.

Speaking of honey.....HONEY FLASH!!

Yes, I'm seguing again...let it go. Ahem...anyways, it's time for me to bring out an old but famous anison from the 1970s. To be specific, this is the theme song for the 1973 anime "Cutie Honey" (キューティーハニー). I never saw the show myself but even I know about this heroine in Japan who fights the good fight while having a certain allergy toward being fully clothed. And the theme is also one of the most famous elements as well as being one of the more recognizable anison ever made.

Written by lyricist Claude Q. (aka Fujio Iwasaki/岩崎富士男 now of the Osaka University of Arts) and composed by Takeo Watanabe（渡辺岳夫）, "Cutie Honey" has got a lot of soaring boogie and spunk done in a spy-show style with lyrics describing the fine attributes of android Honey Kisaragi (I can only imagine her on a date with Commander Data). And singer Yoko Maekawa（前川陽子）interprets it like a Linda Yamamoto（山本リンダ） hit, and that is no surprise since it had been intended for the sexy and dynamic Yamamoto but for some reason, that plan fell through. Still, Maekawa does a fine job resembling the singer.

As I said, I was never a fan of the show but even I paid attention when I was watching the morning news back in Ichikawa one day and learned that there was to be a live-action version of "Cutie Honey" which was released in 2004. Ohhhhhhkayyyyyyyyy, I remarked. And the star was Eriko Sato（佐藤江梨子）, a tarento whose star had been rising at the time.

Kumi Koda（倖田來未）performed the new version of the theme song in an even sultrier way with more of a nightclubby/hip-hop feel. Looking at the music video, I would have thought Koda could have portrayed the heroine but perhaps she was a little too short at 154cm. Sato is actually my height at 173cm.

Man, do I love the fat bass and drums on GO!GO!7188's cover of "Cutie Honey". This is the surf rock version of the song that was included on the band's cover mini-album "Tora no Ana"（虎の穴...The Tiger's Eye） from July 2002. It was able to reach No. 15 on the Oricon charts.

From what I've read, there are plenty of other covers out there on YouTube as well so enjoy!

Morning Musume -- Morning Musume no Hyokkori Hyōtanjima（モーニング娘。のひょっこりひょうたん島）

My days teaching in Tsukiyono, Gunma Prefecture usually started at 6:30 to 7:00 am, and one of my rituals getting up was reaching out from the futon to switch on the television. For whatever reason, the telly would be on TV Tokyo for the morning business program to drone on about the usual ups and downs in the economy (considering I arrived in the country after the end of the Bubble Era, most likely the latter) before the first commercial.

Ah, and speaking about that first commercial, this is what I heard and, sometimes if I were willing to open my eyes early enough, saw:

It was an ad for Nippon Express, and at the time I had thought that Nittsu put out a particularly cute commercial with a bunch of old-style puppets. Give Marketing that extra bonus!

Little did I know at the time that the jingle I heard morning after morning was actually not a jingle at all, but a theme song for a beloved 1960s afternoon children's show titled "Hyokkori Hyotanjima" (Island of Unexpected Contradictions) with those old-style puppets. Debuting in 1964 for a 5-year run, Yoko Maekawa and the Hibari Children Chorus（前川陽子とひばり児童合唱団）sang the chirpy theme for the NHK program. It was written by the creators, Hisashi Inoue and Morihisa Yamamoto（井上ひさし・山元護久）, and composed by Seiichiro Uno（宇野誠一郎）.

My interest in the music of Morning Musume（モーニング娘。）had already waned by 2003 with my last purchase of an MM single being the snazzy and jazzy "Mr. Moonlight" in 2001. Still I was reminded of my Gunma morning ritual when the girl group went ahead to give their own longer and more revved-up version of the theme song titled "Morning Musume no Hyokkori Hyōtanjima" as their 17th single in February of that year. The video was appropriately adorable with the usual choreography and camera close-ups of every member. And I just thought that petite Mari Yaguchi's voice dropped down a fair bit to speak her English at the beginning.

The single went Gold and peaked at No. 4 on Oricon.

Some time after the 2011 earthquake, this heartwarming ad for Toyota came on TV featuring SMAP member Takuya Kimura（木村拓哉）, comedian Tsurube Shofukutei（笑福亭鶴瓶）and director Beat Takeshi（ビートたけし）with "Hyokkori Hyotanjima" as an overarching theme. The gimmick had the three being re-born versions of famous figures from Japanese history.