Okiku Naru Ko (lost Japanese puppet series, 1959)

NHK was NOTORIOUS for wiping their old programs. Chances are that any episodes from the 1959-early 80s episodes are long gone. This can be said about many other NHK puppet programs such as:

Aerial City 008 - 1 episode found from a fans home recording

Spaceship Silica - 1 episode found in NHK archive

Galaxy Troop Boy - 1 episode found in a French tv station archive with burned in French subtitles. Highly sought after of all NHK programs as it is the first series to use puppets based off of an Osamu Tezuka property.

NHK has a horrible track record for wiping early programs, on par with the BBC (albeit much of the lost BBC programs, particularly Dr. Who have been recovered from international archives as the shows were widely distributed, whereas NHK programs were rarely ever shown outside of Japan)

Do you mean the actual theme song, or the opening animation? Because if you mean the latter, you're making one hell of an extrapolation.

In my opinion, NHK is very bad at archiving their programs from the 1950s and to the 1980s.


And it is true that Okiku Naru Ko could be lost forever, unless….

There is some people from Japan that might have recordings of Okiku Naru Ko, in fact, one of the episodes of the NHK program Aerial City 008 was found on a fan’s recording.

it could be a great idea to find some NHK recordings from Japan, but unfortunately…

It’s seems impossible that any VHS tapes were around in 1959. But since the first series of Okiku Naru Ko ended in 1960, it seems like it could be possible but the chances are slim!

Take the original ending for Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer for example, this ending only air once, and after people were upset that Rudolph did not revisit the island of misfit toys, a scene was added a year later where Rudolph save the misfit toys. Apparently, the color version for the original ending is lost, but the original ending that was in black and white was already been found. You see, the original ending of the Christmas flim air on television in 1964, and someone ended up owning a copy of original ending of Rudolph the red nose reindeer. It look like it was home recording. And BUMP! The original ending is found, all be in black and white!

So yeah, some series’s of this Japanese series can definitely be found, if there were some people in Japan who have recordings. But still I doubt the chances are high!

This show was broadcasted in Colombia (as far as I know) during the eighties and the late 2000s and it was called "Niños en crecimiento" (Growing children). According to what I heard, the program was one of the "donations" of a cooperation program from the Japanese government in Latin America at that time. Several other puppet shows from NHK were seen here as well. You can find several episodes in Latin American Spanish on YouTube, like this one: youtu.be/GCUNKo7_2-E

Apparently, there is an English dub for Okiku Naru Ko that aired on Nickelodeon and Nick Jr.


It is called Terry Tiger's Animal School.