SMAP is singing the theme song for the TBS drama series "Sasaki Fusai no Jingi Naki Tatakai," which stars Goro Inagaki and Koyuki. The song, tentatively titled "Sonomama," is composed and written by the band Monkey Majik. A release date has not yet been announced, but it will be publicly heard for the first time during the drama's premiere on January 20.

At the start of each year, the singles sales charts sees a rush of older songs that regained in popularity due to performances at Kohaku Uta Gassen. This year the "Kohaku effect" was in full force, taking over the top three spots.

SMAP's "Dangan Fighter" likely needed no help from its Kohaku appearance, as it retained its #1 spot from two weeks ago. Masato Sugimoto's "Waremokou" jumped up four spots to #2, while Masafumi Akikawa's "Sen no Kaze ni Natte" climbed back into the top three.

Other songs that got a significant boost included Kobukuro's "Tsubomi" (from #46 to #15), Toshihide Baba's "Start Line ~ Atarashii Kaze" (from #141 to #40), Mika Nakashima's "LIFE" (from #94 to #59), and Ataru Nakamura's "Tomodachi no Uta" (from #144 to #63).

On the albums chart, Kobukuro stayed on top with "5296," which sold 455,000 copies over a two-week span. It barely edged out Ayumi Hamasaki's "GUILTY" (432,000 copies), which was at a disadvantage since it just went on sale on New Year's Day.

In #3 was EXILE's "EXILE LOVE," selling 315,000 copies. This puts its total sales at more than 1.23 million, making it the group's third million-seller. It is the first album to sell a million since Kumi Koda's "Black Cherry" reached that milestone in June of last year.

Starting on January 19, TV Asahi will air a drama series titled "Fujoshi Deka." The lead will be played by the current Asahi Beer Image Girl, Mai Shinohara, who made her acting debut in last season's "Shigeshoshi" on TV Tokyo.

As the title indicates, Shinohara plays a police officer who is also a fujoshi (a term referring to women who are fans of stories involving male homosexual romance). She gets fired up whenever there's an incident involving a good-looking man, and she solves the cases in her own unique way.

The drama will air late on Saturday nights, in the 1:30am-2:00am time slot.

According to data released by Video Research Ltd., the first episode of the NHK taiga drama "Atsuhime," which aired on the 6th, had viewership ratings of 20.3% (19.8% in the Kansai region). Last year's taiga drama, "Fuurinkazan," started out with ratings of 21.0% (16.2% in Kansai).

Also exceeding the 20% mark was "Nodame Cantabile Shinshun Special in Europe," the two-night continuation of last year's popular "Nodame Cantabile" drama series. The January 4 broadcast had ratings of 18.9%, which increased to 21.0% for the January 5 episode.