Asian Drama

Adapted from the manga series "Tengu no Daidokoro" (天狗の台所) by Tanaka Ai (田中相).

Episodes: 10

Akutsu Eiji is a newspaper reporter. He is working on unsolved case that took place 30 years ago. The case involved a group of people extorting several companies for money. The group sent cassette tapes to the companies. Akutsu Eiji comes across a mysterious cassette tape. Meanwhile, Sone Toshiya lives in Kyoto and runs a tailor shop. He discovers a cassette tape among his late father's possessions. He plays the cassette tape and hears his voice from his childhood days.

~~ Adapted from the novel "The Voice of Sin" (罪の声) by Shiota Takeshi (塩田武士), which in turn was inspired by the extortion case "Glico Morinaga case" (グリコ・森永事件).

Upon getting thrown out of his girlfriend Fujiko's apartment, Hiromi (Sorimachi) decides to head for the ocean. En route, he crosses paths with Kaito (Takenouchi), an elite employee of a large multinational trading company in Tokyo who is running away from his problems at work after losing a key client. The two stumble into a quiet B&B on the beach run by the aging surfer Masaru and his high-school-aged granddaughter Makoto. Hiromi immediately applies to work there for the summer, and Kaito is forced to join him after he loses his wallet. The two share a room, with Hiromi trying to make friends, and Kaito at first resisting, unimpressed by Hiromi's devil-may-care attitude. Slowly over the ensuing episodes, Kaito becomes more and more at home in this sleepy rural town, and begins to wonder if he should give up his pursuit of success in the big city, and try to relax, and enjoy himself more. When he returns to Tokyo to finish his work, Hiromi and Makoto come to lure him back, but when he returns to the B&B, his boss and girlfriend Sakura likewise come looking for him.

The 31st NHK Asadora Drama is Oshin. Oshin tells the story of a girl born in a very poor rural family in Japan, who through hard work and perseverance eventually triumphs over pain and adversity to achieve fame and success. Broadcast in the early 1980s when Japan had finally cast off the legacy of the post-war years and the Japanese were beginning to reap the benefits of economic development, the aim of the story was to recall the hardships the older generation had endured in order to pave the way for their children to enjoy their more affluent lifestyle. Viewers were drawn to the suffering of the main character Oshin - and then drew similarities between her story and their own home lives.

Some Japanese worried that showing Oshin abroad would give the country a bad profile - and would even be shameful because it showed the seldom glimpsed, poor, unequal side of Japan. In the event, the reverse proved true. Oshin gave viewers outside Japan - whose only image of Japan was formed by Japanese cars or electric goods, or through bitter memories of Japanese treatment during World War II - a far better understanding of the modern Japan and its people.