Digital Script ArchivesDetail
Special Drama: Nihon no Omokage
- No.
- ST-00300
- Year
- 1984
- Broadcated
/Created by - ＮＨＫ
- Scriptwriter
- Yamada Taichi
- Format
- drama seriese
- Awards
- Galaxy Grand Prix for the best program/Mukouda Kuniko Award
- Overview
- This is the fifth installment of the special drama series themed around modern Japanese history that started with Amerika Monogatari (1979). In 1884, British journalist Lafcadio Hearn is acquainted with an official of the Japanese Ministry of Education named Ichizo Hattori at the World Cotton Centennial held in New Orleans. Captivated by Japan’s spiritual culture, Hearn marries a Japanese woman named Setsu in Matsue, Tottori, and becomes a Japanese citizen under the name Yakumo Koizumi. Hearn had wandered around alone without experiencing the love of family. This lead to his longing for family and stimulated his interest in the world of strange stories that are unexplainable by science. Based on this interpretation, the series depicts Hearn’s commitment to, and disappointment toward, Japanese spiritual culture, which he expressed in his letters to Hattori. When Setsu, the wife he adores, tells him the story of the yuki-onna (female snow spirit), Yakumo exhibits Japanese sincerity and etiquette more than a normal Japanese person, sitting on the floor in the correct manner before her and maintaining this posture. This is an allegory of the loss of this Japanese spiritual culture. The sincere, polite Yakumo played by George Chakiris is an abundant representation of the loss of Japanese spiritual culture owing to modernization.
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