TELEVISION DRAMAS
distinct personalities of the characters and mirrors their respective family relations being jeopardized by their habits. Maki Maki (played by Matsu Takako) and her husband (played by Kudō Kankurō), who has disappeared, are both lying and their lies have consequences. The lie of Sebuki Suzume (played by Mitsushima Hikari) is clouded by her hatred toward her father. The complex toward his elite family creeps into the persistence of Beppu Tsukasa (played by Matsuda Ry ū hei). The persistence of Iemori Yutaka (played by Takahashi Issey) has led him to divorce his wife. Above all, these conflicts are depicted not as symbols, but as feelings, expressed by words revealing uncertain and insecure states of mind, which is also the appeal of Sakamoto Yūji’s new style of dramaturgy. The drama won the Award for Excellence in the Serial Drama category of the Tokyo Drama Awards 2017. 116
The good thing about NHK’s Morning Drama Series (asadora) is that the producers are constantly trying to take on new challenges such as having a non-Japanese actress play the heroine in Massan (latter half of 2014) and setting the period of Sunshiny Asa (Asa ga Kita) (latter half of 2015) to the last days of the shogunate rule, which was an earlier time setting than the previous morning dramas. Hiyokko aired during the first half of 2017 was also a challenging scheme in a sense. The heroine was a girl, born to a very normal farming family, and in the drama, all she did was to go to Tokyo from Oku Ibaraki in the heart of Ibaraki Prefecture, and work at a transistor radio factory and a restaurant in Akasaka. Nevertheless, even though the heroine, the setting and the story were very plain and ordinary, the atmosphere and the stream of time that the drama created for half a year were quite relaxing to