JAPANESE DRAMA DATABASE: Dokushin Seikatsu

Dokushin Seikatsu (Single life)

Makiko Esumi and Maki Sakai are providing the best acting performances around this quarter. Esumi stars in Dokushin Seikatsu (Fridays at 10 p.m. on TBS network) and it looks like it will be one of her better efforts.

She gets good support from costar Koichi Sato, who plays a third-rate magazine reporter haunted by his father's suicide. It is one of the best roles he has ever had.

Esumi really gets a chance to play three different characters. She is an elite Tokyo University graduate working for a major bank. At home, she is the dutiful daughter of an obsessive mother who she knows checks her daily diary every night to keep tabs on her activities. At work, she outshines all the men around her. Rather than appreciate her skills, they attempt to sabotage her efforts every time she shows them up, which means she is the constant victim of interdepartmental abuse as well as the general sexual harassment she faces from clients.

Not surprisingly, she is prone to stress and panic attacks that leave her gasping for breath. It is during one of these attacks that she collapses in front of Nana, a nondescript Tokyo pub, and wakes up inside, where the supposedly sympathetic master suggests she alleviate her stress by discovering another side of herself working for his call girl club. For some inexplicable reason, she accepts.

Her first customer turns out to be Yamagishi (Sato), who is working on a story on dating clubs, but when he starts rifling through her things and discovers her business card, he rushes out in a huff. It appears likely that her bank was responsible for his father's death and he wants revenge of some sort.

Esumi's character continues her liaisons with other Nana clients. Viewers are given the impression that this craziness is actually relieving her stress until Yamagishi shows up at her company wanting an interview. With television's tendency to make date clubs, questionable modeling careers and the like appear relatively nonthreatening, there is a refreshing subplot to this tale. Shimamura is a young sex industry recruiter who delivers Esumi to the Club Nana when she falls ill. He is encouraged to pursue this noxious career by his very nasty girlfriend. She gets even nastier when she discovers that he has become acquainted with Ayumi, a naive office clerk who just happens to work in Esumi's bank.

Ayumi is a "sweet" girl who is always sympathetic to Esumi's plight and offers up lines like: "No, don't drink that green tea. That's the one with mold in it that we use to serve the section chief." (Ah, what a lovely world today's corporate warriors inhabit.)

Shimamura's original intention was to trick Ayumi into becoming a nude model (and those who don't agree usually end up being raped). She, of course, is oblivious to all this. Unable to imagine anything nastier than poisoning her boss, she soon wins Shimamura over to the joys of a real, wholesome relationship with homemade box lunches and strolls through the park. But the jealous girlfriend finds out and sends Ayumi hurtling into the hands of the nasty porno flick crowd. The subplot provides a realistic warning to young women naively yearning for attention and celebrity. This series looks like it just could be this quarter's most engrossing drama.

[TBS Synopsis]: Kyoko, an elite career woman working at a major bank, lives a high stress life surrounded by male colleagues and clients that discriminate against her, and a mother who constantly obsesses over Kyoko's lifestyle. As Kyoko is starting to buckle under the pressures of her high profile life, she is approached by a man who inquires if she is interested in working at an escort service. Kyoko refuses the offer at first, but he senses a hidden side to her and persuades her to give it a try. She soon finds herself living a double life: one as a businesswoman and one as a call girl. Her life begins to spin out of control, but a newfound friend may be able to help her escape from her situatio

STARRING: Esumi Makiko, Sakai Maki, Sato Koichi, Kato Noriko, Nakamura Shunsuke, Ohsugi Ren, Mukunoki Miwa and more.
THEME SONG: "The Sound of Carnival" by Kubota Toshi
DURATION: July 1999 hrough September 1999.
REVIEWS:

Some people love this drama, I didn't like it. I felt it was one of Esumi's more boring dramas but people like this dark stuff, I don't. - Sean