Kanojo to Kanojo no Ikiru Michi

Jan. 6, the first night of the new winter TV season, did not appear to hold much promise. Fuji was offering an ode to firefighters, patronizingly titled Fire Boys, at 9 p.m., while the network's 10 p.m. selection Boku to Kanojo to Kanojo no Ikiru Michi seemed heavily influenced by the Kramer vs Kramer scenario. Kanako (Ryo), the worn-out mother, takes off. She leaves behind a child and an uninvolved husband, who must suddenly begin taking care of themselves and building a parent-child relationship.

But the depth of the plot of this Japanese version and the acting of SMAP
star Tsuyoshi Kusanagi were both very pleasant surprises. This one had me
watching intently all through the first episode--and that has not happened
too often lately.

Tetsuro Koyanagi (Kusanagi) is a workaholic bank employee who has provided his wife and first-grade daughter with a comfortable condo and a vacation trip to Hawaii and does not seem to think he owes them much more. There is no conversation at home and he has no knowledge of the workings of the household. But when his wife one day up and leaves him, he still hasn't got a clue why. When his best friend suggests it might have been a fling with a woman in the office, he shrugs off the suggestion. No, that was three years ago and it was only one night. He hasn't an inkling of why his perfectly smooth-running life has been disrupted.

We are soon also shown that the major disruption does not seem to be so much
that his wife has left but that she has neglected to take their child with her. And while the little girl tries valiantly to accommodate his schedule, he makes no attempt to respond to her needs. He expects her to sit at home alone until whenever he decides to wander in with the convenience store obento for supper. He does not know her teacher's name, or class number, or any of the important details of school life, nor even that she has an English home tutor Yura (Koyuki). She is the one who rushes the little girl to the hospital when she becomes ill from a bad case of constipation brought on by trying to rush out of the house early every morning with her father. This is also an interesting reflection on the current state of school life, where the unwritten rule seems to be that no child would dare go to the toilet at school if they could at all avoid it.

Koyanagi is one cool character even at the hospital and when his mother-in-law offers to take the little girl in, he is quick to accept. But as episode one ends, Yura nails him by making him confront the fact that he is very relieved to be able to give up his parental responsibility. The only one cooler than Koyanagi may be his wife, who in episode two will tell him she feels little emotion for the child, the product of a premarriage pregnancy that led to their "dekichatta kekkon (shotgun marriage)." With
more depth than expected and some excellent performances from Koyuki and
Kusanagi, this might just be one of the season's surprise hits.

Starring : Kusanagi Tsuyoshi, Ryo, Koyuki
THEME SONG:
NETWORK: FUJI TV
DURATION: January through March 2004
REVIEWS: