Kiraware Matsuko no Issho (The Life of Hated Matsuko)

[Excerpt from Televiews, October 7, 2006- Wm. Penn, Daily Yomiuri]: Rina Uchiyama has the title role in Kiraware Matsuko no Issho, based on a best-selling novel that was just made into a movie this spring. Matsuko's niece discovers an aunt she never knew and sets out to learn how the happy 23-year-old woman in a family photo ended up dead in a dingy apartment at 56.

The search reveals the men in Matsuko's life and leads to a school, a soapland (a bathhouse that offers sexual services) and a prison. It starts Oct. 12 at 10 p.m. on the TBS network.

[Excerpt from Channel Surf, Japan Times, October 16, 2006]: This fall, TBS has adapted one of last year's big box office hits, "Kiraware Matsuko no Issho" (The Life of Hated Matsuko; Thursday, 10 p.m.), as an 11-part drama series. In the first episode, which aired last week, a 56-year-old woman named Matsuko is found dead of natural causes in her small apartment in a low-rent neighborhood of Tokyo. Her niece, Asuka, comes to clean up the apartment and finds an old photo album that intrigues her. She only thought of her aunt as a quiet schoolteacher, but she discovers that Matsuko's life was much more dramatic.

As a teenager, Matsuko ran away from home and worked as a waitress for six months, during which time she was harassed by one of her customers, who kept pressuring her to go out with him. A young man saves her and they start living together, but Matsuko has to support the two of them, and she has no choice but to seek work in the sex industry.

Starring: Uchiyama Rina
THEME SONG:
NETWORK: TBS
DURATION: October through December 2006