Tokyo
Wankei
[Excerpt
from Televiews, June 30, 2004, Wm. Penn]: A heads-up
too for those who want to check out the first continuing
drama ever to feature a Korean resident of Japan as
the heroine. Tokyo Wankei starts Monday, July 5, 9:00-10:09
pm. on the Fuji network.
[Excerpt
from Televiews, July 15, 2004, Wm. Penn]: In the real
world, finding a guy on an Internet site and then running
off to the warehouse district of Shinagawa, Tokyo,
in the middle of the night in your best designer togs
to meet him is a recipe for
disaster rather than romance.
Fortunately
for our Korean-resident heroine Mika Kimoto (whose
Korean family
name is Lee), Tokyo Wankei (Destiny of Love, Mondays,
9 p.m. on the Fuji TV
network) is fiction. And as fiction, the storyline,
dialogue and casting all
work.
I'm
giving this one five stars, and I can't remember the
last time that
happened.
For
those who missed the first episode, a quick recap is
in order. It was
jam-packed with important details and a few confusing
flashbacks.
Kimoto (Yukie Nakama) works in an upscale Odaiba
publishing house. She wants
to introduce her boyfriend, a Japanese doctor,
to her dad, who is against
intermarriage. Her boyfriend's parents are also
against the union and she
suspects, accurately, that the doc is about to
chicken out, too. One night
as she is staring at her cellular phone waiting
for the doc to call, she
signs up for an Internet matchmaking site on a
whim. Her message includes
the Zen-like question: Can you help me find my
real self?
Soon
she is exchanging messages with Ryosuke Wada, (new
face Toshihiro
Wada), whose friend signed him up for the site.
Wada wants to meet. Kimoto
suggests Haneda Airport. She figures he will
never be able to find her there
but he does. They take a ride on the monorail
together and Wada points out
the warehouse where he works. They part and she
changes her e-mail address.
Next enters Toru Nakamura. He plays an author
who has found the diary of
Kimoto's mother, Kim, and wants to turn it into
a novel. Nakama also plays
Kim in the flashback scenes that detail her romance
with a Japanese guy. Kim
ran away from home to be with him but, as he
rushed to meet her, he was
apparently killed in an accident while trying
to save a young child.
Wada also has a quick flashback and remembers
Kimoto as the girl he bumped
into as she ran out of the Korean Embassy in
a Korean dress on Christmas
Eve. Kimoto does not remember him. Unlike the
at-home viewer, neither does
she know there is a landscape painting in Wada's
apartment that looks very
similar to the spot where her mother's lover
lived.
Obviously,
there is some connection to which we will eventually
be made
privy. Until then, watching the couple fall in
love is pleasant enough. It
is after reading her mother's diary that Kimoto
suddenly had the urge to
rush to Wada in Shinagawa in the middle of
the night.
End of Episode 1.
Awkward
in the retelling, the story works well on screen.
This one looks
like a hit, and an informative introduction for those
who know little about
Japan's Korean residents. The drama educates viewers
without feeling like a
lecture. In one scene, Kimoto rants about the difficulties
of third- and
fourth-generation Korean residents caught between
their parents' world and
their own, but she lessens the heaviness by singing
it into a mike in an
empty karaoke room. In another telling scene, she
mentions the doctor's
Japanese name and tells her father she wants to
bring him home to dinner.
The father assumes he too is a Korean resident
and replies: "Okay, what's
his 'honmyo' (real name)?" It's a simple bit
of dialogue that aptly reflects
the reality of those who live with aliases as a
way of life. Episode 1 was
altogether impressive. Do check it out and let's
hope it can sustain the
stellar five-star rating.
[Excerpt
from Wai Wai, August 13, 2004]: Yukie a flop in wanky
'Wankei Tokyo' drama
By Ryann Connell, Staff Writer
Yukie
Nakama can't compete against the Olympics.Yukie Nakama
is one of Japan's hottest young actresses, but
the Midas touch she once seemed to have with ratings
appears to have lost out in a different lust for
gold, according to Shukan Gendai (8/21-28).
Nakama
has scored huge hits in lead roles with several
TV dramas in the Noughties and has just landed a
juicy part in NHK's legendary taiga drama due to run
once
a week throughout 2006.
But
her latest role in "Tokyo
Wankei," expected
to be a major success on the screen and socially,
is fast turning out to be the biggest flop Japan
has seen
since 280-kilogram-plus ex-sumo great Konishiki tightened
the mawashi around his midriff.
Fuji TV's "Tokyo Wankei" tells the love story
of a pair of Japan-born-and-bred Koreans, with Nakama
in the leading role of a publishing company employee
besotted with a humble stevedore.
Expectations for the series were high considering
it was based on a story by Shuichi Yoshida, a winner
of
the Akutagawa Prize, Japan's most prestigious literary
award.
But more than anything else, "Tokyo Wankei" was
notable for being Japan's first prime-time drama
focusing on the lives of the oft-maligned Koreans living
in
the country.
But "Tokyo Wankei" has been
smitten with problems since going into production.
"Japan may well be going through a Korean boom at the
moment, but that's got nothing to do with the
Koreans already living here," a Fuji TV insider whispers
to Shukan Gendai. "We couldn't find any
actors willing to take on the lead role. We didn't
have
any choice in
the end but to take on a newcomer."
Other
factors have also come into play besides long-held
enmity.
"This woman producer is in charge of the script, but she's
changed it a hell of a lot from the original. For
instance, there were no corny lines in the original like, 'If you
feel down, it's OK for you to cry because you're
a woman,'" a
producer from the company making "Tokyo Wankei" tells
Shukan Gendai. "Everybody making the show
cringes whenever they look at the script."
"Tokyo Wankei" had a promising start, rating 17.7
percent with its first show, but going downhill
from there and notching just 12.3 percent in the most
recently
issued results.
Entertainment
journalist Hiroyuki Sasaki feels sorry that Nakama
is getting her first taste
of
failure.
"This summer, there's only one drama that's going to be
a hit, and that's the drama taking place at the
Athens Olympics. Every network knows that. They knew it was
going to be tough to get good ratings no matter
how famous an actress is playing the lead role," Sasaki tells
Shukan Gendai. "In that way, I feel a bit
of sympathy for Nakama."
STARRING: Nakama
Yukie, Nakamura Toru, Wada Toshiro,
THEME SONG:
NETWORK: Fuji TV
DURATION: July 2004 through September
2004