Teinen Joshi

Official Website
www.nhk.or.jp/pd/teinen

Broadcast
From 10.00 p.m., Sundays, 9 July 2017

Station
NHK BS Premium

Story
53-year-old Miyama Asako is the head of the Corporate Social Responsibility department at Kadokura Trading, a large trading company. She is doing well in her work and fired up about a new project to build schools in villages in Asia. One day, Asako is suddenly notified by the senior managing director that she will be redeployed to the foods business as an advisor because the company has adopted the system of retiring people from managerial positions at a certain age. Shocked that she will lose her managerial title, Asako calls out her old girl friends and proceeds to get dead drunk at a restaurant. But the following week, Asako has a change of heart. She comes into work at her new workplace intending to do her best, and meets a colleague Mizoguchi Yosuke while handing out food samples at a supermarket. However, Asako is treated like a hindrance by rank-and-file employees in her new workplace, and wonders why things have come to this after a 31-year career. She grimly makes up her mind to resign. But her newly-married daughter Aoi is pregnant and has moved back home for childbirth while her ex-husband’s mother Tomiko is still emotionally attached for some reason and even her care falls on Asako. It is a situation where Asako does not have the luxury to choose her job. She is so busy coping with all sorts of work that she has little concern for her own appearance. In the process, she gradually starts to realise what she must do to this society right now.

Characters
Minami Kaho as Miyama Asako
The manager of the Corporate Social Responsibility department at Kadokura Trading. She is doing well in her work but is ordered to step down because of the age limit for managerial positions and ends up quitting the company. However, she is a complete workaholic and starts to look for work because she cannot tolerate the boredom. She takes positions involved in the lives of people such as the job placement office and the undertaker. She wishes for someone’s help after her daughter’s marriage and childbirth, and establishes a new caregiving and childcare business. She has a cheerful but decisive nature. Her daughter calls her pigheaded.

Yamaguchi Yuichiro as Fujiwara Jotaro
He works for a major advertising agency. His wife suddenly passes away and then he loses his job. Although he gets into arguments with Miyama Asako when he sees her, the two of them strangely get along too and before they realise it, their relationship has transformed into one of mutual support.

Kusakari Tamiyo as Kuroda Tokiko
Miyama Asako’s friend from university days. A cool and capable woman with a sharp tongue, she has had countless romances. She had been a cabin attendant for an airline but suddenly decides to resign because of her persistent eye bags.

Shimizu Michiko as Ogawa Tae
Miyama Asako’s friend from university days. She is single and has no children. She is the vice principal of an elementary school and is currently in the middle of exams to become a principal. She has been looking after her mother while she works but does not say a word about how difficult it is.

Ishino Mako as Terauchi Maki
Miyama Asako’s friend from university days. She does accounting at a construction company and she is strict with money. She has a son who has entered the workforce and another son who is a third-year university student. She kind of gets along with her husband but is fed up with him for floundering over his impending retirement.

Machida Keita as Mizogchi Yosuke
The section head of Kadokura Trading’s food business. He is attracted to Miyama Asako despite their age gap. His youth and forthrightness greatly sways Asako who had believed that she can be written off as a woman.

Yamashita Rio as Miyama Aoi
Miyama Asako’s 27-year-old daughter who is going to have a shotgun marriage because she is pregnant but her husband is cheating on her. Although she had declared that she would not have the same fate as her mother, it seems precisely it. She falls into post partum depression but desperately hangs in there.

Takano Shiho as Hoshino Chizuru
She is chosen to succeed Miyama Asako as the next manager of the Corporate Social Responsibility department when Asako steps down because of age. She had initially been at logger heads with Asako, but now that she has taken over her work, she comes to know how great Asako is.

Fuji Mariko as Hayashida Katsuko
Miyama Asako’s former boss. She now works only three days a week at the general affairs department according to the re-employment system. She feels that it is too late to start something and regrets that she was not adequately prepared when the time came for her to be retired from her managerial position.

Terawaki Yasufumi as Miyama Satoshi
Miyama Asako’s ex-husband. His work involves going overseas to buy furniture. When he and Asako divorced, his attempts to pay alimony and child support were flatly rejected by her. Although they keep finding fault when they meet which makes things awkward, he comes to her house frequently for some reason.

Kusabue Mitsuko as Miyama Tomiko
Miyama Asako’s former mother-in-law. Her husband passed away 20 years ago. She behaves like a princess and is profusely cheerful. Asako has difficulty saying what she wants in the face of that. She sustains a bone fracture and Asako ends up having to take care of her.

Scriptwriter
Tabuchi Kumiko (Bijo to Danshi, Dousousei, Go ~ Himetachi no Sengoku)

Original Work
Teinen Joshi by Kishimoto Yukiko

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