Ashio kara Kita Onna

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Official Website
www.nhk.or.jp/dodra/ashio

Broadcast
Saturdays, 9.00 – 10.13 p.m. from 18 January 2014

Station
NHK

Story
It is 1906, near the end of the Meiji period. The government has tried to let the pollutants produced from the Ashio Copper Mine deposit in the pond of Yanaka Village which is in the lower reaches of the Watarase River in Tochigi Prefecture in order to protect the mine’s operations. As a result, the fields of the village are contaminated by pollution from the mine. Through the mediation of her older brother Nobuyoshi, Nitta Sachi, the daughter of a poor farming family that lives in Yanaka Village, is asked by the politician Tanaka Shozo if she can leave for Tokyo to work as the housekeeper of female social activist Fukuda Hideko who heads the magazine ‘Women of the World’. Sachi is introduced to Kusakabe Jotaro, a man who identifies himself as a government official, by Nobuyoshi. Kusakabe accompanies her to Tokyo and she is instructed to report what she sees and hears in the Fukuda household. Social activists representative of the period such as Kotoko Shusui and Osugi Sakae frequent the Fukuda residence. Sachi starts to work diligently but inwardly feels inferior to be the only one who cannot read a character in the house of an intellectual. Meanwhile, the labourers at the Ashio Copper Mine strike. Seizing the chance to overthrow the government, Ishikawa Sanshiro and other social activists supportive of the struggle for a wage increase, express their views in an attempt at solidarity. However, even Ishikawa is put behind bars in a police crackdown. Sachi, who feels guilty for his arrest, runs away from the Fukuda household. She arrives back at her birthplace to see that her house has been destroyed by the country’s forced seizure. Furthermore, her brother Nobuyoshi was at the centre of this exercise … …

Characters
Ono Machiko as Nitta Sachi
A daughter of a farming family in Yanaka Village. She lost her mother who fell sick because of the mine pollution and the fields are barren. In the midst of this, she is sent off to work as Fukuda Hideko’s housekeeper. However, she is ordered by the police to spy on the household and is troubled. She possesses a goodness and hardiness that is rooted in being the daughter of a farmer. But she secretly feels inferior because she cannot read and write.

Emoto Akira as Tanaka Shozo
A politician who spends his life on the trail of the Ashio Copper Mine pollution case. After a political campaign at the Diet of which he is a member of the House of Representatives and a direct appeal to Emperor Meiji, he returned to Yanaka Village and led the farmers in an all-out resistance against the country’s order to evict. He understands Nitta Sachi well and entrusts a stone picked up from the Watarase River to her.

Suzuki Honami as Fukuda Hideko
A social activist. At the age of 19, she plunged into the freedom and people’s rights movement and was imprisoned. This immediately led to her being called “Joan of Arc of the Orient”. She tries to teach Nitta Sachi the importance of education. She has the pride of a samurai’s daughter. She also sympathises with Tanaka Shozo’s struggle and generously offers her support.

Kitamura Yukiya as Ishikawa Sanshiro
A young social activist. With the support of his older lover Fukuda Hideko, he speaks eloquently at assemblies and writes in newspapers for commoners. He gets interested in Nitta Sachi who has a pure heart and makes an approach.

Okada Yoshinori as Nitta Nobuyoshi
Nitta Sachi’s older brother. He threw himself into Yanaka Village’s struggle under Tanaka Shozo. However, during the Russo-Japanese War, he is troubled by the bullets from the copper mine that saved him and soon betrays Shozo and the village, and takes sides with the prefecture.

Matsushige Yutaka as Kusakabe Jotaro
A high-level police official. He cajoles Nitta Sachi to spy on the social activists in order to clamp down on them.

Kunimura Jun as Hara Takakshi
A politician during the Meiji and Taisho eras. He is called the “commoner prime minister” On the other hand, he is a pragmatist who serves as the vice president of Ashio Copper Mine. He and Sachi have a fateful encounter.

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Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.