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