Seasons Database > Summer 2004 >

Tokyo Wankei

Network: Fuji TV
Air time: Monday 9:00-9:54 PM
Number of episodes: 11
Genre(s): love, human drama
Official Home Page: http://www.fujitv.co.jp/wankei/
Opening/Ending themes:
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Cast and characters:

Nakama Yukie
<<Kimoto Mika

Wada Toshihiro
<<Wada Ryousuke

Nakamura Tooru
<<Kamiya Bun

Satou Ryuuta
<<Hayase Yoshio

Aikawa Shou
<<Oosugi Ken

Nakamura Shunsuke
<<Inoue Hirokazu

Ishizaka Kouji
<<Kimoto Masao

A Foreigner in her Home Country

This is probably the first golden time drama to directly address the issue of Korean-Japanese people. Certainly, there have been movies, but most of them were rather small productions and couldn't be compared to a golden time drama, which is about as main-stream as Japanese media gets. Many of you probably already know about the issues facing Korean-Japanese, but for those who don't, most of them are descendents of laborers who were unwillingly brought to Japan during war times. They are born in Japan, speak Japanese, take Japanese names, and basically live the same as any Japanese, except that they are denied Japanese citizenship and legally treated as foreigners. Also, the term "Korean-Japanese" that is often used to refer to these people in the West, reflects the Western perspective that these people should be Japanese citizens, while the Japanese term, "zainichi kankokujin" literally means "Korean resident of Japan". The reluctance to consider these people as Japanese is tied to the identity question of "What makes one Japanese?" which the Japanese have been asking themselves for as long as foreigners have been allowed into the country.

I can't tell you how happy I am that this drama exists. It's about time. With the recent popularity of Korean entertainers and Korean dramas in Japan, perhaps the time is right for revisiting the issue of Korean immigrants to Japan. Not only is it a good subject politically, but the first episode of this drama was pretty entertaining too. Though I do have my small gripes which I will discuss later, let's move on to a plot summary.

Nakama Yukie plays Kimoto Mika, a third generation Korean-Japanese living in Tokyo. She is from a wealthy Korean family. She seems to have a pretty good office-type job and a Japanese boyfriend. She wants to take her relationship to the next level, and asks her father to meet him, but her father has strong loyalties to his family in Korea and absolutely forbids Mika to marry a non-Korean. Later in the episode, we find out that her boyfriend is likewise forbidden by his parents to marry a Korean-Japanese. Both of them are reluctant to betray their families, so their relationship ends there. Meanwhile, Mika's father is arranging a Korean partner that he wishes Mika to marry.

Mika is extremely upset. She makes a big speech about how she eats sushi and drinks Japanese tea and still isn't allowed to be the same as other Japanese. She sees her Korean passport and alien registration card (which all foreign residents in Japan must carry) fall out of her purse onto the floor of her apartment. Then she has a flashback from when she was on a school trip to a foreign country, and she had to use the "foreigners" line at the airport, while all her classmates used the "Japanese citizens" line. After the flashback, she looks at a portrait on her table, in which her family is all dressed in traditional Korean attire, and breaks it.

She gets a text message from her younger sister (played by the singer Sonim) on her phone with a link to a dating site. She puts in a request for a man, with no stipulations other than that he is a Japanese man and lives in the Wankei area of Tokyo. Immediately, she gets one match back and sends this stranger a message asking him to find "her true self".

This message is received by Wada Ryousuke (Wada Toshihiro, who makes his first appearance in a drama, but appeared in the movie "Hotel Hibiscus"). He is dirt-poor, drives a forklift at a warehouse for a living, and has lots of hair. In his spare time, he enjoys shodou (Japanese calligraphy), but he has friends played by the likes of Aikawa Shou, who almost always plays suspicious yakuza-type characters. Fortunately, though, Ryousuke is very cool and attractive despite his shabby appearance. Normally, two people this attractive would never meet through a dating site, but we find out that Ryousuke's friends put his e-mail address on the site without his permission, and Mika did so in a state of impaired judgment, so they're not the kind of people who normally use those websites. There's your excuse.

The two send short, vague, and mysterious messages to each other, mostly in jest. Finally, Mika tells Ryousuke that she will be waiting for him at the lobby of Haneda Airport, and dares him to pick her out of the crowd. Both of them actually show up at this location, and Ryousuke manages to get Mika's attention through giant shodou banners. They have a short date, and Ryousuke seems to be a reasonably nice guy. After the date, however, Mika makes the decision not to see him again and changes her e-mail address. Ryousuke realizes that he has met Mika before, in a short scene at the very beginning of the drama where she runs into him in front of the Korean embassy.

Next, a man named Kamiya comes to see Mika at work. He has found the long-lost diary of Mika's deceased mother and is asking permission to make the diary into a novel. Mika reads the diary that night, and we get a long flashback about a relationship her Korean-Japanese mother had with a Japanese man before she married Mika's Korean-Japanese father. In this flashback, her mother is also played by Nakama (who looks funny with an 70's hairstyle). Her mother's story has striking similarities to Mika's own situation, and the man seems to have similarities to Ryousuke. The man was able to love Mika's mother, neither as a Korean or a Japanese, but as a human being. Unfortunately, she had the same problem as Mika and was persuaded by her father to marry a Korean-Japanese (Mika's father). She ran away from home to go to her Japanese boyfriend, but he tragically died just before they met again, and she ended up marrying Mika's father.

After Mika finishes reading, she gets a mail from Ryousuke who has figured out her new e-mail address. She runs to Wankei to meet him, and that's the end of the first episode.

Overall, I think this drama is a step in the right direction for Japanese of Korean descent. It is important to note that the drama (thus far) deals mostly with discrimination through legal inequities and family obligations, not the sort of personal discrimination that takes place at work or in personal relations that does still exist in Japan. Her boyfriend's parents' disapproval of his intention to marry a Korean-Japanese was the only concrete example of that so far. I have a feeling, though, that it will be dealt with, at least somewhat, in later episodes.

I have one major complaint. I felt like the "Koreanness" of the drama is stressed a little too much. Though there are certainly Korean-Japanese who still have strong ties to Korea as Mika's family does, I think her "Japaneseness" still needs to be stressed more. Korean pop music is used as much of the BGM for this drama - which isn't necessarily a bad thing as it may increase the popularity of real K-pop in Japan - but I don't think it is necessarily called for here. It would also be hard to deny that this drama is piggybacking on the recent popularity of Korean dramas in Japan. During the airing of this drama, a new commercial for a vitamin drink starring Ueto Aya and I Min-Yeong the star of "Winter Sonata" (the most popular Korean drama now) was aired. They obviously assumed that fans of "Winter Sonata" would be watching. Lastly, the title "Tokyo Wankei" also has a Korean subtitle displayed on the logo, in addition to the English subtitle that most Japanese dramas have.

Though some of these things are due to commercial forces and can't really be helped, all of this - though quite innocent and probably done with the best of intentions - undermines the message that Korean-Japanese are really the same as any other Japanese, and ultimately hurts the overall impact of the drama.

Agree with me or not, you should watch this drama. Japanese should definitely watch this drama. Everyone should watch it. Though the reverse-Cinderella style romance is definitely not new, the story should be entertaining enough. My description may have painted a picture of a very politically-charged drama, but keep in mind that the main goal is the same as that of any drama: to entertain. Watch it.

Sample Clip

Real Media - 1 minute 19 seconds