Oshin

1983 was the peak of television monoculture in both the US and Japan. On February 28, the final episode of M*A*S*H was broadcast achieving a rating of 60.3% in the US (some Super Bowl broadcasts have topped that since but nothing scripted.) On November 12 episode 186 of the drama Oshin hit a rating of 62.9% which has not been topped in Japan. The series was subsequently broadcast in 68 additional countries and became a cultural milestone in several of them. The Emperor Showa said in response to his watching the series, “"I didn't know that the people were suffering like that .” The current US President at that time, Ronald Reagan, called the people of Japan “Oshin” as a complement for their collective perseverance in a speech during a state visit that year.

In other words, Oshin was a high point of Japanese drama, and in this spoiler-free (well, I will assume you’ve heard of WWII) review of the series I want to explore the series at some length.

The tl:dnr is:

Is it great? Yes.

 
Does it hold up after 40 years? Yes. 

Should you watch it? Eh...it is REALLY long, and has some other production choices that mean that it might not be worth the time investment for everybody.

The young Oshin played by Kobayashi Ayako

Context

Oshin was the 31st asadora made by NHK. “Asa” means “morning” and “dora” is short for “drama”. Like the BBC, the NHK is a national, government-supported broadcast channel which is funded through television license fees, and in 1963 they started producing serial dramas with daily 15-minute episodes that are meant to be watched by the family before heading off to work or school. The episodes ran six days a week for most series, but in 2020 they shifted to five days a week (interestingly, the decision to do so was made well before the pandemic). In the first decade of this format each series lasted a year, but in 1975 they shifted to alternating having a series produced in Tokyo for six months and then another series produced in Osaka for six months. Oshin returned to being a year-long series as a twenty-year celebration of the format, but all the subsequent series have been 6 months long as was the case in the 70s. Because of various holidays Oshin ended up having 297 episodes rather than 312.

Generally, asadoras can be divided into two types: fictionalized biographies and pure fiction. Oshin is the latter although there were reportedly a couple of people whose lives served as partial inspiration for Oshin’s writer, Hashida Sugako. Also, the series tend to have more female protagonists than male ones, and often include a coming of age story for the protagonist.

Synopsis

Oshin tells the story of a woman named Oshin who was born late in 1899 to a struggling family of sharecroppers in the north-east province of Yamagata. The framing device is Oshin at 83 in 1983 sneaking off from her family for a personal journey to visit the important places in her past. We know fairly immediately that she has been the president of a chain of 16 grocery stores, and that she disagrees with her son, the current president of the chain, and his decision to open a large flagship store as the 17th in the chain. One of her grandsons who is on spring break from college tracks her down, and joins her in the journey and hears the stories of her life as they travel around to the places where she once lived. Thus, the series Oshin is a recounting of one woman’s experiences living through nearly a century that dramatically transformed the country and its culture.

Oshin in her prime played by Tanaka Yuuko

Why You Might Not Want To Watch It

At over 74 hours in length, Oshin is even longer than a typical cdrama, and so it’s understandable that one might want to know a bit more about the series before trying it. 

The biggest hurdle about the series (for me, at least) was that it was clearly designed to look old. It’s not just that it was made in 1983 and that production technology and standards have improved since then. I have seen Kita no Kuni Kara from 1981, for instance, and that series does not look nearly as old as this one. The set design and character blocking and many other production choices in Oshin were made to have the series look much like a series from the 1950s or 1960s (albeit in color, of course). Part of the huge appeal of this series in Japan was that it was a look back at the bad old days, and so the production choices were undoubtedly meant to evoke a sense of old-timeyness and nostalgia. 

And then there is the face-hitting. Oh, so, so much face-hitting. Young girls get hit in the face. Young women get hit in the face. Old women get hit in the face. And a few guys get hit in the face. I think the audience was supposed to think “Well, that’s just the way it was back in those days. And aren’t things much better now?” Except Oshin is still slapping her 50-year old son in 1983. There are periods in Oshin’s life when she is abused, and occasionally that abuse is physical. The tone of the series is not one of approval, but such abuse is part of what the series is about.

Sex. As is the case in all asadoras from what I can tell, all sex takes place off-screen and according to the tone of the shows is only something bad men would be interested in anyway. Asadoras are meant to be watched by the whole family, after all. If any woman ever throws up, then it means they are pregnant. That’s just the way it works. However, it should also be mentioned that sexwork is also part of the plot in a couple of instances in Oshin, and the tone is one of shame and tragedy about such work. The attitudes and norms are undoubtedly appropriate to the time and culture being depicted, but do not expect any kind of sex positivity anywhere at all in this series. When sex crops up, it is inevitably a bad thing.

The Themes and Why The Series Is Great

You cannot read anything about Oshin without running into the words “persevere” and “perseverance”. Indeed, those words also appear frequently in the subtitles, and one assumes that the equivalents are there in the original Japanese. The surface-level reading of the series is that it is about perseverance. Oshin perseveres through various hardships. Some of them are the results of various historical events like Japan losing WWII. Some of the hardships are a result of sociological and economic structures like the lack of universal education in the early 20th century, traditional family structures or sharecropping. The character of Oshin is held up as an exemplar of perseverance, and how if people persevere, life can get better.

But while obvious, that theme is demonstrably not wholly nor even at all what Oshin is trying to say, nor is it why the series is great. Oshin is great because the character Oshin is countercultural. The series is about pacifism in times of war, labor movements in the times of severely exploitative labor systems, feminism in times of patriarchy, and antimaterialism in times of extreme materialism.

The series really is quite surprising in that way.

You might expect this series to be yet another slice of life family drama about a woman growing up and facing challenges throughout her life, and the series ends up being much more political and progressive than it seems it would or even should be. Oshin in her time, place and social standing does not have any power at all to effect change even in her own family let alone in national issues like worker’s rights or peace movements. She does not ultimately even really have the power to change the attitudes and expectations that she herself has and that she was brought up with. And yet, she knows what is better if not what is best even as society slowly progresses in that direction. She knows war is bad, she knows women are as capable as men, she knows that labor should be fairly compensated, and she knows that money and wealth cannot insure stability or happiness.

Nevertheless, the themes are quite explicit. 

Oshin is sent off to work as a live-in babysitter when she is seven, and that job results in her encountering a person who has been through Japan’s war machine. He teaches her to read and introduces her to pacifist writing that she will hold precious for the rest of her life. And so when the wars come she objects to every decision the men in her family make. She does not want her eldest son to enlist, but he is drafted. One of her younger sons is lured by the propaganda to enlist in flight training to be a Kamikaze pilot, and has to run away from home to do so since Oshin will not budge.

But she has no real say. Her husband transforms their small business into one which supplies the military over her repeated objections. He tells her that she must not make her opinions known outside the house, and she tacitly acquiesces. When the war is over all she can do is lament that she should have done more to resist the militarization of her country.

Similarly, she encounters a labor organizer named Kato as a young woman, and he becomes a character that persists literally until the last shot of the series. Oshin works for several people over the course of her life, but mostly she finds her greatest successes and happiest times when she is running her own businesses. For Oshin, business is about supporting her family and nurturing relationships with her customers. Because the men in her family repeatedly over-extend and expand those businesses only to see them destroyed through outside circumstances, she becomes, understandably, risk-averse.

Oshin never becomes a labor advocate. In fact, she often exploits the free labor within her family in exactly the same way that her labor was exploited. But she does see the circumstances of the family farm improve through the efforts of Kato, and she does ensure that everyone is ultimately paid for their labor and taken care of within her family.

The feminism of Oshin is even more subtle. She proves several times over the course of her life that she does not need the patriarchal family structures of her time to survive and to thrive. She can support herself and her family. She encourages all the people in her life to pursue their dreams. She experiences having to live under the thumb of a terrible mother-in-law, and she tries not to be the same when her son becomes the head of the family. She aspires to see all her children become educated and have opportunities that she never had. Her resistance to the patriarchy she lived in is largely internalized and hidden.

Finally, Oshin, for all her entrepreneurial spirit, does not care about wealth at all. She lives through Japan’s post-war economic miracle with a healthy skepticism that materialism matters beyond meeting people’s basic needs. Oshin’s primary values are family and relationships. When materialism and greed threatens her family and the relationships that have sustained that family through some of the hardest times in the 20th century she objects and resists in surprising and narratively satisfying ways.

These themes, while overt, are not a constant presence in the series. The story is much more frequently focused on the day-to-day drama in Oshin’s life. She establishes several successful small businesses over the course of her life, but they are destroyed in sequence usually through circumstances beyond her control, and she has to start from nothing again. In the meanwhile, she falls in love, meets a man who she marries against the wishes of her mother-in-law, has children and ultimately builds a financially successful business with them. 

Oshin at 83 played by Otowa Nobuko

Ep. 186 of Oshin vs. The Finale of M*A*S*H

The most-watched episodes of all time in the US and Japan could not be more different.

The final episode of M*A*S*H was a Very Special Episode in virtually every sense of the phrase in US culture. The production team used five episodes’ budget to produce a 2.5 hour epic that dealt with the trauma of war and its effects on the beloved cast of characters that the US audience had enjoyed for 11 years. It used narrative and film techniques that were otherwise not available or used in the series prior to its conclusion. It was advertised and hyped and everyone who had ever enjoyed the series found a television to watch it on when it was broadcast.

Ep. 186 of Oshin was very much just another episode of the series and interest in the show just happened to peak that Saturday. Much more dramatic events in the story occur both earlier in that week’s episodes and on the following Monday’s episode. Those events have consequences that effect the rest of Oshin’s life, but ep. 186? Not so much.

And so do not watch Oshin expecting ep. 186 to be some iconic moment in the history of Japanese television. The series as a whole is iconic and great, but that particular episode is just a small part of that achievement.

Conclusion

Oshin was the most watched series in Japanese television history and deserves its reputation, popularity and acclaim. Through the lens of one woman’s living through the worst times and the best times in 20th century Japan we are reminded that there were Japanese voices speaking against militarism even as the military led the country into ever expanding conflicts and war, that there were people fighting for worker’s rights even against landowners who had exploited farmers for centuries, that women are as capable of running businesses as men, and that materialism is no panacea or safeguard for one’s family. It is an important part of Japanese television history and is worth watching in that light.

Oshin was certainly influential on subsequent Japanese productions, particularly in the asadoras which were made thereafter. For me a series must both be influential and also make me want to rewatch it in order to merit a rating of 10. Oshin absolutely is as influential as any bit of media in Japanese history. But I doubt I will ever wish to see it again unlike, say, Gochisousan (which covers much of the same time period through the war), Amachan or Natsuzora each of which are asadoras that I would happily watch again anytime. And so on my personal rating scale Oshin is a 9.0.

Ten Years

Ten years ago (approximately today) six young people dragged their suitcases into a posh rental house in Shonan some thirty miles southwest of Tokyo, and their introductions to each other as housemates for what should only have been the next few months were filmed for a reality television series called Terrace House. We do not know exactly what day that first shoot was, but the first episode was broadcast on Fuji-TV on Friday night at 11 pm on October 12, 2012, and it was clear in subsequent weeks that the production had set itself the challenge of presenting each episode a week after shooting them because this was the rare if not unique reality show in which the cast could watch the show on the show. In some ways, the series was something completely new in the genre, and in some ways it was just another reality dating show. But Terrace House was great, and Terrace House was terrible, and the wings of Icharus melted at the height of his trajectory and he fell, crashing into oblivion and legend. 

Well … since it’ll be both men and women

There might be some exciting romances that emerge

Or maybe surprisingly just nothing will happen

- Translation by Terracemouse

There was a lot of reality television before Terrace House, but its obvious antecedents were The Real World and Ainori. Unlike The Real World, however, the housemates on Terrace House rarely if ever “stopped being polite”. The housemates on Terrace House were not generally cast for the drama that they would bring to the show. Terrace House was never about people coming from different backgrounds and being confronted by that difference. Both shows kept cameras and microphones off the screen, and both provided opulent, aspirational living environments, but the aesthetics were nearly opposite: The Real World digs were popping with colors and the promise that parties could break out at any moment while the Terrace Houses were monochrome with little to distract from the minutiae of people living day to day, People entered The Real World knowing the shoot world be over in a few weeks and they’d be back to their lives. Terrace House was life, a place for people to live for a while and to progress.

The more immediate predecessor of Terrace House was Ainori which had wrapped its first 451 episodes before its Netflix era nearly 8 months earlier also on Fuji-TV. Ainori was on Monday nights at 11:20, the slot TH would take over the following year. In many ways, Terrace House was an immobile, de-gamified and upscale Ainori. Terrace House, in contrast to Ainori, was like: let’s step back, breathe and stop pressing these young men and women to confess and to start dating. Just let them be, and see what happens.

But the one key thing that is shared between the two shows is the panel. Panels are extremely common, in fact, nearly ubiquitous on Japanese variety shows.But Ainori unlike most Japanese variety did not use continuous insets of the panelists’ faces reacting to the edit, and chose, instead, to have intro and closing panel segments as well as occasional commentary segments in the midst of the action. Terrace House initially scaled that back even further to its single host YOU only doing intro and exit segments, but since It also did not use producer-prompted confessional segments like The Real World, the only real source of narrative exposition within the show were the producer-prompted boy talks and girl talks. Doing so certainly increased the documentary feel of Terrace House, but at the same time it missed a bit of that audience surrogacy that could only come with panelists marveling over what had just occurred on screen. It is probably no coincidence at all that Torichan was introduced immediately after Riichan’s sunset rejection of Tecchan’s attempt to hold her hand - who wouldn’t want to share the watching of such iconic moments and talk about them?

Because the first season of Terrace House was never shown on Netflix outside of Japan, Boys x Girls Next Door remains comparatively difficult for fans of the show outside of Japan to find and enjoy. In many ways it remains the best season of Terrace House. But it’s reputation as the golden age of Terrace House distorts the truth about its position in Japanese culture and hides the fact that there were almost certainly more problematic issues happening behind the scenes than even Tokyo 2019 - 2020 whose reputation following the suicide of Kimura Hana was so sullied that we are almost certainly never to see anything released under that brand name again.

One article has collected all the accusations that were levied against the producers of BxGND: https://renote.jp/articles/168807 . Bear in mind that all of the sources cited are essentially tabloids, nevertheless, it seems likely that most of these are true if only because they are the kinds of things that have been documented in other reality TV productions throughout the world.

It seems likely that Miwako and Yuiko were sexually harassed. I doubt that Tecchan climbed into bed with Yuiko because both his lawyers and, more important, her lawyers sent cease and desist letters explicitly denying that he did so to the bunshin that repeatedly published that story. OTOH, there’s no reason to disbelieve Yuiko when she said in her blog at the time that someone who had access to the house did so, and that she slept in one of the cars for a couple of nights in fear.

Likewise, it would not surprise me at all if someone on the staff wanted Maimai (chay) to name drop her father’s company Nagatanien during her introductory episodes, and that she refused to do so. (chay’s grand uncle created a packaged instant ochazuke in the early 50s that made the company a hugely successful food brand. She is not in the direct line of succession, but her father is in charge of a production facility, and they are still quite well-to-do: she attended the private school that the imperial family attends.) She has openly spoken of having a difficult relationship with her family who have been against her musical career ever since she first started busking.

The cash for kisses and confessions story seems likely to have occurred as well, but I am skeptical that it occurred more than once or twice. It seems likely that it’s something that a disgruntled member of the production staff did see happen, but it also seems likely that that staff member was fired and was bearing a grudge against the company. I suspect we would have seen way more kisses if that cash bonus were always on offer from the company. And, of course, the opposite allegation is made against Riko (and to a lesser extent Aya) in refusing to let their relationships be captured on camera.

Lastly, the final inevitable allegation is that production scripted everything like all reality shows do everywhere. Here we were told that the head of production and the same guy who allegedly grabbed Miwako’s breasts would harangue house members on the phone telling them what to say and who to date on the show. I am skeptical that the phone was necessary. I am also skeptical that the show was ever as scripted as the tinfoil hats want to believe it was. Almost certainly the production had a hand in the selection of all locations outside the house: that’s pretty much a legal and logistical necessity. And there is ample evidence that production would often make suggestions to housemates on shoot days. But if production were scripting everything, then they were terrible at their jobs since they could have been making swoopy pairings every month at rates much more in line with previous shows like Ainori. The more likely scenario is that production was perpetually more concerned about what was going to be shot next week and capturing interesting if not spicy moments than mapping out story arcs for each of the housemates.

But if Terrace House was terrible in the same ways that many reality television shows are terrible, if Terrace House was never the pristine, objective documentary of some young people’s lives in Japan that some of its fans wanted to believe it was, if Terrace House was sullied by occasional if not chronic power harassment and sexual harassment behind the scenes, then despite all that Terrace House was also great. And here’s why:

The most important essential ingredient in Terrace House’s recipe was its casting formula. Yes, the housemates were selected for beauty, charisma and style, but that’s true of most of reality television. Many shows begin with, “let’s put a bunch of young, hot people on screen.” As fans came to the show in its later years the assumption was that everyone on the show were models. But the formula for casting on Terrace House was never a suburban version of the cast of America’s Next Top Model sharing a house. Instead, the show generally targeted for casting at most two models among its six slots, at least two artists, musicians or athletes, and two people with more normal jobs outside the public eye. These latter two slots were essential audience surrogates and, in the middle of the first series, they became a huge driver of audience engagement when the show started accepting applications from anyone to live in the house. 

Terrace House needs reasons to get out of the house. Dates and group dinners are fine, but if one of the housemates were, say, a member of the biggest selling jpop group in Japan, then the show could film at the group’s events promoting both the group and the show. And so Terrace House consistently cast at least four members whose jobs would take them outside the house and provide hooks that would entice existing fanbases to try watching the show.

A second important element of Terrace House’s success was positioning itself as not being entirely about romance and dating.The panelist YOU always asserts that the show only provides the house and a couple of cars. There is “no script at all”. We the audience are just supposed to watch and see what happens. If the hot housemates begin to get interested in each other, then we’ll just happen to be seeing that too. Here’s an article from a music site a week before the show started:  https://www.barks.jp/news/?id=1000083585. 

Fuji TV's "Terrace House" is a full-fledged "Reality Show" that records six men and women living together, but the program has become a hot topic because AKB48's Rie Kitahara will be appearing on it. What kind of life will this AKB48 member (who is prohibited from dating) live in a house with six men and women? Youth, friendship, love, dreams, jealousy, frustration, etc.: a drama without a plot unique to a reality show will develop. [Edited Google translation]

As you can see, even in the press release that this article was obviously based upon Fuji-TV was pushing the idea that anything could happen and if that happened to be a forbidden love between and idol and a mere mortal, then so be it (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).

A third essential element of Terrace House was the production design and aesthetic. No cameras and mics ever on screen. Minimalist interior design for the houses. No interactions with hosts on screen or even in real life (to the extent possible -Torichan had a few scenes in a jdrama where OND’s Risako played a waitress prior to Risako’s joining the house.) The intent of the production design in the world of the housemates was to convey the illusion that the housemates were not on a shoot and were just living their lives as they would have in that situation without the presence of camera operators, sound techs and other production staff who obviously had to be there all the time during filming.

At the same time, the housemates could and were encouraged to watch the show on the show. Or, at least, we were allowed to see them watching part of the show on the show: the instances when they are shown watching a panel segment are very rare. The housemates in the first series only learn that the show is coming to an end from seeing Torichan announce from the episode filmed three weeks earlier. And Emika in the final Japanese series receives a bunch of goodbye photos including one of her flipping off Yamachan while she watched. In the world of the show, the panel almost completely does not exist for housemates. In some sense, this structure is not a new idea at all: sports competitions have had announcers since at least the advent of radio broadcasting, and the players never need to acknowledge their existence. We never even question that we are watching people watch the game in sports programming. On Terrace House life itself is a sports broadcast.

Outside of sports broadcasting, having a group of panelists discuss filmed footage was comparatively unheard of in television (in the US at least) prior to Terrace House. Talking Dead had achieved some eclat for being a show about watching a show in the four years prior to Boys & Girls in the City’s release on Netflix. And so the idea of having a group of people talk about a show on the show itself, while common on Japanese variety shows, was comparatively novel in the US and helped spark audience engagement through the meta nature of that process. To talk about the panel on Terrace House was to talk about people talking about people on a show. To talk about one of the many podcasts about Terrace House which started springing up in 2017 is to talk about people talking about people talking about people on a show. Which goes even one layer further when we talk about that here.

Thus, a panel is essential to what Terrace House became even if it was not there at the start. My guess is that the panel was originally built to represent the demographics that the show was hoping would watch the show: men and women from teens to fifty-somethings. In some ways, the panel for Shanghai Share Life was even better than the stellar panel recruited for Terrace House. In terms of ages, the SSL panel is essentially five Torichans and a YOU which brings a bit more energy to the discussions, and it also helps that not having the Japanese sempai/kohai dynamics allowed that panel to share the discussion much more equally. The Chinese version did not have the issue of that the youngest member had to wait for everyone else to talk before he could say anything.

The fact that there was ultimately no planned end-date for any of the Japanese versions of the series is also another great aspect of the show although Shanghai Share Life did fine having one. There was a sense in the middle of each of the series that life in the house could go on forever with new people moving in as people left for whatever reason.

Lastly, a word must be said for the music. The demographics of the music selection probably skews towards Dad Rock throughout all the series, but the show always had its hand on the pulse of current popular music as well. BxGND was part of Taylor Swift’s push into the second largest music market on the planet. There are people in Japan who still primarily regard her as part of the show. 

When Netflix started financing the production of the show there started being two versions of the sound track with similar versions of each track being chosen from 5 Alarm Music for the international version of the show. It’s generally agreed that the earlier curation of the 5 Alarm selections is better in B&GITC and AS than in subsequent series. For people outside Japan Slow Down and Tomorrow’s Ours by Lights Follow are quintessential Terrace House. In fact, the international version of the soundtrack is now the only version available anywhere online for those two series. Netflix Japan has moved to that version and even the unlicensed streaming sites ripped that version back before the show surged in popularity.

But all these things are just the frame for what made Terrace House great. It was a franchise filled from beginning to end with iconic moments. From Riichan’s emphatic rejection of Tecchan’s attempt to hold her hand to The Meat Incident to Tsubasa and Shion to Reo revealing he still carries Yo-san’s key from the first series in Tokyo 2019 - 2020 and even beyond to the utter cringe of the double confession to Carmon in Shanghai Share Life, the show consistently reached peaks of drama and investment in the people on the show that are rarely matched on other reality series even on dating shows set up to bring couples together far more efficiently than Terrace House.

Could the show have created a safer experience for the housemates, and should it have done so? Yes. There should have been better psychological screening when casting the members of the house (if there was any whatsoever). And there should have been counseling resources readily available at all times. And there should have been aggressive social media monitoring and management and legal response to online hate. Would these things have prevented Hana Kimura from ending her life and the show? Probably not. There were other factors that contributed to that tragedy including lockdown during the pandemic, her agency refusing to let her leave the show when she first wanted to, her prior history of self-harm and the popularity of the show itself at its peak.

The good news ten years after the housemates first rolled their suitcases into the house is that by most standards the franchise was a huge success wildly expanding beyond the humble aspirations of a late night Friday broadcast that mostly had a 6% rating during its initial run. If we include Shanghai Share Life, the Terrace House franchise brought us 301 fantastic episodes of reality television and a movie. The Real World and Ainori have both had far more episodes, but Terrace House is still in pretty rarified air as far as these things go.

And there is absolutely no reason that its key elements can not be brought back in new series in any country. The essential elements are mise en scène and can be copied by any production. Many of these elements have been used in other shows. Unfortunately, most of the producers of successors to Terrace House have looked at the show and decided that what is needed is gamification like Ainori to bring couples together. Heart Signal in Korea, then China and now Japan took that approach and now Youku and Abema routinely put out shows with that format. The redditor u/MNLYYZYEG routinely tracks such shows. Here’s a recent list: https://www.reddit.com/r/koreanvariety/comments/xrzrbp/comment/iqiekpd/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 .

But for me it’s not Terrace House when the focus is only on the dating. I love the bonding and friendship in general. For all the protestations that “it was all fake”, that everything was scripted, the evidence in subsequent years is that in the vast majority of cases these people in the house came through the experience having grown and made friendships that persist to this day. I want more of that. I wanted to see even more of, say, Ami and Tsubasa’s friendship that really only comes to light on the show when Ami leaves. I want a show about whole people and the whole of their lives. Because at its core, that’s what made Terrace House unique. That’s what made Terrace House great.

Ten Years. I still have hope there will be more.

An Ashida Mana Career Retrospective

This post is a horrible idea and you should not read it. Ashida Mana is a child star. There is a good chance that you have seen her, and did not know it. She has played two characters that you will remember for the rest of your life if you seek out those performances. She is an actor. She is currently taking a break. (And by break I mean she's only done voice work as the narrator of the asadora. Manpuku) She is in middle school.

This post is a horrible idea and you should not read it. The world is not kind to child stars. Their job is to create personas that we will love. But with that love comes expectations. We suck at separating the person from the persona for all actors, and we are even worse at doing so with young actors. The annals of Hollywood are strewn with childhoods marred by early success and the attendant fame and expectations. Ashida Mana is that famous in Japan. She should be that famous here. She is that good.

This post is a horrible idea and you should not read it. She was six.

I'll let that sink in.

This post is a horrible idea and you should not read it. I mean, it's not unprecedented. Shirley Temple was five when she was in the film that launched her career. Shirley Temple was a hugely talented individual. Ashida Mana is the better actor. Oh, she can be inconsistent, and directors can let her overact. But when she's on ...

This post is a horrible idea and you should not read it. This post is about the legendary career of Ashida Mana who is 14 now, and who has already created two more indelible characters than most actresses ever will. I will talk through all the roles that are available for viewing with English subtitles. I will start with the few that you can avoid - not because she wasn't good (she's always a pro and welcome to see on screen), but because she is not given much do.

What to avoid:

Happy Together, All About My Dog (2011) is an anthology film about dogs with segments that vary wildly in tone. The comedic segments generally fall flat, and the one melodramatic segment is overlong. Ashida appears in the final segment, and has maybe three lines. One of those lines is meant to summarize the film, but even her talent cannot salvage this mess.

Liar Game Reborn (2012) is actually a fun film, particularly, if you like the game-theoretic analysis of one particular variant of musical chairs performed by a collection of OTT manga cliches. And who wouldn't? Ashida plays Alice, a member of the mysterious organization that runs the game. It's a perfectly serviceable performance, but the role is just part of the exposition machine.

Alice In Liar Game (2012) is a series of four short promotional segments for the film that gives the backstory for her character. She plays a prodigy well as one might expect, but there is not much for her to do here beside try to entice people to watch the film.

Support Roles:

Because of her breakout in Mother, Ashida became the go-to casting choice for children of broken families. Her character has a single parent in all these roles except in two cases, and in one of those case it's actually uncertain since the character's father is never seen or referred to. This next set of productions are all well worth watching but Ashida's character is not the protagonist. She generally has some moments in each of these where she shines, but the story is not about her character.

Ghost (2010) Yes, there is a Japanese remake of my high school classmate Demi Moore's film from 1990 (she only attended our freshman year and I didn't know her). It has some interesting twists on the original including the fact that Ashida plays the equivalent of the Vincent Schiavelli character.

Bunny Drop (2011) The focus here is squarely on Ashida's character Rin's much older nephew as he decides to adopt his unexpected and unknown aunt after his grandfather's death in this film. We do not get much of her side of the story which would seem to me to be far more interesting. Instead, the film tells the story of his learning to be a parent to Rin.

Pacific Rim (2013) Yes, that Pacific Rim. This is where you probably already saw her. She played the young version of Mako in flashbacks.

Beautiful Rain (2012) is a surprisingly upbeat drama about Early Onset Alzheimer's. Ashida plays Miu the young daughter of a machinist and widower, Keisuke, who is facing the disease. Understandably, he lies to her about his prognosis as he tries to deal with the disease and prepare for Miu's future. And so she has to grapple with the truth as it comes to light. The focus is squarely on Keisuke, but Ashida is essential and excellent in it.

Hanachan no Misoshiru (2014) is a pure but effective melodrama in which a man falls for a woman, Chie, with breast cancer, and they marry and have a child despite the risk that doing so will increase her chances of the cancer recurring. Ashida plays Hana who learns to make misoshiru from Chie before the cancer recurs. Ashida takes over the role of Hana at about the half-way point of the film, and she does have a couple moments, but the film largely focuses on her parents. Michiko Ono plays Ashida's mother for a second time here in a much more extensive role and is great as usual.

Marumo no Okite (2011) is a story in which the talking dog proves to be surprisingly irrelevant. Instead, this drama is mostly the story of Mamoru who works in the complaints department of an office supply manufacturer having been banished there after a customer complained of sustaining an injury after trying to use the pen cap he designed to clean her ear. His best friend dies, and Mamoru learns that the surviving family wants to separate his friend's twins. Mamoru volunteers to take care of the children, and every episode he writes a rule (okite) for their new little family which now somehow also includes a stray dog who talks occasionally. Ashida plays the smarter twin, of course.

Our House (2016) is Ashida's most recent drama appearance (she was the narrator on the asadora, Manpuku, but voice-over work is much less of a time sink). In this comedy she plays Sakurako, the oldest daughter, of a musician whose wife who died six months prior, and who has just returned from Las Vegas with a new gaijin wife, Alice, who he has neglected to tell about his previous wife and their four kids. Sakurako goes head to head with Alice trying to get her to leave even as Alice tries to win over her unexpected new family. Ashida overacts in spots in this one, but she also hits the series' highs in her performance.

Sayonara Bokutachi no Youchien (2011) is a movie that I watched with very low expectations, but is very much a kind of live action Miyazki Hayao film. And then I discovered it was written by Sakamoto Yuji who I have written extensively about because of Mother. It's the fable of five kindergartners who, in the face of the dissembling of all the teachers and adults in their lives, set out on their own to visit their terminally ill friend at a hospital three substantial train rides away. Mitsushima Hikari plays the teacher who lets the five escape from the kindergarten when she takes an illicit smoke break. One by one the five are recovered until only Ashida's character, Kanna, reaches the hospital. Along the way the kids have adventures and encounter strange adults. 

The Great Roles

Ashita, Mama ga Inai (2014)

Remembering How To Say Good Things: An Overreaction To Dreamcatcher's "Scream" MV

I watched a KPop music video that was released last week (2/18/2020) and liked it so much that I did a very stupid thing: I then watched every reaction video that was released for it.

(I am lying: I loaded every reaction video that searching "dreamcatcher scream reaction" in the YouTube search bar would cough up. There were a handful of videos that I stopped watching when the sound of the MV was too low in the mix or there was too much noise to hear the song. And, of course, the YouTube search algorithm does not deliver all the videos that meet the criteria. Safe to say I have seen all the reactions that have at least a few hundred views to date and most of the ones who have fewer.)

Here is the text we shall be considering today:

It's A Good Video

I am not a fan of KPop.. 

More accurately, I am not a fan of pop music in general. 

I do have a bit of that cloying hipster gene that wants to frame myself as floating above the tastes of the hoi palloi. The truth is I graze widely and very occasionally go deep into very specific bands or genres. I am old and so that means I've encountered a bunch of stuff, and rarely I add a group to my bag of precious gems. 

Dreamcatcher and particularly this video is a precious gem. For me.

The MV for "Scream' is a strikingly beautiful visual art work presenting a powerful song. It uses a lot of CG to present a fantasy setting for a solid EDM bop, and both the video and the song seem to be about something. As we shall see from the reactions, the result is that a wide variety of people find it intriguing and a genuinely enjoyable experience to watch. It evokes a lot of goosebumps and surprised smiles and lots of yelps of delight (though, ironically, few actual screams) and only occasional tears (from the longtime stans),

I do not believe there is an objective "good" in art. There is technical proficiency, of course. "Scream" is slathered in technical proficiency. From the construction of the song, to the art direction, to the editing, to the costuming, to the choreography, to the performance and skills of the women in Dreamcatcher it's all highly professional, and most of the creative decisions are in consonance with the themes of the material.

But that's not why "Scream" is a good video.

"Scream" is good because it's a kinetic expression of human power in opposition to social network systems that dehumanize and hurt people. 

We shall dive deep.

A Lot Of People Think It's A Good Video

Broadly, the reaction videos for "Scream" can be grouped into three categories:

• People who have never seen a Dreamcatcher video and were unaware of the group prior to being recorded.
• Fans of Dreamcatcher
• People who routinely react to KPop videos.

The uninitiated are the rarest and most precious of the reactions. They are uniformly positive for this video. Lots of puzzlement leading to surprised grimaces of "this is not what I expected from a KPop group" leading in turn to head-bopping grins at the drop, gasps at the rap breaks, breath-holding at the bridge and giving over to the jam at the end. The TBC leaves them confused and wondering about what they just saw.

The fans have a bit more range in their reactions. Their expectations based upon prior videos and songs sets them up as fragile at the beginning. Can this song live up to their expectations? Most of this group say yes, and rationalize any shift of genre from rock to EDM as well within the purview of Dreamcatcher's ouvre. The only disappointment in any of the reaction videos, however, come from a few fans who only want metal guitars and vocals in the chorus, and want an even darker visual style with greater contrasting flashes. However, the majority of fans beam at this video throughout and declare it the best one yet, not only because of the obviously larger budget, but because they recognize that this is a song that they love and will become a happy, welcome part of their lives.

The reactions of the semi-pro KPop reaction video community who react to most KPop videos as they are released (besuretolikeandsubscribeandhitthatnotificationbell, thank you) are uniformly positive as well ranging from good to great. The common theme among this crowd is that Dreamcatcher is slept on. Dreamcatcher is acknowledged as having an unusual concept but still well-within the fold of KPop girl-groups and most are astonished at the fact that this group checks all of normal tick-boxes of KPop success (stable vocals, sharp intricate synchronized group choreography and women visually at the very center of the narrow band of what is considered beautiful by KPop standards) but have yet to amass a large, rabid fan-base within South Korea itself. The semi-pro video reactors enjoy this video as a change of pace, and the fact that the group is maintaining their concept despite the fact that doing so inhibits the amount of success they should be seeing compared to equally talented groups.

Getting Into It Is Good

The theme is RIGHT THERE in the opening shot

I didn't tally this metric, but I believe that most reactors read these lines before unpausing the video. A few do not manage to read the entire thing before it disappears. Those who do read it generally agree with the sentiment and then forget about it.

Most people find the video intriguing and do want to figure out what it is saying, but I think only one of the initial English-speaking reactors actually parsed from the first viewing that the theme of the video is that personal attacks on the internet and social media in particular are bad. 

Part of the issue is that the lyrics are saying something that is close to that theme but not exactly the same thing. And the video visually ignores the denotation of the lyrics to support instead the connotation of the theme. That disjoint is exacerbated in the reaction videos by the fact that translations were not yet available for most of the reactors, and even when they were available and subtitles turned on, the cuts and transitions are far too fast for much attention to be left for the first-time viewers. Now's the time to review the lyrics (via Genius):

[Verse 1]
My covered eyes
Are stained with blood
Tell me why
I don’t lie

Cold wind blows
I can feel the stare
Flowing through the vein All Pain

[Refrain]
The feeling of the tied two hands going to sleep
Even when everyone throws rocks at me
I can’t escape

[Pre-Chorus]
Nothing entertains me
Who is this for
Someone please tell me Tell me
On the blazing up fire Now

[Chorus]
Please I don’t want to scream
(Devil eyes come, open my eyes, open my eyes)
Please I don’t want to scream
(Scream scream scream scream)
Spread in the darkness Scream
[Verse 2]
Trick behind the mask, ridiculous Freak
A random Target born from growing animosity
Even if I drink away the burning parchedness, they blame the hypocrisy on me
At the end of the chasing lies the cliff
The choice that only remains regrets

[Refrain]
The sharp words akin to a sharp knife
Even if they dig into me as wounds
I can’t end this breath

[Pre-Chorus]
I don’t know anything
Who is this for
Someone please tell me Tell me
In the rising smoke now

[Chorus]
Please I don’t want to scream
(Devil eyes come, open my eyes, open my eyes)

[Bridge]
After everyone leaves
I open my eyes again
All traces are gone
Can’t believe me
Don’t be sad
No more No more No more
For me No more No more No more
Uh uh, Forget everything you saw
Believe that nothing happened
Like that, one by one, everyone get crazy
[Chorus]
I just wanna make you scream
(Devil Eyes Come)
Everyone look at me and Scream
(Scream scream scream scream)
I just wanna make you scream

The imagery of verse 1 through the first refrain is that of a witch being tied up and persecuted. The video however ignores that specific imagery, and instead presents the women on a witchy wasteland set and wearing fashions from the Stevie Nicks school of occult toggery.

Jui is singing about blood covering her eyes with no blood covering her eyes

An extremely common reaction here is shear adoration of that purple hair.

The previous promotions have set the expectation that there will be a serial narrative conveyed through a series of MVs starting with this video. And so it's perfectly reasonable to guess that the women of Dreamcatcher will be given distinguishing roles or powers in this set of videos and so I do think the visual of Siyeon at the end of verse 1 ends up being a bit of a red herring and a thematic misstep:

No, really, Siyeon is singing about pain running through her VEINS

Despite the fact that she is singing about being in intense pain, Siyeon looks calm and sultry.

Similarly, our first glimpse of the dance choreography is to the refrain about being bound and unable to escape:

This is not a dance about Gahyeon being tied up and constrained

Are the mismatches between the lyrics and visuals intentional? And if so, what is the director trying to convey by doing that? I believe the answer lays in the sense of motion that the director wishes to build. The video begins to hurtle towards something inside that tree:

Oooh, Shiny. Must runs towards that. Nothing scary there at all.

Several fans who kept themselves spoiler free even of the name of album that this video is promoting guess that this is the Tree of Life. The name of the album is "Dystopia: The Tree of Language". That is, in Christian iconography we are not talking the Garden of Eden but, instead, the Tower of Babel in sense of the video being about speech but more aptly about not casting stones and punishing people.

There is a strong visual distinction between the outside of the tree and the inside of the tree. At the drop we have fully entered the tree:

Note the masked Handong memorial dancer

The biggest laugh I had all week was the fan who reacted: "Oh, My, God: They're wearing pants!" No problem with nebulous pink arm auras, drifting volcanic ash or glowing tree portals. No, the biggest shock here is that the women are wearing pants.

We have reached the chorus which is all about fear. "Please, I don't want to scream." and "Open my eyes" are pretty strong indicators that the speaker is trying to awaken from something awful.

But the chorus also introduces the devil into the discourse in an ambiguous way. Does "Devil Eyes Come" mean devil eyes do come? Or is it imperative: I command the eyes of the devil to come here and witness this? The writer probably means both. I think there is a metaphorical interpretation of the line as well based on the ensuing verse and refrain. There is an implication of unwanted social attention - the witch is burned by her community, the adulteress is stoned by her village. The witch trial has begun.

You won't believe this, but the mask is a metaphor

The visual clues to this video being about the internet in particular begin with the lightning effects in the tunnel as we enter the tree, but we see another here in the black and white setting used for Gahyeon and later Dami: the stars are connected with faint lines indicating a network in the mathematical sense. The mask, therefore, is readily interpreted as being about the anonymity that people can put on and take off online, and the way in which doing so enables people to criticize and verbally attack others without consequence via social network comments.

The verbal text points out there is no real way to defend yourself from online pile-ons as Dami spits her first set of fire.

The fan reactions to Gahyeon and Dami are interesting. One gets the impression that they must only rarely let Gahyeon do anything at all in their videos (which I'm not sure is true in my cursory review of the previous videos). Nevertheless, many reactors are surprised and pleased to see her fully take the stage at this moment. Virtually everyone reacts thereafter to Dami, however, and it's immediately clear that she's many people's bias.

The one moment of near literal interpretation comes with the next refrain:

Sua sings about BEING stabbed, not doing the stabbing

The fans immediately think of the previous MV, "Deja Vu", but, indeed, it's not remotely the same kind of sword.

Interestingly, the shot is outside the tree which confuses things even more. She's not being stabbed, and she is not within the Tree of Language as she sings about being stabbed by sharp words.

Oooh, shiny floating gem in the middle of the spooky tree. What could possibly go wrong?

The visuals more than the song text suggest that there is something about the tree than pulls us in. We seek approval, adoration or even fame, but the whole thing can blow up in our faces at a whim.

I believe that the visuals give a hint that this video is more than about the social dynamics that lead to online attacks and mobbing, but the evidence is far flimsier here. Back in the first pre-chorus we have this brief shot:

Who? What?

It takes place outside the tree. One small question:

• How many days since the last KPop suicide?

Things inside the Tree of Language can and do have real-world consequences. This video, I assert on this flimsiest of support, is not only about the adverse socialization that can wound all of us as individuals, but also a response to the parasocial dynamics that focus hatred (like some sort of lenticular gem or something) onto certain individuals like entertainers or celebrities.

Devil Eyes Come

And so we reach the devil horn gesture. In the making of video, Gahyeon seems to think the up-raised fingers represent the devil's eyes, and who are we to doubt her - it turns that the use in music and as a symbol of devilishness in the music industry really only goes back to the Sixties at the earliest, and so the interpretation as horns is hardly fixed.

And then the goddess Siyeon sings the bridge:

The calm at the center of the hurricane

But that antipathetic parasocial attention being criticized in this MV does tend to evaporate. The mob is fickle. What do they care if they left you in the alley bleeding to death?

And so Dami (of course) with the lightning and fire of her voice reaches the conclusion:

The big gun

"Like that, one by one, everyone gets crazy" The victims become the victemizers. The internet is a breeding reactor of hatred. "I just wanna make you scream."

Boom

The Reaction Rabbit Hole Is Good

So why watch all those reaction videos? 

Well, for one, it was a good way to hear a song I like repeatedly. It is a tune that stands up to repeat listening. But more than that, it's a particularly good song for people to react to. There are a wide variety of things to catch people's attention from the fashion to the vocals to the fantasy setting (you would not be surprised by the number of Harry Potter books captured in the background of the reactor's rooms) to the unexpected EDM chorus. Most KPop videos have rap breaks, but everyone knows Dami is strong but then is surprised that Gahyeon steps in and steps up as well.

I think the very first reaction I saw was this one:

We shall come back to it because, man, that leads to an entire roller coaster of related videos.

A good solid video on the music is

My personal favorite is this video, but then, I'm a cat person:

The overwhelming conclusion after having watched all these reaction videos is that this is Earth. I believe I saw reactions from every continent except Africa and Antarctica in over a dozen languages. It's a hugely diverse fandom: we have hijabs, we have piercings, we have cat-ears, we have the ancient uniforms of the metal head. And they are all saying good things. In contrast to the MV itself, the reaction videos are almost entirely about how people do remember to say good things.

Sera Also Says Good Things

Almost exactly two months prior to the release of "Scream" that early reactor up there posted the following video:

She's a bilingual YouTuber (Korean and English). It seems she just wanted to introduce herself to a group she'd heard about like she had done many times before But then .... OMG, YOU CAN SEE THE VERY MOMENT SHE BECAME A STAN.

But the thing is, this bit of the story goes even deeper. You see, she's not just another YouTuber. She's a former member of the KPop girl group Nine Muses. And, conveniently, THE BBC DID A DOCUMENTARY ABOUT THEIR DEBUT:

Yes, that's her at the end singing,"You lift me up." I DARE you not to cry.

She rode out the debut and worked in the group for several years. Given what we see of the hellishly bad management in the documentary, it's no surprise she was graduated. But she seems neither bitter nor angry at her time in the industry. She even did a reaction video to her own group's videos including the one that hurt her the most:

And so here's this beautiful former idol, sensitive, artistic, and now, oh boy is she a FAN GIRL. What could be better? How about if she gets to meet and interview Dreamcatcher?

If that does not heal your SOUL from the travails of internet hatred, give up. Nothing can.

Postscripts Are Good

A huge shout-out and thanks to the Ask Me About KPop podcast that introduced me to Dreamcatcher 3 weeks ago.

All I can say is: thank you for starting me on this amazing and unexpectedly rewarding journey.