Japanese Ah Au

[wkeej]

on the way to finishing this series. the in-fighting is quite exciting, especially the cunning 1st wife. on the other hand, i really cannot stand the shogun, like a hopeless bum

[jade_frosts]

Screenshots from Ooku the movie

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Stars Nakama Yukie as Lady Ejima; Nishijima Hidetoshi as Ikushima Shingoro; Takashima Reiko as Teneiin, wife of sixth shogun Tokugawa Ienobu; Igawa Haruka as Gekkouin, mother of seventh shogun Tokugawa Ietsugu; Oikawa Mitsuhiro as Manabe Akifusa, leading attendant of Tokugawa Ienobu.

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[wkeej]

cool jade_frosts. the movie is similar to the second series?

[jade_frosts]

cool jade_frosts. the movie is similar to the second series?

It is a continuation on the depiction of life during the Tokugawa shogunate (the seventh generation) but I won't call it similar because it this movie focuses on Lady Ejima from the inner palace and her entanglement with a Kabuki actor Ikushima Shingoro, and the eventual punishment the two lovers face when their affair is discovered.

For your reading pleasure, The Ejima-Ikushima affair 1714: http://www.kabuki21.com/case.php

[jade_frosts]

One more tale from the 'Ooku'
Jin Kiyokawa / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writer

Refreshing the male-dominated world of period dramas, Fuji TV's popular Ooku series, loosely based on events at the inner palace in the Edo period (1603-1867), is returning to the small screen with a two-hour Ooku Special: Mo Hitotsu no Monogatari (Dec. 29, 9:00 p.m.).

The special program will star Kyoko Fukada as Oman, a samurai's daughter who starts working in the ooku--the quarters reserved for women, where the shogun was the only man allowed--to contribute to her poor family's income.

Serving the sixth shogun Tokugawa Ienobu's concubine, Oshino (Shihori Kanjiya), and meeting a footman, Shinkichi (Hisashi Yoshizawa), who is secretly in love with Oshino, Oman unwillingly gets involved in their plot to assassinate the shogun.

The first Ooku series started in June 2003, starring Miho Kanno and Yuko Asano in a tale of conflict in the ooku during the last years of the Tokugawa shogunate.

The succeeding Ooku: The First Chapter, which aired in 2004, featured the clash between Kasuga no Tsubone (Yuki Matsushita), a legendarily powerful ruler of the women's quarters and the third shogun Iemitsu's wet nurse, and Oeyo (Reiko Takashima), wife of second shogun Hidetada.

Ooku: Hana no Ran, which aired last year, focused on the struggles for power between the fifth shogun Tsunayoshi's birth mother and his wives, starring Rina Uchiyama and Eiko Koike.

The key to Ooku's success has been the casting. Selecting young actresses who are popular for their contemporary dramas, the series succeeded in making female viewers, who generally do not watch conventional costume dramas, feel at home with the genre.

The new TV special is set three years before the film version, Ooku, which opens at cinemas today. Matsushita, Takashima and Asano appear in both the movie and TV special, playing the same roles.

Loosely based on the historical ooku scandal known as Ejima-Ikushima Jiken, the film features the romance between a woman, Ejima (Yukie Nakama) who rises in power at the women's quarters, and a kabuki actor, Ikushima (Hidetoshi Nishijima).

The Ooku series sincerely aims for historical accuracy, even requiring its characters to adopt the postures and movements dictated by the rigid class system of the time.

The series does use a more contemporary soundtrack, however.

Toru Hayashi, who directed almost all of the installments of the series and the special programs, believes that no period drama can look or feel right if the crew do not know about the conventional manners and outlook of the time.

Among the highlights of the Ooku series are the showy sets that re-create the period atmosphere.

Hayashi, who previously worked for a film production company in Kyoto, says he understood the importance of details in creating a convincing atmosphere after spending three years as a movie prop maker.

The director's attention to detail can be seen in the movie version--the culmination of the crew's efforts for the TV series.

For the scenes at Edo Castle, they drew byobu-e folding screen paintings and fusuma-e sliding door paintings to authentically re-create the atmosphere of the castle.

For scenes outside the castle, an open-air set was built by Lake Biwa in Shiga Prefecture to re-create the downtown atmosphere of the period.

(Dec. 23, 2006)