NHK's late-night drama "Midnight Taxi," starring actress Kotone Furukawa, will begin airing on June 1st (NHK General, Monday-Thursday 10:45 PM). The drama is an original story by Ruri Hyodo, a 주목-worthy screenwriter who last year became the youngest recipient of the Kuniko Mukoda Award. Furukawa will play Shoko Araragi, a mysterious late-night taxi driver.
In the drama, the characters surrounding Shoko include Aoi Nakamura as Yakumo Shibasaki, a regular customer and salaryman; Marika Ito as Reika Suzuki, a regular customer and actor; Momoko Kobayashi as Mei Taira, Shoko's junior driver; Emi Wakui as Yayoi Ran, the president of an entertainment agency; and Naoto Takenaka as Gen Hirukawa, the owner of her favorite coffee shop.
A taxi drives through the Tokyo night. Behind the wheel is 29-year-old taxi driver Ranzoko (Furukawa). She's not particularly talkative, nor does she have any special talents for being considerate. Yet, for some reason, everyone who rides in her taxi later finds themselves remembering the scenes of that night. She's a woman who exudes a mysterious aura.
As lovers head to a luxury apartment building, they express their love using only the numbers on the cards they draw—a "word-limited romance." Two women, their hearts burning with excitement over a coincidence on their birthdays, search for an outlet for their true feelings, tainted with lies, as they close the distance between them through "false confessions" only permitted during candy time.
A mother tries to meet her father for the first time in 40 years, and her son follows her, confronting the weight of a single word he never said as they chase after his father's roasted sweet potato truck.
Shoko doesn't go too far in any of those things. She just subtly connects with them through the rearview mirror, sometimes cracking open a roasted sweet potato, and sometimes telling a quiet lie.
And what started as merely being a "stepping stone" in someone else's life, before she knew it, she herself was approaching the milestone of turning 30 and began searching for what she was looking for. What exactly is she searching for...?
