It has been announced that actress Kitagawa Keiko will star in the TV Asahi drama "Hana Noren" to be broadcast in 2025. The drama commemorates the 100th anniversary of the birth of the late Yamazaki Toyoko, known for many masterpieces such as "The White Tower," "The Magnificent Clan," and "Fubu Chitai," and is a live-action adaptation of Yamazaki's early representative work, the same-titled novel, which won the Naoki Prize. The protagonist is modeled after Yoshimoto Seiga, the founder of Yoshimoto Kogyo, and the human drama depicts the life of a female impresario who dedicated her life to Japanese show business during the turbulent Meiji and Showa eras.
The protagonist, Kawashima Taka, is married at the age of 21 to a kimono shop owner in Senba, Osaka. However, her lazy husband, Kichisaburo, spends all his time visiting entertainment districts and vaudeville halls, and the business is on the decline. After Taka advises him to "just make his hobby his main job," Kichisaburo buys a vaudeville hall in a back alley and starts a vaudeville hall business with his wife. However, Yoshisaburo passed away after taking a mistress. Taka, with the debts left by her late husband, focuses even more on the vaudeville theater, expanding the theater with her natural tenacity and business acumen. She brings the energy of laughter to the city of Osaka. Meanwhile, Taka develops a faint crush on a male customer who saves her from a difficult situation.
The model for this work is Yoshimoto Sei, who is known as the "mother of the Japanese entertainment world" and who built the foundation of modern entertainment strategies, such as adopting what is now called the audition system early on and gaining fans through merchandise sales and expanding her influence.
The script is written by Yoshida Noriko, who is known for the series "Dr. Koto's Clinic" (Fuji TV) and "Destiny" (TV Asahi, 2023), and is also making waves with the currently airing "Danchi no Futari" (NHK). Yoshida, known as a master of human drama, spins the "biography of Japan's first female producer."
Kitagawa, who plays the heroine Taka, was originally a big fan of Yamazaki's literature and read it avidly in middle school, and said, "I was surprised and happy that I would be able to appear in a work by Yamazaki Sensei."
In this work, she plays 40 years of Taka's life, from the age of 21 to her later years. She said that filming was also hectic, saying, "In the morning, we would shoot a scene of playing with Hisao as a child, and in the evening we would shoot a painful scene in which the grown-up Hisao receives his draft notice, so it was like I was aging all at once in the morning and evening, so every day was 'tumultuous.' I was doing my best to tackle each scene, but that just shows how intense Taka's life was.... What I felt while acting was that Taka was a very strong woman. I felt like I was being encouraged and given courage by her while acting."
She went on to say, "It's a human drama that nicely depicts the life of a woman, with her roles as a businesswoman who built a vaudeville hall all by herself, as a wife and mother, and her way of life as a woman. I think it will be two hours with tears and laughter that will fly by in a flash."
Screenwriter Yoshida said, "Yamazaki-sensei's unique, flamboyant works are entertaining to watch, but when it came to adapting them myself, I knew it would require a lot of effort, so I was prepared to do so. I also had to keep in mind the 'history of comedy' that lies behind it, so I researched the historical facts of rakugo, entertainment, and manzai before starting to write." She added, "I wanted to emphasize the 'passion' that Taka has within her, which is fading in today's world. The 'passion of an Osaka woman.'"
