NHK's Saturday drama "After the Earthquake" is based on a short story written by Haruki Murakami after the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake in 1995. We spoke to actor AI Hashimoto, who appeared in "#1 'A UFO Lands in Kushiro'" which aired on April 5th. We asked her about her impressions of Masaki Okada, with whom she co-starred for the first time in about 15 years since the movie "Confessions" (2010), the words he spoke to her on set, and her relationship with director Go Inoue, who knows Hashimoto well.
◇ Regarding the original work, "I felt it had such depth that the only thing I can say is that I don't understand it."
"After the Earthquake" is a drama series that adapts four stories from Murakami's collection of short stories "All God's Children Dance," published in 2000. The setting is not only changed from 1995 to 2025, depicting the 30 years of "after the earthquake" that continue from the "present."
Hashimoto played Mimei, the wife of Komura (Okada) in "#1 'UFO Lands in Kushiro'" starring Okada. Mimei had been watching the news program about the earthquake disaster, but one day she left a note for Komura and disappeared from the house.
When asked about his first impression after reading the original work, Hashimoto revealed, "I felt it was so profound that the only thing I can say is that I don't understand it."
"As I read it over and over again, I thought, 'Maybe it was like this,' and for example, I wondered if Shimao, played by Karata Erika in the drama, was 'human, an alien, or something in between?' But I felt that narrowing it down to one correct answer would trivialize it. I wanted to leave the mystery as it is, and cherish the feelings as they are, and that's something that's continued up to this day. But I never stop thinking about it."
◇ Unknown: "I always felt like my consciousness was separate from my body"
She took on the role of Mimi without knowing what she didn't know, but she never stopped thinking. In the original work, the character doesn't even have a name, and there's only a page or so of description at the beginning, but she said, "I played the role of someone who has been awakened to the violence within themselves by a kind of 'violence' that is the earthquake."
"For Komura, it was a kind of violence, but for Mina it was her only hope. By 'awakening' she saw the light. As the video shows, Mina is also a person who 'moved towards the light.'"
In the play, Mina appears to watch news programs about the earthquake disaster so continuously that she forgets to eat or sleep, and Hashimoto recalls, "I constantly felt a separation between my consciousness and my body."
"I think the quote by Godard at the beginning of the original collection of short stories (from Pierrot le Fou, the scene in which the news reports on the deaths of the Vietnam War) is symbolic. In the drama, too, the news reports on the deaths and missing in the earthquake are broadcast, and the names are read out one by one, but it's just impersonal information, and there's no telling what kind of people the dead and missing were, or what kind of lives they had. If there were 100 people, it just hits you as one lump of 100 people. It's a sense that the cruelty doesn't reach you right away. Even when you're told that 100 people died, the pain doesn't immediately reach you. I felt that distance all the time."
◇Message from Masaki Okada: "Connection" with director Go Inoue
Eventually, Mina disappears from her husband Komura, leaving behind cruel words such as, "You have nothing to give me." This is her first time acting with Okada, who plays Komura, in about 15 years, and in the previous film they were teacher and student.
"It's been a while since I last met him, and he's always been like an older brother to me, so we were able to talk on an equal footing. One scene that made a big impression on me was when Komura spots Mina in the grassland from inside the car. I was standing in the same spot as Okada (as a landmark), and when we finished filming, he said something like, 'Thank you for being there. You were a big help.' It's something he does all the time, but I think it was the first time he'd ever been thanked like this, and it made me happy that what I was doing had meaning."
Director Inoue is known for his work on the 2013 morning drama "Amachan" and the 2019 Taiga drama "Idaten: Tokyo Olympic Banashi," and has a long history with Hashimoto.
"I feel like Inoue has known me since I was a child. He has seen all of my turbulent times, so I have nothing to hide from him. We are both from Kumamoto, and we met by chance in Kumamoto after filming this drama. It's been more than 10 years since we met, but this was the first time we've met, so in that sense I feel a connection, or maybe I just feel a sense of security because we've seen similar scenes, and I really like the works that Inoue creates."
From Hashimoto's perspective, Inoue is someone who "keeps everything in the open."
"I'd say he's the type of person whose thoughts and feelings really shine through. When he's troubled, he tends to think things through a lot, and I also think a lot about the role and the work before going to the set, so it's reassuring to have someone who thinks about it even more than that, like they're fighting alongside you. This time, my role was small, but it's a joy to be able to create a production together with someone I want to fight alongside and share the same struggles with."
