"Anpan"Takumi Kitamura interview: Surprised by Kazunari Ninomiya's "insight"

In the Asadora drama series "Anpan " (NHK General TV, Monday to Saturday 8:00am and others), starring Mio Imada , actor Takumi Kitamura plays Takashi Yanai , Nobu's (Imada) childhood friend who later becomes her husband. In the 59th episode (broadcast on June 19th), Takashi collapses from hunger and is confronted by the vision of his father, Kiyoshi ( Kazunari Ninomiya), who died at a young age. We spoke to Kitamura about his impressions of Ninomiya, with whom he is co-starring for the first time in a drama.

"Anpan" is based on the married couple Takashi Yanase(1919-2013) and Noriyuki Yanase (1918-1993). It is a "story of love and courage" that will make you feel the joy of living, depicting how the two met, overcame all sorts of rough seas, and arrived at "Anpanman", the embodiment of "unreversible justice."

Kiyoshi, played by Ninomiya, died of an illness while working overseas for a newspaper company after working at a publishing company. He was a man of great knowledge of literature and art, and Taka's beloved father. His only appearance in the play was in a flashback scene in which the young Taka (Yuki Kimura), Chihiro (Masataka Hirayama), and his wife Tomiko (Nanako Matsushima) ate Anpan together as a family, but in episode 59, he appeared as a vision in front of the grown-up Taka, telling him, "You have to live for your father... and make something that everyone can be happy about."

Looking back on this scene, Kitamura revealed, "In front of Kiyoshi, I made small changes to gradually correct my posture to that of a child. I wanted to sit with my legs crossed, and use the nuances of the way I spoke and looked up to resemble Taku as a child."

"The only time Takagi spent with Kiyoshi was when he was a child, something he barely remembers. I wanted Kiyoshi to feel those memories from that time, and I was really impressed that he managed to pick up on that without saying anything. When Ninomiya was talking to the director, he casually said, 'Takagi is becoming more and more like a child, isn't he?' and I thought, 'He's found out!' (laughs)"

There were also moments when Kiyoshi and his older brother, Hiroshi (Yutaka Takenouchi), who would become Taku's adoptive father, seemed to overlap.

"I think Ninomiya-san and Takenouchi-san are similar but not the same, but there were some strange overlaps, and there were moments when I felt like, 'We are brothers after all,' which was interesting. I felt a blood connection with Hiroshi-san from Kiyoshi-san's words and his thoughts on the war, and I have the feeling that although Kiyoshi-san is Takashi's real father, Hiroshi-san is his father in his heart."