A new year means certain things in Japan, like exchanging formal greetings with everyone you know the first time you see them in January. It also means the start of a new “Taiga Drama,” the big-budget historical drama broadcast by NHK, Japan’s clone of the BBC, every year. Japan has always had an excellent tradition of remembering its history through jidai geki (period dramas; this is where we get the word “Jedi” from). It’s basically as if a show as awesome as Downton Abbey was on every Sunday night, all year long, and when the year ended a new show would start up. The Taiga Drama for 2012 is called Yae no Sakura, the story of a Yae Niijima (Neesima), a female samurai who fought in the Boshin War in 1868-1869, dressing as a boy since girls weren’t allowed to fight. This was an uprising of Tokugawa Shogun-affiliated samurai lords in Northern Japan who fought against the new Meiji Government being formed around the Japanese Emperor. The story takes place in Aizu-Wakamatsu, Fukushima Prefecture, and the drama is very much intended to help encourage the economic recovery of that region, still struggling after the March 2011 earthquake and Fukushima Daiichi. Whenever a new drama starts up there’s always a “history boom” as viewers take an interest in the new subject material, and I’m sure many fans will be making visits to this historic region of Japan.
A new samurai period drama set in Fukushima.
