Perhaps there is no such a Japanese drama that "suits the scene" in China. Just as the domestic debate about "996" is raging in the past few days, Japan's TBS TV just happens to broadcast a new drama from the "Tuesday Drama (火曜ドラマ)" time (22:00-23:00) on the evening of April 16, 2019, called "I'm Home on Time" (わたし, 定時で帰ります).
Poster of "I'm Coming Home On Time"
Such an eye-catching drama name is actually not what gold medal director Kaneko Fumiki came up with. Although the latter directed the acclaimed and popular TV series "Sand Instrument (2004 Edition)" and "Escape Is Shameful but Useful"; the name "I Came Home on Time" comes directly from the novel of the same name adapted from this TV series, and its copyright probably belongs to the original author, Zhu Ye Guizi.
Original novel
Born in 1979, Keiko Chuno is a highly qualified student who graduated from waseda University's First Faculty of Letters. This person has been writing novels since 2010 and has gained some popularity among young readers with his detailed details and brisk style. I'm Home On Time is her second work to be adapted into a TV series. However, the last work, the 6-episode TV series "Falling into the Sea" (海に降る), starring Jun Mura, did not seem to have a very good response after broadcasting.
As you can tell from the name, "I Came Home on Time" is a story about the workplace. In fact, "workplace topics" have long been a regular IP in Japanese dramas. About five or six years ago, the popular "Naoki Hanzawa" was such a TV series - just look at the classic lines like this: "We must pay attention to the emotional connection between people, and we must not work rigidly like robots", "The value of people cannot be measured by money." ”
What is the Japanese workplace like in Naoki Hanzawa? The play takes place on a large bank. The hero leaves work at 2 o'clock in the morning many times, almost completely does not undertake any childcare tasks and housework, has no vacation, stays up late and works overtime, and the interests of the company are absolutely higher than the interests of small families. This is indeed the typical Japanese workplace in the eyes of the public. The truth is pretty much the same. As early as 1987, Japan revised the Labor Standards Law, changing the "original statutory weekly working hours of 48 hours" to "statutory weekly working hours, 8 hours per day", which was implemented in 1988. Ironically, it was this year that a survey by Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications showed that 7.77 million people worked an average of more than 60 hours a week (that is, 5 days a week, 12 hours a day, which is equal to "995"). Even after the Abe government introduced measures in response to the "death from overwork" problem — including mandatory leave of at least five days a year and requiring a "break" before the end of the day and the start of the next day , nearly a quarter of Japanese companies require employees to work more than 80 hours of overtime a month, according to a 2016 Japanese government survey. These extra working hours are usually unpaid.
Lines from Naoki Hanzawa
It can be said that under the strong overtime culture, overtime has become a Japanese-style corporate culture and way of life. In the book "Unusual Civic Life", there is a description: "Busy work is like a scar on the body from participating in the war, which is a man's medal." "In times of economic bubbles, if the husband comes home before 10 p.m., he will still be snubbed by his wife, and the neighbors will also cast sympathetic eyes." Everyone thinks that the husband of the family is not valued in the company, does not do important work, and does not have to work overtime. Even Guiko Zhuno, the original author of the novel "I Came Home on Time," frankly admitted that "for me as a company employee, work was hard work," although reluctantly— because, as scholar Shoko Kuroda pointed out, "Japanese people working long hours are not necessarily their own will, and the workplace has a great impact on them." In the case of other colleagues working overtime, the employee who leaves work first will be excluded by the group.
Unconsciously, though, this situation seems to have quietly changed. According to the OECD, the average annual working hours of Japanese people in 2016 have dropped from more than 2,000 hours in the 1980s to 1,713 hours, although it is still 400 hours more than the Germans, it is 300 hours less than that of Koreans and Greeks. For such reasons, in addition to the promotion of the government, it is probably inseparable from Japan's "relaxed generation" entering the workplace. The so-called "loose generation" refers to the generation (born from April 1987 to March 2004) that grew up in 2002 when Japanese schools began to "reduce the burden" and implemented "loose education (ゆとり education)" under the teaching policy of "Pi can be calculated by 3". The 2016 Japanese drama "What About the Loose Generation" is a portrayal of this generation: "The state arbitrarily told us not to go to class on Saturdays, thinned the textbook, and then treated us as waste when our test scores dropped." In the eyes of the seniors in the workplace, the "loose generation" has no "sense of competition" - the most typical performance is that they still have their own interests and lives to be busy after work.
Stills from "What About loose generations"
"I'm Home On Time" is set against the backdrop of contemporary Japanese society that advocates "work style reform (that is, reducing overtime)", focusing on the ultimate confusion in the workplace: "What is work?" "Work for what?" "What is true happiness?" The protagonist of the story, Yui Higashiyama (32 years old), happens to be the earliest generation of the "Loose Generation". She is a director at "web production companies" by profession. Growing up watching a father who didn't return home because he threw himself into work (the previous generation in Japan) completely negated the lifestyle of "working with your life." She has been implementing the principle of "zero overtime" since she joined the company. She works hard and efficiently every day at work, but leaves on time without delay. In her opinion, spending time drinking beer in a Chinese restaurant with her lover Suwa Akira (a warm man who loves family, Yuichi Nakamaru) is an important part of the off-hours. This is naturally a typical "loose generation" outlook on life. Interestingly, the "Chinese restaurant" in the play is called "Shanghai Hotel", of which naturally many Japanese artists come to Shanghai to perform and praise, and even say the name of the Shanghai famous dim sum - "Xiaolongbao", it is said that it is a special "Jingding Lou" (some people evaluate it as a cottage version of "Ding Tai Feng") specially made by a small cage.
The "Jingding Building" that produced Xiaolong for this drama
Such a "human design" can be tasted for a few points. Or back to Naoki Hanzawa, in that bank, the audience can not see similar to his female employees working in the bank, the role setting is all male, and the female characters with very few scenes are only Kenuchisuke who silently supports him behind Hanzawa and the mistress of the big boss who launders money through the bank - played by the famous Japanese star Tanmi. She dresses revealingly in the play, sexy and charming, and the audience happily consumes her "body" and becomes the object of viewing. In other words, women become supporting roles in the drama "Naoki Hanzawa", and rarely play a role in the promotion of the plot. The protagonist of the earlier "Top Announcer" (2006, Hong Kong translation of "Queen Live Room", Taiwanese translation of "Anchor Station Queen") is a working woman (Tsubaki Haruka), but she is a workaholic. Again and again, for her journalism work, the anchorwoman abandons what should have belonged to her — including love and friendship. The classic line in the play is, "You put me behind the news report." "The Higashiyama Yui in "I'm Home on Time" does not belong to these two, neither a workaholic nor a marginalized person in the workplace. I am afraid that this is also a change of the times.
The "web production company" in "I'm Home On Time" has encountered a personnel turnover. When new officials take office, the politics of the office change. After all, there are still many people who think that "ideals and reality are not the same, overtime is inevitable", and that there are still many people who maintain the "overtime aesthetic"; how will the new generation of professional women with the purposes of "leaving work on time" and "not working overtime" how will the new minister who is used to sneering (who originally started his own business and sold the company to jump here), the "non-efficient male" colleague who is keen on grinding foreign workers (because "there is nothing special to do after returning home", So what's the tangle between the co-ops and the workaholic people who coexist with them (who have never taken time off from elementary school and won the company's attendance award)? Such a plot setting will undoubtedly make people look forward to Yoshitaka Yuriko, who plays this role. At least, the original author of the novel, Keiko Zhuno, thinks so, "For me, a fan of TV dramas, the lead actor Yuriko Yoshitaka is a strong actor who tolerates others and implements her own way of life."
Starring Yuriko Yoshitaka
The play's theme song is sung by Superfly
As an actress, Yuriko Yoshitaka also belongs to the "Loose Generation" (born July 22, 1988). Speaking of which, Yuriko Yoshitaka is a young man who won the 51st Blue Ribbon Newcomer Award and the 32nd Japanese Oscar Newcomer Award at the age of 20 for starring in the movie "Snake Letter and Tongue Ring". In 2014, he starred in the NHK morning drama "Hanako and Annie" for the first time. The drama's ratings reached a high level, and Gigaku's popularity soared, not only won the 82nd Japanese Drama Academy Award for Best Actress with this drama, but also appeared on the stage of the "Red and White Song Battle" that year as the Red Group Division. But in recent years, her career in the field of television drama seems controversial. Some criticized her acting skills, and some praised her performance (one of the actresses with the most fans on Twitter). The TV series she starred in were also inconsistent in word of mouth. 2017's "Tokyo Daydream Girl" is the first time in two years after the morning drama "Hanako and Annie" starring Yuriko Yoshitaka, although there are many dramas starring actresses, but the female setting of the drama has achieved a good effect, and the final rating reached 11.4%, which should be said to be a good result in today's Japan. A year later, the same time slot, "The Rin of Justice" (正義のセ), also starring Yuriko Yoshigao, was criticized for being somewhat unsatisfactory in the plot setting, the characters were not expressive enough, and the final ratings were not very satisfactory, not keeping double digits (9.8%).
Yuriko Yoshitaka, who presided over the Red and White Song Battle
In fact, starring in "I'm Home on Time" is also a new challenge for Yuriko Yoshitaka. After all, she has not starred in a Japanese drama on TBS TV for 10 years since 2009's Love Shuffle (ラブシャル) in 2009, and this is her first starring in a TBS TV series. Also, Yuriko Kikaka, who debuted as an actress at an early age, has no experience working in the company, so can she perform this role? In any case, Gigaku himself is full of confidence in this, "I put unexpected emotions into the show, and the humane and personality-rich characters appeared in the play one by one. I believe that this is a work that allows workers to become lighter after watching it, and can be full of strength to meet tomorrow."
Stills from "I'm Home On Time"
However, if the audience is full of strength to meet tomorrow's "996" work, the TV series "I'm Home on Time" seems to have some black humor.