On Japanese television, mornings are for drama — asadora, to be precise.
A portmanteau of “asa” (morning) and “dorama” (drama), “asadora” is the colloquial term for NHK’s “Renzoku Terebi Shosetsu” (serial TV novel) — a serialized, 15-minute program that airs weekdays from 7:30 to 7:45 a.m. (The week’s five episodes are then shown again on Saturdays from 9:25 to 10:40 a.m.)
Given the format, these slices of historical drama have proven particularly easy to follow, and since first airing in 1961, the asadora has been an important vehicle for educating a general television audience on the lives of relatively unknown Meiji, Taisho and Showa era pioneers, many of them women.
Among the most archetypal and well-known of the first generation of asadora is “Ohana-han” (1966-67), featuring actress Fumie Kashiyama. This epic about a young woman, who was born in the Meiji Era (1868-1912) to survive repeated hardships while single-handedly raising a large family, attracted fully half of the nation’s households. Two decades later, “Oshin” (1983-84) followed a somewhat similar storyline across a staggering 297 episodes. It subsequently became Japan’s first international success, being shown with subtitles in 68 countries.
While the asadora went into something of a decline in the 2000s, it still attracts a household rating close to 20% and maintains its untouchable status as the longest-running series in Japanese television history.
The most recent asadora, which ran from April until this past week, was “Ranman,” a fictional retelling of the life of Tomitaro Makino, the “Father of Japanese Botany.” Starting Oct. 2, however, the focus will shift to music as the new series, “Boogie-Woogie,” focuses on Suzuko Hanada, a young woman who dreams of becoming a singer. The character, played by the single-named actress Shuri, is based on Shizuko Kasagi, the “Queen of Boogie.”
The choice of Shuri for the lead is an interesting one as she herself is the daughter of showbiz royalty — her father is singer and actor Yutaka Mizutani and her mother is Ran Ito, leader of influential 1970s idol group Candies.
Acting alongside Shuri in most of the key scenes will be another musical giant: Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, formerly of the J-pop idol group SMAP. He’ll play Suzuko’s mentor, supporter and close friend Zenichi Hatori, a character based on real-life composer Ryoichi Hattori.
The Osaka kid
Kasagi is one of the most famous individuals to be fictionalized in the asadora library, so it will be interesting to see how director Shin Adachi dramatizes the events that shaped this extraordinary singer’s life. Another highlight to listen out for will be the arrangement of Kasagi’s jazz-influenced songs by Takayuki Hattori, grandson of Ryoichi. The younger Hattori is considered by many musicologists to be the country’s greatest popular music composer, and his enormous output has been the subject of numerous books and academic studies.
The elder Hattori’s catalog is also notable, and is often cited as having been crucial in cheering up a population struggling to recover from the devastation of World War II. While only Kasagi’s most famous song, 1947’s “Tokyo Boogie-Woogie,” is known by a younger demographic today — largely thanks to cover versions — she was a household name in the postwar era, and her life and career should be familiar to most of the asadora’s female (and mostly retired) demographic.
Even before the war, Kasagi was breaking new ground for women. Like many female jazz singers in other countries, she grew up in a world of suffering and found her escape in song. Born Shizuko Kamei on Aug. 25, 1914, in rural Shikoku as the illegitimate daughter of a 17-year-old heir to a landowning family, she was adopted by a friend of her teenage mother’s in Osaka. A keen dancer and singer, young Shizuko became a member of the Osaka Shochiku Shojo Kagekidan (OSK), the more downscale Osakan rival to the Takarazuka women’s dancing and entertainment troupe.
OSK will go under the name USK in the NHK drama with fictional names being given to all of the major figures in her life, including three other OSK dancers and singers — Emiko Akizuki, Asa Misuzu and Akiko Asuka — all of whom were involved in what would become known as the momoiro sōgi (“pink dispute”). This was a strike for better working conditions organized in July 1933 by the members of SSK (the Tokyo branch of this Shochiku-run troupe) in the Asakusa entertainment district. The solidarity action by the Osaka branch would include a dramatic late-night train ride to sacred Mount Koya in Wakayama Prefecture. There, the OSK dancers barricaded themselves in Kongobuji temple and appealed for support from the priests and monks. It will be fascinating to see how this legendary prewar event will be handled under Adachi’s direction.
A wartime crackdown
Kasagi got her big break in April 1938, when she was selected by OSK to join the Shochiku Gakugeki-dan, a variety theater troupe. She would then meet Hattori, at the time an up-and-coming composer, who soon took notice of the diminutive singer’s powerful voice and untamed dancing style.
Within months, Hattori concluded that, among Japanese vocalists, the Kansai-accented singer was best equipped to be the vehicle for his dream of creating a Japanese version of the American swing jazz style that was rapidly making gains in Japan’s music industry.
It was during these years that Kasagi was given the opportunity to develop herself under the tutelage of not only Hattori but some of the most talented theater directors, choreographers, comedians and musicians of the era. In the comfort of the spectacular and imposing new Imperial Theater, Shochiku Gakugeki-dan artists — including highly talented tap and line dancers in lavish costumes — produced an impressive array of spectacular and pioneering musical theater. Sadly, none of these performances were ever recorded, and it will be a challenge for the director and his staff to re-create them based on a limited photographic record.
In 1939, inspired by his new muse, Hattori composed “Rappa to Musume” (“Trumpet and a Girl”) for Kasagi, encouraging her use of scat-style singing. The recording would be the first instance of such style in Japanese music history and is regarded by enthusiasts as the best jazz recording of the prewar era. In the two years that followed, she would have numerous other hits, such as “Sentimental Dinah” and “St. Louis Blues.”
By 1940, wartime political ideology was also in full swing, leading to a government crackdown on what was seen as decadent Western jazz. This derailed the trajectory of both Kasagi and Hattori’s careers. Indeed, Kasagi was specifically singled out by the authorities, receiving directives from the police to stay still, stand no farther than 90 centimeters from her microphone and avoid singing anything that could be considered Western. Her response to what amounted to an effective cancellation of her entire performance persona was to hunker down during the war years, reluctantly singing patriotic or traditional folk songs for workers in the factories.
The one bright spot in this period of Kasagi’s life, one in which her brother died as a casualty of war, was an unexpected relationship with a fan. Waseda University student Eisuke Yoshimoto was nine years her junior and the dashing eldest son of Sei Yoshimoto, the widowed wife of the founder of the Osaka-based (and still very relevant) Yoshimoto Kogyo entertainment agency.
Not surprisingly, the highly unconventional relationship was opposed by Yoshimoto’s powerful mother. Despite the many hardships of the postwar period, Kasagi would later describe her short time with her lover as the happiest of her life. And as her career began to revive in October 1946, she became pregnant. The couple’s happiness would be cruelly curtailed, however, when Eisuke became seriously ill with tuberculosis, dying just weeks before the birth of their daughter, Eiko.
Entertainer Shizuko Kasagi (born Shizuko Kamei) holds her daughter, Eiko, in a picture dated from 1947. Her tenacity, resolution and fortitude as both a performer and single mother inspired other women in her generation and the one that followed.
| KYODO
Depressed and now a single mother, Kasagi considered retiring from show business and went as far as announcing her determination to devote her time to raising her daughter. Fortunately for Japanese music history, she was encouraged by Hattori and others to continue her career. In 1947, Hattori presented the singer with his newest creation, a song written explicitly for her.
Recorded in January 1948, the up-tempo and optimistic “Tokyo Boogie-Woogie” became a major hit. In the year that followed, during which she appeared and sang in several films, Kasagi would become perhaps the most widely recognized singer in the country. Her energetic and defiant performances caused her to be seen by women as a sympathetic figure who could understand the privations of the postwar world: homelessness, disease, and the daily struggles and humiliations of trying to find food and clothing in the black market. Among her most loyal admirers was Tokyo’s large community of pan-pan gāru — sex-workers who, having seen Kasagi perform while pregnant, viewed the singer as the voice of female emotional resilience and perseverance.
The postwar legacy
Kasagi’s success also solidified Hattori’s status as Japan’s premier postwar composer. From 1948 to 1950, he worked tirelessly to provide his muse with an outpouring of jazz-infused compositions that, in combination with her vocal delivery and vibrant dancing, perfectly matched the country’s mood. This included 1948’s “Jungle Boogie,” which she performed by growling with raw sensual energy in the Akira Kurosawa film “Yoidore Tenshi” (“Drunken Angel,” 1948). “Kaimono Boogie” (“Shopping Boogie,” 1950) followed, sung in the Osaka dialect as an ode to the excitement of being able to go about your daily shopping in the arcade again.
Her performances, and the reactions to them, also provided Kasagi the means with which to cope with her personal grief, a key to achieving unprecedented status as a single mother embodying the tenacity, resolution and fortitude of women of her generation.
Kasagi’s musical and performance template quickly attracted imitators. By 1952, she would find herself increasingly eclipsed by child star Hibari Misora, who would soon become the country’s premier solo act. Kasagi’s response to this decline in popularity was to reinvent herself as a comedic actress, appearing in several movies alongside comedic giant Kenichi “Enoken” Enomoto, who was among her biggest supporters.
Performances at the Nippon Theater in Tokyo’s Yurakucho, which included those of entertainer Shizuko Kasagi, helped to combat a gloomy postwar mood in Japan.
| KYODO
In the mid-1950s, Kasagi, then in her 40s and no longer the lithe dancer of a decade prior, essentially retired from music, concentrating on movies and television while raising her daughter. Although her roles became increasingly small, she was able to boost her flagging career in the 1970s when handed the job of a judge on a popular TV singing show, and the main role in a series of ads for soap.
By the time of her death from breast cancer in 1985, Kasagi’s career as a singer was largely unknown to those born in the 1950s and ’60s. In the years since her passing, her life has been commemorated through CD compilations and TV serials, as well as successful stage musicals.
Although Kasagi’s transcendent success is already well-enshrined in Japanese popular culture, the NHK series seems certain to take her life story to a new level. Its announcement alone prompted two of Japan’s leading pop culture writers, Toshiaki Sato and Yusuke Wajima, to publish books on her life. While obviously an entertainment vehicle aimed at a general audience, “Boogie-Woogie” may successfully bring to life the power of prewar and postwar Japanese women to reimagine and rebuild themselves.
Either way, this asadora promises a veritable breakfast smorgasbord for old and new fans alike.
Michael Furmanovsky is a professor of Popular Culture Studies at Ryukoku University with numerous publications documenting Japan’s rich post war popular music culture. These are all available with free access at the websites Academia and Research Gate.