Hidetaka Yoshioka: “Dr. Koto Clinic” Revived After 16 years!

The drama series was launched in 2003, and in Season 2 in 2006, it recorded the highest viewer rating of 25.9%, surpassing its predecessor. The drama “Dr. Coto Clinic” (Fuji TV), which set a milestone in medical human drama, has returned as a movie.

The box-office revenue from the December 16th to the 27th was approximately 1.1 billion yen, breaking through the 3 billion yen mark at the box office. On the 28th, their Majesties the Emperor and Empress and Princess Aiko attended a charity screening to support local medical care.

After the screening, they had a chat with Hidetaka Yoshioka, Kou Shibasaki, and director Isao Nakae, all of whom star in the film.

This film is a human drama about a doctor, Kensuke Goto, aka “Dr. Koto,” who is transferred from Tokyo to the island of Shikina in Okinawa Prefecture, which has fallen into a state of doctorless village, and the islanders. The cast and crew of the previous film reunited for the first film adaptation of “Dr. Koto Clinic” in 16 years.

Director Nakae directly communicated his feelings to each of the cast members, and persuaded them to join him in this miraculous reunion.

Nakae’s team is known as one of the toughest at Fuji Television. The location shooting on Yonaguni Island, located at the westernmost tip of Japan, was a special circumstance, and the participation of staff who knew the area back then was a prerequisite.

However, the staff at that time were now in management positions, and it was extremely difficult for them to participate in this film, which was premised on long-term location shooting on a remote island. After overcoming such problems, in early May of last year, the reunited staff gathered at an “art meeting” held at Fuji Television’s Wangan Studio, and began three weeks of location shooting on Yonaguni Island in June.

However, the risks of bad weather, such as sudden squalls and waiting for the sun, were not the only things that awaited the crew. In addition to the difficulty of managing a schedule that required many people to travel to an isolated island in the middle of the ocean, the COVID-19 crisis often caused unpredictable problems.

Even if these negative factors are subtracted, the film is filled with the overwhelming beauty of nature that can only be captured on Yonaguni Island and the life of the people living on the island.

First day of shooting. Cranked in from the scene where Kensuke Goto, played by Yoshioka, puts on a white coat, rides a bicycle, and goes for a home visit to the clinic. When the islanders see him, they say to him.

“Dr. Koto!”

The scene was first shot at the beginning of the film. Dr. Koto” is still alive on the island 16 years later.

However, the fact that Kensuke Goto has been loved by the islanders during the “blank 16 years” as the one and only “Dr. Koto” is eventually driving Yoshioka to the brink of extinction.

After filming in Yonaguni, we were filming a surgery scene at the Wangan Studio. When Yoshioka saw himself in an operating gown, he couldn’t stop crying or shaking and couldn’t say the words, ‘I’m going to start the surgery,’ and the shooting stumbled from the start.

Yoshioka confessed his feelings at the time, saying, “I felt irresistible when I thought about how Dr. Koto had continued to treat patients and make house calls for the past 16 years, and had been called in for emergencies even when I was drunk and sleeping, and had worked tirelessly to spare time for sleep,” and “This was my first experience like this.”

Yoshioka made his debut as a child actor at the age of four. In 1980, he was discovered by director Yoji Yamada at an audition for the film “The Call of the Faraway Mountains,” starring Ken Takakura, and the following year he began appearing regularly in the “Otoko wa Tsuraiyo” series of films starring Kiyoshi Atsumi.

The following year, he began appearing regularly in the “Otoko wa Tsuraiyo” series of films starring Kiyoshi Atsumi. In 2003, he began his current work, which has received high ratings, and in 2005, he won the Japan Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role for the film series “Always: Sunset on Third Street”.

He also appeared in films by Akira Kurosawa such as “Rhapsody in August” and “Well Done. He is now one of the most famous actors of all time, having wowed even the most renowned masters. In his first year with the company, Nakae worked as an assistant director on the drama “Kita no Kuni Kara ’89 Homecoming.”

He was younger than me, but he had worked with Kurosawa, Yoji Yamada, Kiyoshi Atsumi, and Ken Takakura. In the beginning, I was nervous about going to the set.

I learned a lot from Yoshioka-san, including how to read a script, how to approach a role, and how to act.

He also said, “I learned a lot from him.”

Yoshioka’s gripping performance can be seen in the film’s climactic scene. Ayaka (Kou Shibasaki), a nurse who has supported Dr. Koto for many years, gets married. However, just before he becomes a father, a fatal illness strikes Dr. Koto.

A typhoon hits Shikina Island, turning the clinic into a field hospital, and many islanders, including Ayaka, collapse. and he inspires the patients and islanders to fight on their own.

In the scene where he himself faints in the middle of the treatment, but is revived and finally saves everyone and burns up, he looks like Takeshi Yabuki from “Ashita no Joe. He looked just like Kensuke Goto, who has been protecting the island all by himself for 16 years since the last film was broadcast,” said the director of the production company.

At the first day’s stage greeting

In his stage greeting on the opening day, Yoshioka said, “This is the last time I will wear a lab coat as Kensuke Goto.

Yoshioka said, “This is the last time I will wear a white coat as Kensuke Goto.” However, Ken Takakura, who is also his teacher, told him, “Making a film is like going on a journey.”

Making a film is like going on a trip. If you go on a trip, you should go with people you can trust.

If you are going on a journey, you should go with people you can trust. Will the day ever come when the silver dragon (Dr. Koto), who is fighting a lonely battle while facing life, will come back to life? Those who visited Yonaguni Island three times because of this drama, would like to quietly wait for that day.