Why it’s so hard to find an understudy for Ennosuke Ichikawa in the movie “Kintori.

It has been two weeks since Toho, the distributor of the movie “Emergency Interrogation Room the Final,” announced the postponement of its release in response to the “family suicide” of Ennosuke Ichikawa.

The film is the final version of the popular TV drama series by TV Asahi, which depicts the activities of “Kintori,” a team of interrogation specialists in the Investigation Department of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. Yuki Amami played the lead role, and Ennosuke played the role of the Prime Minister who is interrogated by Amami.

Here is the synopsis.

Japan is hit by an unprecedented series of typhoons. The Prime Minister (Ennosuke) arrives 10 minutes late for a disaster countermeasures meeting during a state of national emergency. A gangster (Kuranosuke Sasaki) appears to denounce the “blank 10 minutes,” and an attack on the prime minister ensues.

The Metropolitan Police Department decides to urgently convene Kintori to solve the case caused by the thugs. Amami and his team begin interrogations, but the thugs repeatedly demand that the prime minister be brought to the interrogation room. As the interrogation reaches an impasse, “certain suspicions” emerge about the prime minister.

The thugs and the prime minister were yacht club mates when they were students. The allegations refer to crimes in which the prime minister was involved in the past, and the thug is a person who knows the details of the crimes well.

The production team plans to release the film by reshooting it with an understudy after Ennosuke’s incident.

There are reports prying into potential replacements for Ennosuke, but the actual decision has yet to be made. Naturally, it seems that they are largely keeping an eye on the progress of the investigation. It is probably difficult to make a move unless they can see what kind of decision the investigative authorities will make.”

One gets the sense that the “real” Metropolitan Police Department’s Investigation Department, which is in charge of the Sarunosuke investigation, is jittery about what decision they will make as a result of their meeting with the prosecutors. However, even if they have not been approached, they may have at least picked up some candidates to some extent.

He said, “That seems to be a pretty serious issue. After all, he is the prime minister, so the people around him and those on the outside tend to think, ‘Here’s to the big man,’ but in fact that’s not the case. …… As I mentioned earlier, the prime minister and the thugs are in the same boat club, which means that the actors who play them need to be within the same age range.

Unless the script is rewritten from scratch or Kuranosuke Sasaki is removed, the understudy for Ennosuke must be close to Sasaki’s age.

Sasaki is 55 and Ennosuke is 47. That means we need to find an actor in that age range who can give a convincing performance worthy of the role of prime minister. They cannot ask Kinya Kitaoji, Toshiyuki Nishida, or Kaoru Kobayashi to play the role of the prime minister of a country.

(The same source) There is a possibility that Teruyuki Kagawa would have been cast had it not been for the scandal, but there is a strong feeling among Toho officials that “it is difficult to cast an actor involved in Kabuki because he would look like a duplicate of Ennosuke.

For those involved, it seems that the days of stomachache will continue for some time to come.