NHK’s morning drama “Boogie Woogie” Kagawa: The “deep darkness” contained in Shuri’s “outstanding” performance.

Shuri plays the heroine in the morning drama “Boogie Woogie” (NHK). In the fifth week of the drama, the existence of the birth mother of the heroine Suzuko was revealed, and Shuri’s outstanding performance attracted a lot of attention.

The model for the heroine, Suzuko Fukugi (Shuri), is Shizuko Kasagi, a postwar star known as the “Queen of Boogie” who sang many famous songs such as “Tokyo Boogie Woogie” and “Kaimono Boogie”. It is a human story that brightens up a damaged Japan with her singing, dancing, and natural cheerfulness.

In the fifth week, Suzuko returns to her parents’ hometown in Kagawa to attend a Buddhist memorial service. There, it is revealed that Suzuko is the child of Kikusaburo, a deceased member of the Jiromaru family, a local landowner, and Kinu (Noriko Nakagoshi), a maid. Suzuko overcomes the opposition of those around her and goes to a farmhouse in a neighboring village where Kinu is getting married.

Suzuko is so shocked that she runs through a grove of trees, screaming. Watching her, the famous scene of Shuri running through a shopping street while taking off her clothes came back to me vividly.

That movie is “Just by Being Alive, Love” (2006), which made Shuri’s name known to the world.

In this film, Shuri played the role of Neiko, a recluse suffering from manic-depressive illness and hypersomnia. Unable to control her emotions well, she blames Tsunaki (Masaki Suda), with whom she lives, for her eccentric and troublesome behavior. She knows herself objectively but is unable to change. At the time, I saw Neko struggling to do her best.

I couldn’t think of her as someone else’s problem,” says Shuri.

Shuri says.

Shuri studied at a ballet school in England at the age of 15, but repeated injuries caused her to fail. In playing this role, she candidly confessed to the director about her own experience of losing her dream and being in the depths of despair.

I faced up to my painful past, which I did not want to remember, and prepared for the role. The famous scene in which he runs through the shopping arcade in an emotional outburst is also a reflection of that experience,” said a producer from the production company.

Shuri strips completely naked and shed tears of freshness. Shuri’s divine appearance is still burned in my mind’s eye and will never leave. I am not the only one who saw her in the scene from “Boogie Woogie,” where she runs single-mindedly through a grove of trees. Her performance, however, goes up a gear from this point on.

Suzuko visits Kinu after spending the night with him, hears her lullaby, and is convinced that she is his biological father. On her way home, clutching her father’s pocket watch, Suzuko joins the children in playing in the water and eventually runs out of energy and lies down in the river. This scene became a famous scene that surpassed the one in “Just by Being Alive, Love”.

Suzuko lies on her back in the river and closes her eyes. The camera captures her from a bird’s eye view,

My chest, my stomach, my whole body was so hot, it felt like it was going to explode,” Suzuko muttered.

Suzuko mutters, “My chest, my stomach, my whole body was so hot, I felt like I was going to burst.

Watching this scene, which depicts the deep sadness of Suzuko who has lost sight of herself after learning the truth, I was reminded of this,

When people are sad, they don’t make sad faces.

Human emotions are not that simple.

This is the golden saying of the master filmmaker, Yasuji Ozu.

These words were given by Yasujiro Ozu to the young actress Shima Iwashita, who was chosen to play the heroine in his posthumous film “The Taste of Akutogyo” (The Taste of Akutogyo). With these golden words in mind, Iwashita rose to the top as an actress.

Shuri, on the other hand, also succeeded in expressing Suzuko’s deep sadness.

The Kagawa version ended after only three episodes. However, the production staff put a lot of thought into these three episodes.

The reason is that in order to portray Suzuko Fukugai, who overcame the turmoil during and after the war and shone as a great star, the darkness hidden deep in her heart is the magma. The deeper the darkness, the more brilliantly the star shines.

The “Tokyo version” started in the 6th week. We look forward to the “heart-throbbing and exciting” development of Suzuko, played by Shuri.