Kunimura Jun Shares Insights on the Charm of Imo Tako Nankin and the Appeal of Morning Dramas, Discusses Challenges on Sets of Korean and American Film Productions
16 The morning drama “Imo Tako Nankin” rebroadcast after a year
Jun Kunimura plays an important role in “Onmyoji 0” starring Kento Yamazaki and directed by Tsugumako Sato, and “Goban Zanri” starring Tsuyoshi Kusanagi and directed by Kazuya Shiraishi.
It is still fresh in our minds that his name, the name of the role he played “Kenjiro-san
One of his best-known works, “Imo Tako Nankin” (2006), a morning drama starring Naomi Fujiyama and originally written by Chikako Nagakawa and modeled after Seiko Tanabe, was rebroadcast for the first time on NHK BS 16 years after its original broadcast.
So we asked her again about the masterpiece “Imo Tako Nankin”, morning dramas, foreign productions, and more.
Q: The dialogue between you and Naomi Fujiyama, who played the heroine Machiko in “Imo Tako Nankin”, was so natural that it was hard to tell how much of it was dialogue and how much was ad-lib.
Jun Kunimura (Kunimura): Naomi would not finish a scene even if her lines were finished in the script (laughs). The director didn’t know where to cut the scene.
In a sense, he is unrestrained because he is an actor who creates and manages a kind of atmosphere on the set. And when he goes too far from the script, the rhythm of the scene is always right on. Naturally, I was trained by interacting with such a person.
–Mr. Kunimura has appeared in many other morning dramas, including “Ayu no Uta,” “Yoi Don,” “Kokoro wa Itsumo Ramune Iro,” “Miyako no Kaze,” “Futarikko,” “Audrey,” and “Carnation,” and he and Mr. Fujiyama also appeared together in “Kono Shime Tomare! and “Heart is Always Ramune Color,” “Futarikko,” as well as “Audrey,” which is currently being rerun, and many others.
Kunimura: I saw “Audrey” just the other day, and when I watch it now, I can’t help but break out in a cold sweat (laughs).
In “Imotako nankin” I was pulled along by Nao-san, but I was able to play freely without being restricted by the lines. The current morning drama “Tora ni Tsubasa” has a different taste and a different world, of course, but I enjoy watching it, thinking that it is very similar to our “Imotako” in that I can see the clear concept of what we want to create.
The vision of why and how you want to do this is clear, and everything, including the casting, is well planned and imagined.
Imotako” also has a big framework to complete a story in a week, and multiple plots are carried out at the same time, a system that only Aaron Sorkin, such as “The White House,” was using in America at that time. It may have been a little difficult to get people to understand this system on location.
