Kasumi Arimura shopping at a supermarket in February this year. She is holding a pack of green onions.Kasumi Arimura stars in the drama “Ishiko to Haneo: Sonna Koto de Uttaemasu? -(TBS),” starring Kasumi Arimura, will begin on July 8.   The drama is set in a small law firm run by a private individual. The main character, played by Arimura, Ishida Shoko, works as a paralegal (a professional who is involved in legal affairs under the direction and supervision of an attorney) at her father’s machiben “Ushio Law Office”. She graduated with first class honors from the University of Tokyo’s Faculty of Law, but failed the bar exam four times and was so afraid of failing a fifth time that she gave up on taking the exam. The comedy drama comically portrays her as she deals with various problems and faces her own complexes as she grows up with Yoshio Haneoka (Nakamura Tomoya), a high school graduate who passed the bar exam on his first try. Arimura has played the heroine in many romantic dramas, such as “Chugakusei Nikki” (TBS), “Someday I Will Cry When I Remember This Love” (Fuji TV), and the movie “I Wish I Had a Bouquet of Flowers,” which won the Japan Academy Award for best leading actress. However, it is widely known that her acting range has broadened in the last year or so.   In “Contrast Begins” (NTV), she played the role of a family restaurant clerk whose life is supported by cheering for a comedian who rescued her from being a recluse. The scene in which she sings the theme song of the anime “Heidi, Girl of the Alps” in a high tone voice while drunk and swinging in a park late at night, and lectures the comedian she is cheering for in a lispy tone, is a performance so famous that it will be passed down through the generations. In the movie “Ex-convict,” she played a woman who is in massive debt due to her own illness and struggles to make ends meet while working as a public defender, a convenience store clerk, and a newspaper delivery man. Her ability to naturally express the difficulties of life that all women of her generation face and her desperate struggle against them is truly amazing,” said a TV station insider. Why is it that Arimura is able to play such difficult roles so naturally? Perhaps it has something to do with her career to date. In an appearance on “Bokura no Jidai” (Fuji TV) last August, Arimura talked about her childhood. “When I was in the fourth grade, my parents separated and I started living with my mother and older sister. At that time, I had to support my mother. I have to support my mother and protect my sister. I have to be a father figure.” He was already aware of her “enlightenment”. Her parents divorced when he was in the first year of junior high school, and in order to help the family financially, she decided in his third year of junior high school to pursue show business in earnest. To earn money to move to Tokyo, she spent four hours after school on weekdays and 10 hours on weekends working part-time at a sushi restaurant and a soba noodle shop. Such experiences have undoubtedly broadened her acting range. Arimura also says, “I am often told that I am calm, but I guess I have a strong sense that I have to keep my composure (since I was in grade 4).” In an interview with a magazine during her appearance in the NHK TV series “Hiyokko” in 2005, the year that marked Arimura’s rise to fame, she said, “When do I feel happy? When I am in the supermarket (laughs). The moment when I take off my make-up and the moment of slumber before falling asleep, I guess.” After filming “Hiyoko,” this magazine has seen Arimura stop by a supermarket on her way home several times, taking her time to do some shopping. Then again in February of this year, we spotted Arimura coming out of a supermarket in Tokyo. A long green onion was peeking out of the bulging supermarket bag she was carrying in both hands. Her appearance was no different from that of a woman of her generation on her way home from work, and she blended in perfectly with the everyday scenery normally found in the city. Perhaps the essence of Arimura’s natural acting lies in her ability to keep it.