Taihe drama refers to a long-running historical TV series, one has been broadcast every year since 1963, and this year's "Wei Tuotian: The Story of the Tokyo Olympics" is the 58th one.

Friends who follow Japanese dramas know that although Japanese dramas are famous for being short and concise, they also have long-form masterpieces every year. The trump card of long-form dramas is NHK's Taihe drama and morning drama .

Taihe drama refers to a long historical TV series, one has been broadcast every year since 1963, and this year's "Vei Tuotian: The Story of the Tokyo Olympics" is the 58th one. If a Dahe drama is based on a 45-minute episode with a total of 50 episodes, it would take 37.5 hours to watch one episode.

Morning drama refers to a novel series broadcast in the morning period (around 8 o'clock). It is broadcast continuously every Monday to Saturday. Each episode is 15 minutes long, and the total number of episodes is mostly 150 or 156 episodes. Calculated, it takes 37.5 or 39 hours to watch a morning drama. The total duration is close to that of Dahe Drama.

Stills from "Axin" (1983)

The morning drama started airing on April 3, 1961, and was one per year until 1974. The cycle was from April of that year to April of the following year. Starting from 1975, it was changed to two movies per year. The cycle is roughly: one from April of the current year to October of the current year, and one from October of the current year to April of the following year, with the exception of three movies that were broadcast for a whole year: Yuko Tanaka "Oshin" (April 1983-March 1984), Kyoka Suzuki "My Name" (April 1991-April 1992), Narumi Yasuda " Spring Comes " (October 1994) -September 1995). As a result, the number of morning dramas is nearly double that of Taiga drama. The currently airing " summer sky " starring Hirose Suzu (April 2019) is the 100th morning drama. do.

Morning dramas have a history of nearly 60 years. What remains in the memory of the audience are stories of inspirational struggles. The general theme is stories about women growing up in adversity. The protagonists are positive and have a positive outlook on life. "Morning drama girls" "Protagonist" has also become the chicken soup for the soul that Japanese people must drink every morning. In the past ten years, when TV audiences have been rapidly losing, the ratings of morning dramas are generally not low, even staying at around 20%. Several popular morning dramas have even given Douban netizens a rating of 8.5 or above. points, such as "Doctor Mei" (April 2012 issue) starring Horikita Maki , " Ama " (April 2013 issue) starring Rena Nonen, " Thank you for the treat " (September 2013) issue), Haru " Asa is here " (September 2015 issue), Nagano Meiyu "Half, Blue" (April 2018 issue), etc.

Poster of "Ama" (2013)

In my impression, those who star in morning dramas are basically young Japanese actresses. Most of them were in their early 20s when they starred in the drama. There are also many actresses who took on important roles in their teens, but This raises a question: Are there no male actors starring in morning dramas?

This is of course not to say that there are no male actors who have appeared in morning dramas, otherwise the heroine’s husband, father, childhood sweetheart and other roles would come from, but the lead actor who is ranked first in the cast list is whether there is a male actor. Xiao Lin looked through the cast list of morning dramas over the years, and the following actors were the leading actors in morning dramas (in reverse chronological order).

Tamatsu Tetsuji " Azheng " (September 2014 issue)

In the first decade of the 21st century, morning dramas did not choose male actors to play the leading roles. Pushing forward nearly 20 years, there was another male starring role in the Three Kingdoms Kazuo "Ben!" (Go Forward Courageously)" (October 1995 issue). Since no photos of the actor were found earlier, there was only a blurry poster, in which Miho Kanno, who was only 18 years old at the time, appeared.

In the April 1990 issue, Minoru Tanaka was the male lead in the morning drama "Rin Rin". The actor passed away in 2011 (born in 1966).

The following morning dramas are listed in years when most of us were probably not born yet:

Shinichiro Okano, "Saitaiko" (October 1985 issue)

Eisaku Shindo, "Heart Like Lemonade" "General" (October 1984 issue)

Enoki Takaaki "Romance" (April 1984 issue)

Throughout the 1970s, morning dramas did not use male protagonists. Pushing forward, it was 1967, that is, In an era when only one morning drama was broadcast a year, among the nine morning dramas in the 1960s, four of them starred male actors. It seems that at the beginning of the birth of morning dramas, there was no fixed rule. The heroine should be used throughout the play.

Yokouchi Masaru "Travel Road" (April 1967-March 1968)

Kasa Chizhong (1904-1993) " Yu Xiang" (April 1965-April 1966)

Sabeki Toshinobu (1909-1982) The poster for "Dawn" (April 1963-April 1964) was not found. Here is a still of Sabeki Toshinobu in Ozu Yasujiro's "The Taste of Ochazuke". On the right is Chiyo Kigure Michiyo (1918-1990) ).

The last one is the first morning drama on the timeline, and it also stars an actor, Kitazawa Biao (1911-1980) "My Daughter and Me" (April 1961-March 1962)

Although the ratings of Dahe dramas are going from bad to worse nowadays, morning dramas are bucking the trend and rising. It can be said that today's Wakade actresses have caught up with a good time. With morning dramas as a springboard, the audience can see you every day, are you worried about not being famous? .

Following the 100th morning drama starring Hirose Suzu, the starring roles of the two subsequent dramas have also been finalized, namely Erika Toda's "Crimson" (September 2019 issue) and April 2020 issue Masataka Kubota . With sama confirmed to be the leading actor in the morning drama, we can see the 11th "morning drama male lead"! Let’s wait and see how sama performs in this feature-length drama next year. Of course, first of all, we must look forward to Toda exuding the charm of a "morning drama heroine" on the screen every day.