Since we have reached late August, and more than halfway through the yearlong broadcast of the NHK Taiga drama HIKARU KIMI E, a depiction of the life and times of writer Murasaki Shikibu, I thought I'd give my overall impressions to date, and draw a few conclusions for a finale I can neither see nor imagine. It would be impossible for me to single out any one Taiga drama that I feel is superior to the rest, but I have had a special attachment to this one because I am predisposed to love any drama that is focused on a writer I love.
In terms of entertainment, there have been more exciting Taiga dramas. But the writing for this one has been exceptional, and I'd say you'd be missing out on a lot if you have no interest in learning about the culture, art, and politics of the Heian age. The following comments reflect my opinions on the first eighteen episodes only, since that's as far as I have reached. You will find almost no complaint here. This story has already far exceeded my expectations. For its insight into the uniqueness of the culture, I feel HIKARU KIMI E represents the very best of Japanese television drama.
A Magnificent Love Affair
At heart, HIKARU KIMI E is the story of two brilliant people whose love for one another could never be fulfilled. Where does brilliance go when shared between a man and a woman who occupy the same space but who cannot occupy it together? That's the story the drama has to tell.
What's especially beautiful about HIKARU KIMI E is that it allows us to observe two exceptional people even before they were aware they had greatness within them. Even up until her early twenties, the drama portrays Mahiro—the young Murasaki Shikibu—composing poetry, studying the Chinese classics, creating little fictions for the entertainment of others, but up through Episode 14, at a time when Mahiro declares she wishes to be of service to others as an aim in life, she can only conceive of herself as a teacher first, by deciding to help the poor learn how to read. It hasn't even occurred to her yet to write something as massive and complex as The Tale of Genji.
Her lover Fujiwara Michinaga, as portrayed in the drama, was to become one of Japan's greatest statesmen. But for most of the drama up until now we see him passively observing his surroundings, paying due deference to his father and older brothers or when speaking with his powerful older sister Akiko, all in all portrayed primarily as a person who has no intent to speak out of turn. We see him thinking deeply about how the state is run. But he shows no signs at all that he is an unusually talented man. His father is ruthless in obtaining power, and we see Michinaga think nothing of it; he doesn't approve or disapprove of his father's actions. He is only interested in observing and forming privately his guiding philosophy.
His father Kaneie, for his part, respects his youngest son, but shows no signs that he believes his youngest possesses exceptional talent. It is fascinating to see the drama choose to show Michinaga merely thinking, listening to others, not stepping forward even though he disagrees, at times, with the way the state is run. We never see him, in other words, discuss his thinking with others. We have no idea what he thinks of the state, but we do see him preoccupied with a woman he loves, Mahiro.
Michinaga and Mahiro are certainly no Antony and Cleopatra, as depicted in Shakespeare's drama, of two wildly different, impulsive, energetic personalities who demand that the world bend to their game. Who cannot stand enthrall to that lunatic couple's indomitable spirit, a pair that makes civilizations clash, who will not allow the people they rule to get in the way of their desires? But who among us can ever begin to see ourselves in their shoes? Michinaga and Mahiro's affair is much more closely aligned to ours. They are both passive, observing members of society biding their time within an imperial court system that easily banishes those who do not obey its rank and file system. Michinaga is superior at the game of keeping his true feelings to himself. Mahiro tries, but she cannot help but show how she really feels, mainly through her eyes. And yet no one can tell what she is really thinking (she has really only revealed herself to Michinaga), but we can see that she is storing up a vast amount of information that will be of use to her in the future.
The Main Stars
Yoshitaka Yuriko has been given a demanding role; her brilliant young Mahiro has had to display a wide range of emotions, from lightly amused to heavily traumatized. Mahiro shows great talent intellectually, but because she is lower status, because she has no connections within the court, she has been easily excluded from it. Some lines have indicated that if she were a man she would have not been excluded; but her father Tametoki, whose knowledge of Chinese history and literature is formidable, has been made subject to the same whims of time and place; however great his knowledge as a scholar, it is not enough to transcend his lower status within the nobility for securing a rank within the palace.
The arc of the story has been very interesting so far in that it has shown Mahiro welcomed within the palace from a young age. But then the drama takes the time to show her being cut down bit by bit, imperceptibly, all of which she doesn't understand, until she finds herself having to scrub floors and prepare food for her family while isolated out in the countryside. The worst blow she has had to face (outside of the horrible death of her mother) was the rejection she received at the hands of Michinaga. We can debate on whether or not it was her pride that caused this rejection; but the fact is that through the first quarter of the story (and her life) Mahiro finds herself on the outside looking in, and she suspects that it didn't have to be that way.
The heartbreak and humiliation that society (as well as Michinaga) imposed upon Mahiro would be enough to embitter any woman. Michinaga's older sister Akiko, for instance, became embittered, imperious, even, after the humiliation and heartbreak she experienced for being rejected by her husband, the emperor. Yoshitaka's way to depict this inner transformation was to create a young woman who becomes stoical in the face of defeat. We can see that Mahiro is heartbroken, but we can also see that by resiliency, born by an intellect's curiosity for the world, and a passion for her surroundings that helps feed her understanding of poetry, she discovers an inner vision where most other people would have found defeat. Probably the most moving bit of acting that surfaces in the first half of HIKARU KIMI E, and it's subtly done, is the way we can observe how Yoshitaka has taken a young and romantic Mahiro and turns her into a stoical and proud one. Stoical and proud—that's exactly the characteristic I find most appealing about the real Murasaki whenever I read her diary.
My concern at the start of the year was that Yoshitaka Yuriko, a highly intelligent actress but also one who doesn't appear to have a domineering bone in her body, wouldn't be able to successfully recreate the indomitable intelligence of the writer; that she was too youthful-looking, and lacking the drive, to embody one of the greatest minds Japan has ever produced. My fears have been allayed; I have bought into Yoshitaka as being the real Murasaki.
As for Emoto Tasuku playing the part of Fujiwara Michinaga, I had no expectations at all. That's probably because my understanding of the real Michinaga is superficial, at best. Emoto has been excellent too. We have no idea what noble men of the Heian court looked like, but whenever Emoto appears on screen, I look at his features and think, now that's exactly what classical Japanese male beauty must have looked like, at the time. By "classical" I mean something exotic, something almost prototypically Japanese, as if the mold for it was poured over a thousand years ago and still manages to work its magic. His is not a masculine kind of beauty, but it's certainly not of the pretty, feminine, untouched-by-violence sort that young women nowadays tend to favor; that seems about right for the real Michinaga who was reportedly the original inspiration for Murasaki's hero, Hikaru Genji.
The Face of Michinaga
Emoto's portrayal of Michinaga reminds me a little bit of Oguri Shun's portrayal of Hojo Yoshitoki from KAMAKURA DONO NO 13-NIN two years ago. I was enraptured with Oguri's intellectual, master strategist, biding his time, not seeking power but wishing to understand the nature of it so that he and his clan might rise above it. Emoto is playing Michinaga in a similar way in that we can see him observing, biding his time, a person who is more intelligent than everyone else in the court, and he knows it, but for the possible exception of his father Kaneie who he cannot disobey.
But he has been very hard to read. It is clear that this strategy of making Michinaga inscrutable has been intentional for the sake of intensifying the drama. We know that eventually Michinaga is going to become the most powerful man in the realm. Emoto playing Michinaga as deferential, obedient, subservient to his father, siblings, and the councilors to the emperor, a stoic whose face, unlike Mahiro's, reveals nothing about his true feelings, has added a very interesting tension to the drama. Oguri's Yoshitoki would reveal himself every so often. Emoto's Michinaga, not at all.
The archery competition in Episode 15 between Michinaga and his cocky nephew Korechika shows the great moment of Michinaga's transformation from underrated noble to master political strategist. He enters the archery court beside his older brother Michitaka who has cultivated an air of superiority thanks to no more a fact than his father Kaneie has chosen him to succeed him as a favored son, and by the fact that he packed the court with his own chosen people. Korechika, constantly flattered by his father Michitaka, foolishly disrespects his uncle Michinaga, mainly because he has learned to adopt the same opinion everyone else has had of Michinaga: that he is not a particularly ambitious man, is a man of few words, and whose siblings haven't even taken him seriously.
What transpired in this scene was so good it reminded me of the 2003 MUSASHI scene when Miyamoto Musashi fought Sasaki Kojiro in a battle to the death. A genius emerges at the end of both scenes, and the world can never be the same for all involved.
A Most Moving Relationship
One of the most heartwarming aspects of the drama so far has been the way it has shown Mahiro's maturity develop through her relationship with her father, Tametoki. At first, she was close to rejecting him for the way he did nothing to honor the memory of her mother who was slain. But as Mahiro has come to understand the nature of the exclusion she felt at the hands of the court, not only do we observe Mahiro come to recognize her true place in society but her father's too, since he has experienced the same. All the aspects of her father's behavior that had seemed incomprehensible—his inability to stand up for his own and his family's honor—she comes to recognize as a problem that she shares with him. Both learn to adapt to a system that does its part to exclude them, as they stand helpless before it.
The bond between father and daughter, however, strengthens because of this understanding. Tametoki was patient with his daughter until she could see for herself the way society is run. You could even call it an act of faith on the father's part. When Mahiro sees her father nurse a woman, most likely a lover, as a replacement for her mother, a woman who was sick and dying, we gather that Mahiro is finally able to understand her father's heart and soul. He is a very passionate man, but society is such that it would be social suicide for him to fight back against a structure that has made him dependent. Mahiro also sees that she is in the same position as her father. And it is at this point we see that she has become a fully mature woman.
The first half of The Tale of Genji is largely about this same theme: how those people who don't fully understand their place in society end up running the risk of ruining their own children's future. Mahiro's father Tametoki does know his place in society, but that doesn't mean he could live the life he pleased (which is a modern concept anyway). Michinaga's older brother Michikane did whatever he pleased and thought he could get away with his abuse and egotistical outrages. His very father Kaneie would eventually punish him for it, something Michikane, to his horror, had never expected.
Standout Acting
Without question, Danta Yasunori's Fujiwara Kaneie has been the standout performance so far. He plays something of a devious bastard, but we don't feel him as a malignant force because Danta plays him as that rare kind of politician who doesn't seize power for the sake of gaining power but because he enjoys the game of outwitting people. Kaneie has actually made it look very easy. He and his family have gained supremacy within court and all the rest of the families can do is stand around looking baffled at what just happened. We are really not supposed to like him, but as the drama develops I found myself rooting for his family to succeed, even though four of his five children are rather unpleasant figures (of the siblings I am really only warm to Michinaga so far, though I am also sympathetic to Akiko).
A great surprise so far has been Akiyama Ryuji, playing the part of Fujiwara Sanesuke. He comes to me as a complete unknown. Looking at his credits, he has had very little presence within Drama World. I read that his work has been largely in comedy. After his work in this drama, he better be lined up for more roles! He enlivens the screen whenever he appears. The complete opposite of Michinaga, we know exactly what Sanesuke is thinking because he lets everyone know it, and in a rather jovial, boisterous way. Akiyama has an engaging, deep-toned speaking voice. It makes you curious about him even when he has nothing of importance to say. One is automatically inclined to love his character. He hasn't brought as much color to the drama as Bando Yajuro's Hojo Tokimasa did for KAMAKURA DONO NO 13-NIN but the pleasure he brings to the story is along that line.
Underrated Character
Yoshida Yo's imperious Fujiwara Akiko has been a powerful, if familiar type of character within the world of the Taiga: a woman who, once her purpose has been used up by marrying for the sake of power, becomes power-mad and a scary moralizing presence that no one would want to cross. But interestingly, in this case, for marrying very badly. I always manage to forget Akiko, which is a little hard to explain, because Kaneie's ascendancy within the court system wouldn't have been possible without Akiko. The story, in other words, has depended on her, and yet I always manage to forget her, should we return to the Michinaga or Mahiro plot.
But then she reappears, embittered, broken-hearted, taking no bull from anyone, and I am glad to see it. Serves as a striking contrast to Mahiro who has taken her heartbreak stoically.
Japanese YouTube Comes Of Age
It has been slow to develop, taking off only around 2019-2020, but we can finally find excellent commentary on drama and literature at YouTube. I have found ten to twenty channels offering weekly commentary on HIKARU KIMI E. Most are merely recap, offering little in the way of commentary, or are didactic in nature, telling us what is or isn't historically accurate. But one YouTube channel stands out for commentary, and that is the one run by a woman who goes by the name of Kiryuu along with her co-hosts Ku and Ratto.
I haven't looked into Kiryuu's background, but if she isn't a Sensei for history at a school or a university I'd be surprised. Part of the charm of following the channel is that though Kiryuu has knowledge on the level of a scholar (or, at any rate, that of an obsessive hobbyist), she follows the dramas with an intense emotional attachment. (All the other channels run on the dry side.) It has amused me that she refers to Michinaga's father as "Kaneie Papa". Or whenever informing us about the historical accuracy of the drama, when it comes to the TV production team whose responsibility it is to bring us the story, she refers to the team as "NHK San." An added bonus for us is that the channel includes Japanese subtitles throughout. Comments in the threads to the individual episodes show that Kiryuu's Japanese followers are grateful for this too, as she speaks incredibly, excitedly fast.
Reception to Hikaru Kimi E
It matters not in the least to me whether individual Taiga dramas garner high ratings. Prior to watching the 2012 Taiga drama TAIRA NO KIYOMORI, anyone who had anything to say about it liked to refer to the drama's historically low ratings. Therefore, it had to be bad. But then I watched it and realized everyone must be parroting the rest; for me, it was exceptional drama and even better history. I haven't bothered to look up the ratings for HIKARU KIMI E yet. Same goes for the critical response, through fan sites or news media reviews. But anecdotally? I feel that the drama, with its romantic story and poetic atmosphere seems to have sparked a great interest in all things Murasaki, Michinaga, and the world of the Heian age. Kiryuu's weekly commentary gathers up to 150k views per episode, which is remarkable. It is just three women chatting about the episodes, and two of them aren't very informed. I would hardly call myself fluent in Japanese, but even I seem to know more than these two. A scholar and two ordinary, uninformed citizens discussing history and literature seems to make for a winning combination.
To supplement my reading with the drama, I looked up the work of scholar Yamamoto Junko who specializes in life at the Heian court. I had read one of her books some years back, and was thrilled to discover in the intervening years that she has written another one, but this time with an attempt to recreate Murasaki's voice in monologue form, as if the writer herself was speaking directly to us from the grave. But this was no fantasy project or revisionist history. Yamamoto's monologue is based entirely on the historical record (I am told; I have ordered it but haven't read it yet). Comments on Amazon consisted mainly of people who have picked up the book thanks to being captivated by HIKARU KIMI E.
That led me to a related title written by scholar Kuramoto Kazuhiro that answers the question, what do we actually know about the relationship between Michinaga and Murasaki? I gather that Yamamoto's work is a bit of a popularization, Kuramoto's decidedly not. It must come as a great surprise to both scholars that the population is coming around to their work thanks to the enchantment they have received from the drama. Ratings? What a pointless little system for all that lives and survives. NHK is doing a great public service by dramatizing the story of Murasaki and Michinaga for us.
When Murasaki Shikibu and Sei Shonagon First Met
We see the two great writers cross paths just along the margins of court legitimacy. They are not women of nobility, though they can pass for nobility by serving them; it is clear that their talents far exceed the women who help rule the land. Noble women have nothing to fear... at least not from women like these, as their own place in society is secure (to the extent anyone's is).
We have, of course, no record of how Murasaki Shikibu and Sei Shonagon first met or interacted. HIKARU KIMI E allows us to imagine what those first meetings were like, and I have to say, though it is impossible to even venture a guess as to what they spoke about, or how they truly regarded one another, I am convinced that the drama's portrayal of these moments are accurate. Later in life, Murasaki turned a wary eye on Sei Shonagon and her self-importance. Murasaki sized up the women around her and didn't frame her observations strictly on what she thought about them morally, or for how well they served the court, but for how far each one rose or fell according to standards of elegance, intelligence, and taste (it is for this reason that I adore Murasaki and prefer her to Sei Shonagon who is a little too in love with her own thought processes).
First thing I'd like to say about this rivalry within the court is that Summer Uika's portrayal of Sei Shonagon looks about exactly right. A little ridiculous, a little full of herself, bold, and, annoyingly, able to get away with it. When we see Sei Shonagon first meet Takahata Mitsuki's Sadako (seen in the photo above), she is all those things; and yet, rather than having her immediately dismissed for disrespecting the throne, Sadako is charmed by this woman's unusual personality. Up until that point we have seen Sadako at play with the boy emperor Ichijo. Akiko scolds Sadako for acting like a child. Now, as Sadako sits before this new servant to the court, who not only doesn't act as a proper woman should, but who acts as if the protocols that have been worked out and established over the generations is of no concern to her; Sadako looks on amused, curious, by the woman's originality.
Mahiro (Murasaki), welcomed into the court but not promoted within it, when she hears that Kikyou (Sei Shonagon) has received the court's embrace we see Mahiro's eyes register the shock. We can imagine her thinking, "How did that blabbermouth ever get greeted with open arms?" But since it's Mahiro, we can also imagine her thinking about where she herself might have gone wrong. It's exactly sentiments and judgments like these that one can read into Murasaki's diary entry on the real Sei Shonagon.
Inspiration for Modern Audiences
After being rejected by Michinaga, Mahiro bares her soul and swears she will find her own way in this world (with decidedly less theatricality than camp queen Scarlett O'Hara). Kikyou (Sei Shonagon) tells Mahiro, "If only I didn't have a husband and child, if these things weren't necessary, I would be free to explore the greater world as I please. If only one didn't have to be married!" I saw this scene and thought sentiments like these were clearly meant to flatter the tastes and secret desires of the modern female viewer.
But I was pleased to see that Kiryuu had something to say about this scene by reminding us that such sentiments can be found in Sei Shonagon's Pillow Book. It is probably for reasons like these that today's female reader adores Sei Shonagon and doesn't really know what to make of Murasaki. They know the name Murasaki. But, based on her writings, she is not an easy person to know. She doesn't bare her soul, certainly not in her diary. She has nothing to say, for example, about the great love of her life, in the way the mother of Michitsuna does (in The Gossamer Years) or the way the author of the Sarashina diary does (whose main love in life seemed to be the writings of Murasaki). Like I said, a kind of woman like Murasaki is more to my taste; I prefer her precisely because she is such a realist on women's psychology, and who liked to point out that a woman's lack of artistry is most obvious to everyone else in the world but herself. However, and I can't believe I'm saying this, over the past few years I've started to come around to Sei Shonagon, as a personality, maybe even as an artist, viewing Sei Shonagon as Sei Shonagon and not as the person viewed through the eyes of Murasaki.
Overlapping
The great pleasure of watching HIKARU KIMI E for those of us who have read The Tale of Genji is that it offers us moments where the classic work of literature overlaps with the television drama we are watching. Much like with Shakespeare's dramas, I don't really have a need to see The Tale of Genji performed anymore. When I read the book, as I have been doing this year, it has come alive like never before thanks to the imagery and atmosphere HIKARU KIMI E has provided us. Recasting a book that we can already visualize well thanks to the book itself serves little purpose, I feel. This drama has done something quite amazing: it has given us The Tale of Genji without telling us its story.
Some of the most tedious people among the literary class are those who insist one only need read the book to understand it. By that standard, one should avoid HIKARU KIMI E at all costs because it will teach you nothing that the book itself cannot teach you. Silly, silly people.
Historical Accuracy
Apparently on Twitter (X), among the Japanese fanbase of the drama, there is fervid attention paid to historical detail. Judging by Kiryuu's amusement covering the discussions, it is a lot less of the pedantic "they got it wrong" or "it never happened that way" commentary but of the eagerly anticipated "will they cover this?" or "will they cover that?" One of these moments, according to Kiryuu, was how "NHK San" depicted the way elegant men of nobility and talent used to open and close sliding doors with two hands in such a way that it makes the graceful and smooth sounding "suuuu" sound. These men will never allow a door to bang into place. Or how the men will scratch their backs with a folding fan in such a way that is, rather than a vulgar method to remove an itch, an attractive gesture redolent of their beauty. These instincts on the part of the ordinary Japanese viewer are of an empathetic sort of reading I can entirely warm up to; one kills the spirit of beauty if one's eye becomes too accustomed to criticism.
Wrong Language
I have found illuminating discussions on Yahoo message boards regarding the language used in HIKARU KIMI E. (Here are five examples: here, here, here, here, and here.) Ever since the age of mass media began a hundred years ago, and audiences had a desire to see entertainments that treated the great spectacles of the past, a big issue has been made of whether we are actually watching a recreation of the past or "histories" that merely flatter the needs of those living today. An important consideration for this question is the language a movie or television drama uses.
Some Japanese viewers, apparently, cannot stand the idea that HIKARU KIMI E is using modern Japanese. There is nothing classical about the language everyone is using, they complain. We might as well be watching a Heian age costume party taking place somewhere in today's Roppongi. I have noticed the intrusiveness of the modern language myself, and the modern sensibility it brings along with it. It was a bit jarring to hear Akiko suggest to her younger brother Michinaga that Minamoto Akiko might make for an excellent wife, adding, 最高じゃない？["Wouldn't that be awesome?"] Modern phrases like these certainly tend to spoil the effect.
If you seek out those threads I linked to above, whenever the complaint is made, invariably someone will say, "If you have everyone speak classical Japanese, good luck with that because no one will watch it; no one will understand it." Hard to disagree with that opinion. The Taiga that focused on the life of Saigo Takamori from a few years back, SEGODON, started off doing exactly that, hitting its viewers with a strong, accurate dialect to properly reflect Saigo's home life and his times. It lost a lot of viewers that way because the dialect was too confusing. It would be interesting though, wouldn't it, if one out of the fifty plus episodes did feature spoken, classical Japanese just so that we can hear what that sounds like. They do that for Shakespeare, so why not for Murasaki?
Worthy of a Longer Stay
Maiguma Katsuya's Naohide deserved a better fate. Whenever Naohide appeared on screen, whenever he magically appeared atop Mahiro's roof, NHK's Taiga drama seemed to have entered entirely new territory. At times I couldn't tell if we were supposed to read him as a real character or an apparition.
Once Naohide left the script, HIKARU KIMI E became a different story; not better or worse, but most definitely missing a unique element. His character arc had to be what it was as a means to introduce Michinaga and Mahiro to us. But damn it, couldn't Naohide have stayed with us a little longer?
Never Forget The Plebs
When Naohide was part of the script we received a panorama view of Heian society. At any one time we'd be seated with the emperor and his councilors, the well-off families of nobility, the villagers out trading goods, the farmers bringing their food to the market, the street artists, the poor. Without Naohide the world of the script narrowed.
Once Naohide left, the story began to shift between the proto-middle class world of Mahiro and her university-attending younger brother and their father the scholar all aided by their uncouth and lovely and selfless maidservant, to the world of the nobility that surrounds the court. The grit of the earlier episodes has been left behind. So has the sense for Japanese folklore, and the world of the common man and woman even the great female diarists of the age overlooked.
A Personal Note
This has been the first Taiga drama I have watched during the year it was broadcast. This is definitely the way to watch one, especially with all the supporting historical material to be found online. The NHK site is very good too for providing short character descriptions; in the past I have tended to get lost on who is who (especially during the first half of KAMAKURA DONO NO 13-NIN) but not anymore.
Atmosphere; or, What The Future May Hold
I thought the look of the highly underrated 2012 TAIRA NO KIYOMORI was exceptional for evoking an environment that made us feel that we were looking at a barely populated, highly agricultural, classical, Japanese past. It has not been the intention of HIKARU KIMI E to evoke something similar. With a soft focus lens, with a largely feminine point of view, almost every episode contains scenery that looks as if it was painted rather than filmed. What is missing is the sense of robbery, warfare, piracy, murder, rape, abuse, and filth to be found in the more masculine Taiga dramas. Feminine or masculine leaning, it's really all the same to me. But since it is largely a feminine recreation of the past, it is worth noticing the difference.
Writer Oishi Shizuka was quoted at the beginning of the year as saying that the drama will contain elements of The Godfather and KAREI NARU ICHI ZOKU. That is to say, more violence, more cutthroat competition. Frankly, I have seen little evidence for that, which makes me wonder if Oishi had been misquoted. But this drama is far from a female-centric view of the world, which is why I feel it has worked so well. In one scene we might observe Michinaga's masculine world, next, Mahiro's feminine one, but overall I'd say the brutality of the masculine one has been drastically minimized, enough to say that this is a feminine drama; but not so feminine that the story is overwhelmed by sentimentality and an embarrassing dose of wish fulfillment fantasy. It will be greatly fascinating to see how these two worldviews blend (or clash) in the second half of the drama when the main characters, both male and female, come into power.
[Photos (in order of appearance): Yoshitaka Yuriko as Mahiro, Episode 13; with Emoto Tasuku as Michinaga, Episode 4; Michinaga faces off against Korechika, Episode 15; Michinaga's moment of transformation, Episode 15; Takahata Mitsuki as Sadako, Episode 14; a view of the poetic countryside, Episode 2; a scene of village life, Episode 1; Mahiro with friend Sawa, Episode 15. 光る君へ Hikaru Kimi E. NHK]