Orange Days (2004)

A handsome boy at university, good-natured, sensitive and intelligent too, is undergoing the tedious, though not very vigorous interview process for full-time employment. He has a girlfriend who is lovely and fully supports him and whose future prospects are as equally promising as his. One gets the impression, by the way they interact, that their love has been shaped by a mutually shared career trajectory. Maybe underneath the holding of hands, the meeting in the quads, there is real passion driving them forward, but one cannot really tell. All seems well, but one afternoon the boy spots a girl boldly playing classical music on her violin in one of the school quads. He is intrigued. He also discovers, by the way she doesn't initially respond to him, that she has lost her hearing.

It soon becomes obvious to the neutral bystander (us) that the boy, Kai, is more interested and attracted to this new girl, Sae, than the one he is seeing, Maho, whose only fault appears to be that she loves him faithfully and devotedly. To put Kai's budding relationship with Sae next to Kai's solid one with Maho and it becomes obvious that the love he has for Maho is obligatory and unexciting. Sae presents a dynamism in his life that he doesn't currently have, and probably will never have (outside of work) once he and Maho become legally married. Maybe that's true, maybe that isn't, but we gather that's what Kai is thinking by the way we see him take Maho for granted. 

The only real challenge Kai has left to face in life (outside of work) is how to negotiate his and Maho's two-tracked professional career in a way that doesn't impinge upon the other. Until that day arrives, Sae, a young woman who is hardly career-oriented, especially now that she has lost her hearing (all for centering one's life around music), appears the complete opposite kind of girl than Maho. None the least, there is the perpetual pouting, the quickness to accuse, and a knack for getting immediately upset. The elegant comportment, the far-seeing gaze of Maho, by comparison, makes her appear the height of measured rationality. One would think Kai having to choose one woman over the other would be a no-brainer, especially if one is no radical and would very much like to live a secure, middle class life, which Kai is definitely most suited for, but for whatever reasons he has hit upon a major dilemma.  

What fascinated me most about the 2004 ORANGE DAYS is that for the majority of the time we spend with Kai and Sae, it is never really made clear to us why this couple should be falling in love. It is the kind of relationship where we see the couple throw up an interminable number of barriers just so that the love can find its way through a constant (and frankly unnecessary) struggle. Kai is often bizarrely vacant-minded about why exactly he is spending so much time with Sae. His attraction to her seems to have emptied him of common sense such that it doesn't even occur to him that he is two-timing Maho. I don't even think he bothers to rationalize his attraction to Sae, for himself or for Maho, since he has convinced himself "we're just friends." Even though it doesn't look that way to everyone else. Kai and Sae haven't even come close to getting married and yet they seem to have already proceeded past the honeymoon stage to those nights of arguing over who is going to do the dishes tonight. It is clear that he hasn't lost his love for Maho, even while it couldn't be any more obvious to her that he has ceased to prioritize her love. 

Maho is part of a volunteer group at the university that provides support for those students who are hearing impaired. That means that we have situations where we can see Kai flirting with Sae right in front of Maho, but to Kai, flirting with Sae is not what he is doing; he has convinced himself that he is just paying Sae special attention, as any decent person would when communicating with a handicapped person. Kai and Sae speak, argue, connect; they get along well whenever she isn't uncontrollably moody; he waits for her in the park long past any ordinary man's endurance; he forgives her for all her faults. And yet we don't see any signs that he intends to declare his love for her. Not a word from him about Sae, for instance, whenever he hangs around his male friends. I know Kai is supposed to be young, and therefore in need of a lot of help in life, but I found his behavior when it comes to love bizarre. 

Love often appears mysterious to those on the outside of it, and I assume for the vast majority of people who watch this drama, he or she will feel that Kai and Sae belong together and that Kai and Maho do not. I am not one of them. The drama intends to show us that Maho isn't the excessively pretty bourgeois she thinks she is. She can be a little underhanded while Kai is perfectly sincere. No sooner than Kai diverts his attention from Maho, we see her easily seduced by a man she already knows, and who has already established himself as a solid man in the world. They get to bed with barely a fraction of the effort Kai is putting in with Sae (if indeed sleeping with Sae is highly desirable for him; one can never really tell with Kai, even after they have slept together). I suppose we could say that Maho is being typically bourgeois even in this newfound arrangement. That is to say, even when she abandons herself to desire we can see that, coldly calculating to the core, even the sex must be slotted in as a part of one's future plans. But honestly, I couldn't find much fault with Maho. In fact, I rather liked her, and felt the drama handed her a raw deal. 

With the great success of the 2022 SILENT, a drama that also deals with the difficulties of falling in love with someone who has lost his or her hearing, a scan of reviews online indicates that it is very natural for the Japanese television drama viewer to compare SILENT with its predecessor ORANGE DAYS. But I feel that these are two entirely different kinds of drama.

I have been poking some fun at Kai here, but I actually liked him a lot better than I did Sae who was played deliberately to annoy (one would hope) by Shibasaki Kou. The drama made me wonder why Tsumabuki Satoshi, who plays Kai, hasn't fared better in the world of television drama? I thought he was a natural at playing the part of a lover in a romantic story. 

I found Sae incredibly moody and difficult, so hard to please, that I felt that, short of advanced, professional training in the psychological arts it would be impossible for anyone to break through and reach her heart through the wall of insecurities. Poor Kai, not even a university graduate yet, couldn't figure out what he was constantly doing wrong. Since his heart was in the right place, he reasoned, what could possibly be the issue? In fact the drama, I'd say, handled both his sincerity and cluelessness exceptionally well. He was without question the abiding angel at the hospital where he interned for physical therapy patients. But having to deal with Sae, his lack of certification left him bleary-eyed and confused. 

Every touching moment in the relationship we see, every step forward, including the night they so swiftly went to bed (I was surprised at how quickly they went from a first kiss to that, for their connection showed almost no sexual edge), seemed to take them two steps backwards instead. By the end of the drama we see that Kai and Sae have a future together. But do they, though? I for one am not convinced. 

I say Kai should have stayed with Maho. With her I felt he could grow together with the woman he loves. With Sae, all I can see for him is an unending series of artificial barriers to have to remove, greater excitement, yes, but a relationship that moves sideways rather than forward. They come to understand each other better, as the drama develops, but a greater understanding in relationships doesn't necessarily mean growth and maturity; it just means that you have learned how to put out a series of fires. Their relationship was the equivalent of being proficient on the job without having any hopes for promotion. With Maho, Kai looked self-assured, confident in his capacities as lover, friend, student, colleague, a man who you looked up to for being competent and a bearer of well-earned secrets. With Sae, he was often reduced to looking helpless, distracted, flummoxed, even a bit whiny. Being with Sae for Kai was like taking all the muscle out of a Brad Pitt character. But I guess that's what the drama is trying to tell us. The confidence with which Kai was carrying himself, thanks to Maho, was a façade. Sae helped open his heart, showed him how to better treat his patients at the hospital. But I'll say it again—he couldn't have achieved the same with Maho?

Despite my ceaseless irritation over Sae's moodiness and difficulty, I don't mean to imply that the writing is to blame for this. About halfway through the drama I looked up the production credits and was greatly pleased to see that the writer for this drama, Kitagawa Eriko, wrote the 2000 BEAUTIFUL LIFE which also featured a moody, difficult to please, often irrational love interest who also happened to be physically handicapped. But that drama often moved me precisely because the woman was difficult, whereas this one just left me indifferent. I will say this though. Unlike in SILENT, where we were never far removed from being in touch with the trauma a person confronts who has lost his or her hearing, I never really felt Sae's handicap was at issue. I found that aspect of the drama rather impressive. ORANGE DAYS, by deciding not to have us pity Sae, helped show us a person who is no different from anyone else. So excellent was the drama about this, that there were large stretches of time where I looked at Sae without any thought for her handicap. I found her most definitely annoying; however, her loss of hearing had nothing to do with it.  

It's very interesting that Kitagawa came back to use this tactic in two separate dramas. She has Sae challenge Kai, during one moment in the drama, by asking him if he really loves her or is he only interested in her because he pities her? That question is central to ORANGE DAYS as it was for BEAUTIFUL LIFE.    

I feel that SILENT is far superior to ORANGE DAYS in every way: better story, more appealing characters and actors, greater insight into the nature of the handicap, a social conscience that has much to say about today's Japan, and a highly appealing aesthetic style that was often poetic. I have a working theory that says to compare the two dramas is to see that Japanese television drama is working at an even higher level than it had in its so-called Golden Age. But man, what a run Kitagawa had! Beginning with LONG VACATION (1996), a drama that perennially makes the top ten lists for good reason, for which Kitagawa won Best Screenwriter for the Television Drama Academy Awards, followed by one for BEAUTIFUL LIFE, one of Kimura Takuya's better roles, next, an award for the 2022 SORA KARA FURU ICHIOKU NO HOSHI (which I haven't seen yet), and finally one for ORANGE DAYS, it is rare to see a writer have such a string of success. Two of those dramas I would most definitely watch again, and though I am not inclined to watch ORANGE DAYS again, I just might do so to further understand Kitagawa as a writer after I've watched more of her work, which I most certainly will do. 

It's a shame the script had nothing to give Nagayama Eita's character. The girls in the ORANGE DAYS circle of friends adored him, as they should have, but strangely, for such an appealing actor, Eita, in one of his earliest roles, was given no story. He was used mainly for decorations.  

The drama also stood out for me in that I found the side story of Narimiya Hiroki's character and Yamada Yu's and their strictly sexual relationship highly erotically charged. When they kissed it didn't look like they were just following the script. Drama World's kissing scenes are invariably, almost comically tame but Narimiya and Yamada's broke the mold. This was a pleasant surprise, as such kind of not so hinted-at erotic content almost never works within the confines of television drama. A credit to the two actors on that one, I'd say, as they inadvertently made the sexual relationships of the other two couples look dull and rather juvenile by comparison. It's a good thing these two actors weren't given a drama of their own, otherwise Drama World would have had to reevaluate its moral standards for all the heat this couple generated.   

On a side note, I very much like the DVD packaging for the drama. For those who have watched the drama, you will recognize the part the orange notebook played. I like the minimalist packaging and the orange, yes orange; when it comes to women choosing bathing suits I hear that the color was very much in style this year!

[Photo: 小西真奈美, Konishi Manami, playing Maho, together with 妻夫木聡, Tsumabuki Satoshi, playing Kai. From Episode 5 of オレンジデイズ, Orange Days. TBS.]