As Seen on TV: 4 Songs from Winter 2024 Dramas
Blogging about the music in this season's Japanese dramas, from Aina the End to Rina Sawayama
As Seen on TV is a side column of This Side of Japan dedicated to music featured on Japanese TV shows. You can return to the main newsletter here.
Look, I did not foresee myself writing about a song by Rina Sawayama from few years ago to start off this column either, but I really did not expect “Chosen Family” to be dropped in my favorite TV drama from this winter season, Tsukuritai Onna To Tabetai Onna (or She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat).
The show was far from subtle with it. Airing Monday to Thursday, the 15-minute episodes during the second week mostly focused on Kasuga (Emi Nishino) and her father, who’s been insistently calling her, pressuring her to go back home to take care of her ill grandmother. On the week’s final episode she finally spoke up to him about not ever returning home, hanging up the phone but not before he accused her of abandoning her family. After all this, she turns on the car radio, where a DJ introduces a song for those who hope to find a place that will accept them for who they are. And out comes Sawayama’s voice emerging from warbling synths that sound like an incoming signal from a distant star—I immediately knew what the song was before it went into its titular chorus.
“Chosen Family” by Rina Sawayama [Dirty Hit, 2020]
My initial surprise came from Tsuku Tabe choosing to play such a current pop song since the show doesn’t necessarily go out of its way to establish any particular taste for music or art. Adapted from the manga of the same name, the NHK drama follows office temp Nomoto (Higa Minami) befriending her neighbor Kasuga by making dishes and eating meals together but soon develops feelings for her as more than just friends. For the scene with “Chosen Family,” I thought the radio DJ would play an older J-pop song of a slight AOR flavor, like Tomoyo Harada’s “ping-pong” that aired on the previous season—not the kind of music by an international pop star with her clout minted also by the stans on the internet.
And I definitely did not think the show would use a song that plays so literally to the situation hand, especially when last season’s insert of Harada’s “ping-pong” was memorable in part from how it cued up the music so smoothly. Featuring specifically the duet version with Asako Toki, the song played, again, from Kasuga’s car radio as her and Nomoto went on their first drive together. “This is a great song, isn’t it,” the latter character asks the former as you hear Harada and Toki lovingly sing about playing ping pong against each other over a jubilant string arrangement. As the music in that moment subtly touches on the unspoken attraction between the two in the car, I can’t now hear the duet as anything other than a sapphic song.
The queer themes of “Chosen Family” should not be lost from Tsuku Tabe. After all, the show follows Nomoto exploring her sexuality and identity as a lesbian. That said, for that scene with Kasuga, Sawayama’s song, and its titular chorus in particular, seemed to apply for something broader as it responded to family matters relating outside of queer identity. The needle-drop simultaneously felt too straightforward yet too ambiguous, its gesture too clear in its intent yet answering only vaguely to the conflict at hand. It’s maybe something less to blame on the show than the song, which also suffers from its own grandiosity, making its purpose known too well.
Because for how painfully earnest the song itself, the syncing in the drama still feels well-intended as it does honest to the personality of Tsuku Tabe. The show remains wholesome through and through as it discusses complicated topics like dysfunctional families, heteronormativity and eating disorders with an open mind. Nomoto supports Kasuga with sincere love, too, when the latter confides in her about what’s going on with her family. While she cries from slight embarrassment of being oblivious to Kasuga’s problems, she doesn’t hold back as she tells her how much she cares about her neighbor, until she almost confesses her love to her. That moment will come the next week, but that night, they leave it right there before they resume dinner.
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And here are 3 more songs from this season’s Japanese dramas.
“Takaramono” by Aina the End [Avex Trax]
…from Sayonara Maestro ~Chichi To Watashi No Appassionato~ (Sundays, 9 p.m.; TBS)
In a funny turn of events, Hidetoshi Nishijima went from playing the boyfriend whose livelihood involved heading to the supermarket after work so he can cook for him and his partner to the dad who can’t make eggs for his children to save his life. Starring in Sayonara Maestro: Chichi To Watashi No Appassionato, he’s now conductor Shunpei Natsume, who’s returned to Japan to look after his kids who he’s been disconnected from since an incident 5 years prior. But while he struggles to win back his love from daughter Hibiki (Mana Ashida), he at least convinced me on this Aina the End song.
The production for Sayonara Maestro’s title track has barely a hint of rock music. If there’s a presence of a band, it’s in the vein of the string-laden processions you’d hear in the more wedding-friendly singles of, say, Ryokuoushoku Shakai. But to be fair, a prog-metal arrangement from Ling Tosite Sigure’s TK also would have no business in the world of a cozy Sunday-night family drama. If anything, Aina being the singer for this sentimental song is the thing that makes it work. The lyrics showing appreciation sounds that much of a relief coming from a voice that often sings about more tortured emotions with a spiked intensity. She can peacefully lean on the fluff of the arrangement as she rests in the love of her significant other.
Listen to it on Spotify.
“Naniiro Demo Nai Hana” by Hikaru Utada [Sony]
…from Kimi Ga Kokoro Wo Kuretakara (Mondays, 9 p.m.; Fuji TV)
Not even the music of Hikaru Utada could convince me to tough out the sappiness oozing out of Kimi Ga Kokoro Wo Kuretakara. While the drama’s two love interests being named Ame (Mei Nagano) and Taiyo (Yuki Yamada)—Rain and Sun, respectively—already raised a red flag for me, the story overall made hardly any room for humor. When Taiyo gets into a fatal car accident, Ame strikes a deal with the devil to revive him in exchange for her five senses, the things that, according to the show, define her humanity. It’s so achingly maudlin as it unravels why each of her five senses personally matter. I barely made it through the second episode detailing her days before she loses her taste until I had to tap out.
It’s a wasted opportunity. The last time Utada’s music backed a show, the relationship between the on-screen characters on the respective TV drama gave a new way in which to hear the song. The business-political romance driving the story of Saiai brought the context of forbidden love into the lyrics of “Kimi Ni Michuu,” and the song’s stark production made the ordeal feel more and more heavy in stakes as the song progressed. “I’m crazy about you / oh, you’re the type that screws up someone’s life,” they sang about this fatal attraction in the chorus, alluding something much even bigger once the world of its attached show started to seep into the music.
“Naniiro Demo Nai Hana” at least stands well on its own removed from its attached show. A sparse piano ballad reminiscent of their work in Fantome, Utada ruminates on their love but also the odds stacked against them to keep it alive. Some of my favorite Utada-isms appear in the single, like the singer making room for both the scientific and the biblical within their internal monologue. What cuts deep for me is their bold declaration to rise above despite it all. “But if we can’t believe in ourselves / We can’t believe in anything,” Utada sings in the last third of the ballad, a heroic moment that echoes a song like BAD Mode’s “Pink Blood.” And a drum beat finally comes in, like the song has snapped awake with total clarity.
Listen to it on Spotify.
“Ikuokukonen” by Omoinotake [Sony]
…from Eye Love You (Tuesdays, 10 p.m.; TBS)
Do you remember Koi Wa Tsuzukuyo Doko Mademo? The rom-com from 2020 where Mone Kamishiraishi is a nurse who’s in love with the heartless doctor played by Takeru Sato? That show introduced me to Official HIGE Dandism and their single “I LOVE…” whose ecstatic brass intro cued the show’s climactic moments. It’s been almost a half a decade since HIGE Dan proved themselves to me as a band whose music was primed to soundtrack love stories, and now we got bands trying to channel the band’s cinematic power. Observing the way Eye Love You inserts its title track, Omoinotake’s “Ikuokukonen,” I also can’t help but feel the show is trying to recreate the HIGE Dan-triggered rom-com magic brought from a show like Koi Tsuzu.
I initially guessed “Ikuokukonen” was by HIGE Dan. The R&B music bounced with glee while it gradually soared and soared. The voice on record, too, kept climbing along with the ascending track as if it didn’t already hit such a high register. And like Satoshi Fujiwara, the frontman sang about undying love like he was proudly shouting his feelings to the world through a megaphone. But the music felt not as stuffed and the metaphor in the lyrics nowhere as elaborate—have you followed along to the lyrics of “Subtitle”? Omoinotake gestures to something similar in sound and conceit and yet it doesn’t swing as ambitious or grandiose as their clear inspiration.
“Ikuokukonen” pops up in Eye Love You like a HIGE Dan song would, too, in another show with the song cued to add an extra kick to a heart-melting scene in the rom-com. Now, follow with me here: A CEO of a chocolate company, Yuri (Fumi Nikaido) have always avoided relationships since gaining the power to read other people’s minds. But then, she falls in love with her Korean intern Tae Oh (Chae Jong Hyeop), whose internal monologue is in Korean, a language she doesn’t understand. As if the show doesn’t already proceed cheesy and soap-y enough, here comes a confetti hit of brass and that heaven-reaching chorus. After being much trained from HIGE Dan hitting the senses during my rom-com watches, the effect is almost Pavlovian.
Listen to it on Spotify.
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