All You Need is (Pure) Love
Ikuko Kamia can’t wait until Saturday comes around. The Japanese housewife, who lives in the western suburbs here, awakens with a light hearted feeling. It isn’t because it is a holiday. It is a day when she can watch not one but two of her favorite Korean love dramas on television.
“Now I only watch Korean dramas,” said Ms Kamia. She thinks that Japanese television dramas are boring. She is just one of tens of thousands of mostly middle-aged women in Japan who have been captivated by the televised imports. It has turned several Korean actors into superstars and sparked new interest by Japanese in things Korean.
Bae Yong Joon, 32, -- universally known here as “Yon-sama” using the honorific suffix for idols -- was a relatively obscure Korean actor until the Japanese success of his popular drama “Winter Sonata” catapulted him to international stardom. He has many fans in other Asian countries from Vietnam to Indonesia too.
Bae’s visit to Japan in November to open an exhibit of his photographs elicited airport scenes not experienced since the Beatles sent younger women into swoons in the 1960s. Thousands of women turned up at Narita airport to greet their hero. Hundreds more besieged his hotel. “Now I can die happy,” said Noriko Fukawa, 48.
They have been captivated by Yon-sama’s soft good looks, killer smile, the excruciating sensitivity in which he plays his roles and his polite demeanor. No other Japanese or Western actor even comes close. The Korean stars are also seen as being humble and polite – gentlemen – qualities seemingly lacking in the current crop of Japanese talent.
The stories are popular because they depict “pure love.” Pure love, or jun ai in Japanese, has a special meaning in Japan, explains Kaori Shoji, who writes frequently on social issues and trends for the Japan Times. “A jun ai couple would face many obstacles contrived to keep them apart and pining for a romantic reunion.”
That, of course, is precisely what Korean love dramas portray. In Winter Sonata a young woman played by Choi Ju Woo meets the love of her life in high school only to lose him in a traffic accident. Ten years later while working in an office she meets a Korean-American played by Bae who looks just like her long-lost love.
The stories are full of obstacles that the protagonists must overcome in the quest for true love. They unfold slowly, dreamily, with lots of long shots of the couple walking hand-in-hand through snowy woods, or Yon-sama giving the heroine long, searching and loving looks.
The fabulous success of these television dramas has sparked widespread interest in things Korean among Japanese, who in the past tended to look down on their neighbor across the Sea of Japan (or East Sea as Koreans call it). Indeed, Yon-sama may well be the first Korean that Japanese have unabashedly admired in their long histories.
Most of the Korean love dramas are broadcast late at night in a time slot that used to be the preserve of American imports such as Ally McBeal. Korean stars have also been bumping American faces for lucrative advertising gigs. Ms Choi, the comely heroine of Winter Sonata, is seen in commercials almost every day.
Copies of the television series are, of course, hot (and expensive) sellers in DVD format. Korean language schools have noticed a sharp increase in enrollments, and thousands of Japanese tourists have traveled to South Korea to visits locations where the television series was shot.
The house in the South Korean city of Chuncheong that was used as a set for Winter Sonata recently was closed after the owner said she had become physically and mentally exhausted coping with the thousands of Japanese visitors. Dai-Ichi Life Research Institute estimates that the shows and other products and tourism have injected about $700 million into the South Korean economy.
What Japanese call the hanryu, or the Korean Wave, has been building for about five years. It got a big boost when Japan and South Korea jointly hosted the 2002 World Cup. Just before the games South Korean President Kim Dae Jung relaxed a long-standing ban on Japanese cultural imports. Although Japan never had an official ban on Korean cultural imports, Seoul’s action also opened the way for a more general acceptance of things Korean in Japan.
Many fans say that the Korean dramas hark back to an earlier, golden era of Japanese films and television dramas of the 1950s, when the male stars were more stoic, manly, more protective of women. Many had “pure love” plots with lovers separated by war or soldiers returning to find their loved ones married to someone else..
Some critics think that the Korean dramas took the country by storm because Japanese television and drama are at a low creative ebb. Many of the older stars, such as Kiyoshi Atsumi or Toshiro Mifune, have passed from the scene and not been replaced by talent of equal drawing power. Most Japanese TV programs also seem to be aimed at single people, especially single, big-spending Japanese women, who are normally the most desirable demographic for advertisers.
But there are signs that Japanese producers are beginning to get on the pure love bandwagon. If Winter Sonata was the uncontested hit of 2004, then the second biggest phenom of the year was a blockbuster Japanese tearjerker with a jawbreaker of a title: Sekai no Chishin de Ai wo Sakebu (Crying out for love in the center of the world), or “Sekachu” for short. Based on a bestseller about a man whose girlfriend is dying of leukemia, it was turned into a hit movie of the summer season.
One intriguing question is whether Japan’s new interest and respect for things Korean will spill over into better treatment for Japan’s own Korean minority, known as zainichi, who have been the object of many forms of discrimination and disrespect in Japan since the end of World War II.
It may be too early to give a verdict, but it is seen as encouraging that Fuji Television’s new “pure love” series Destiny of Love has cast a Japanese-Korean as the female lead. It is the first time in Japanese television history that a series has been built around a zainichi.
Todd Crowell is the author of Tokyo：City on the Edge.
“Now I only watch Korean dramas,” said Ms Kamia. She thinks that Japanese television dramas are boring. She is just one of tens of thousands of mostly middle-aged women in Japan who have been captivated by the televised imports. It has turned several Korean actors into superstars and sparked new interest by Japanese in things Korean.
Bae Yong Joon, 32, -- universally known here as “Yon-sama” using the honorific suffix for idols -- was a relatively obscure Korean actor until the Japanese success of his popular drama “Winter Sonata” catapulted him to international stardom. He has many fans in other Asian countries from Vietnam to Indonesia too.
Bae’s visit to Japan in November to open an exhibit of his photographs elicited airport scenes not experienced since the Beatles sent younger women into swoons in the 1960s. Thousands of women turned up at Narita airport to greet their hero. Hundreds more besieged his hotel. “Now I can die happy,” said Noriko Fukawa, 48.
They have been captivated by Yon-sama’s soft good looks, killer smile, the excruciating sensitivity in which he plays his roles and his polite demeanor. No other Japanese or Western actor even comes close. The Korean stars are also seen as being humble and polite – gentlemen – qualities seemingly lacking in the current crop of Japanese talent.
The stories are popular because they depict “pure love.” Pure love, or jun ai in Japanese, has a special meaning in Japan, explains Kaori Shoji, who writes frequently on social issues and trends for the Japan Times. “A jun ai couple would face many obstacles contrived to keep them apart and pining for a romantic reunion.”
That, of course, is precisely what Korean love dramas portray. In Winter Sonata a young woman played by Choi Ju Woo meets the love of her life in high school only to lose him in a traffic accident. Ten years later while working in an office she meets a Korean-American played by Bae who looks just like her long-lost love.
The stories are full of obstacles that the protagonists must overcome in the quest for true love. They unfold slowly, dreamily, with lots of long shots of the couple walking hand-in-hand through snowy woods, or Yon-sama giving the heroine long, searching and loving looks.
The fabulous success of these television dramas has sparked widespread interest in things Korean among Japanese, who in the past tended to look down on their neighbor across the Sea of Japan (or East Sea as Koreans call it). Indeed, Yon-sama may well be the first Korean that Japanese have unabashedly admired in their long histories.
Most of the Korean love dramas are broadcast late at night in a time slot that used to be the preserve of American imports such as Ally McBeal. Korean stars have also been bumping American faces for lucrative advertising gigs. Ms Choi, the comely heroine of Winter Sonata, is seen in commercials almost every day.
Copies of the television series are, of course, hot (and expensive) sellers in DVD format. Korean language schools have noticed a sharp increase in enrollments, and thousands of Japanese tourists have traveled to South Korea to visits locations where the television series was shot.
The house in the South Korean city of Chuncheong that was used as a set for Winter Sonata recently was closed after the owner said she had become physically and mentally exhausted coping with the thousands of Japanese visitors. Dai-Ichi Life Research Institute estimates that the shows and other products and tourism have injected about $700 million into the South Korean economy.
What Japanese call the hanryu, or the Korean Wave, has been building for about five years. It got a big boost when Japan and South Korea jointly hosted the 2002 World Cup. Just before the games South Korean President Kim Dae Jung relaxed a long-standing ban on Japanese cultural imports. Although Japan never had an official ban on Korean cultural imports, Seoul’s action also opened the way for a more general acceptance of things Korean in Japan.
Many fans say that the Korean dramas hark back to an earlier, golden era of Japanese films and television dramas of the 1950s, when the male stars were more stoic, manly, more protective of women. Many had “pure love” plots with lovers separated by war or soldiers returning to find their loved ones married to someone else..
Some critics think that the Korean dramas took the country by storm because Japanese television and drama are at a low creative ebb. Many of the older stars, such as Kiyoshi Atsumi or Toshiro Mifune, have passed from the scene and not been replaced by talent of equal drawing power. Most Japanese TV programs also seem to be aimed at single people, especially single, big-spending Japanese women, who are normally the most desirable demographic for advertisers.
But there are signs that Japanese producers are beginning to get on the pure love bandwagon. If Winter Sonata was the uncontested hit of 2004, then the second biggest phenom of the year was a blockbuster Japanese tearjerker with a jawbreaker of a title: Sekai no Chishin de Ai wo Sakebu (Crying out for love in the center of the world), or “Sekachu” for short. Based on a bestseller about a man whose girlfriend is dying of leukemia, it was turned into a hit movie of the summer season.
One intriguing question is whether Japan’s new interest and respect for things Korean will spill over into better treatment for Japan’s own Korean minority, known as zainichi, who have been the object of many forms of discrimination and disrespect in Japan since the end of World War II.
It may be too early to give a verdict, but it is seen as encouraging that Fuji Television’s new “pure love” series Destiny of Love has cast a Japanese-Korean as the female lead. It is the first time in Japanese television history that a series has been built around a zainichi.
Todd Crowell is the author of Tokyo：City on the Edge.
posted by Todd Crowell at 2:34 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home