Tsugunai

Official Website
www.nhk.or.jp/bs/tsugunai

Broadcast
Saturdays, 10.00 – 10.49 p.m. from 17 November 2012

Station
NHK BS Premium

Story
Hidaka Eisuke used to be a hotshot brain surgeon with a promising future. He even married a professor’s daughter, Hiroe to stay ahead in the hospital’s career track. As time passed, he no longer felt the significance of marriage and neglected his family. Meanwhile, his son died of an illness. Blaming herself for his death, Hiroe committed suicide. At the same time, Hidaka accepted responsibility for a medical error in the hospital and resigned as a doctor. With all hope lost, he became a recluse and eventually degenerated into a homeless man. Suspected by the police to be the culprit in a case of arson in one of the streets he wanders, Hidaka is questioned. At the discretion of a detective, Hidaka’s former girlfriend, the psychiatrist Nagasawa Miwako, arrives as his guarantor. As if by fate, Hidaka meets Kusanagi Masato, a youth that he had saved from sexual abuse 12 years earlier, on the streets and begins to feel fatherly. Masato has an uncanny ability to “hear people crying in their hearts”. As Hidaka and Masato support each other, Hidaka finds the hope to live, but gradually struggles with the possibility that Masato may be the criminal behind the spate of serial murders targeting the socially vulnerable on these streets … …

Characters
Tanihara Shosuke as Hidaka Eisuke
He used to be an up-and-coming brain surgeon, but his son died of illness because he took no notice of his family. His wife, Hiroe, who blamed him for the boy’s death, committed suicide before his eyes. Hidaka is wracked with guilt and loses hope. Giving up everything, he becomes a homeless man. He ends up witnessing a fire on one of the streets that he wanders and goes to the police. And then he gets embroiled in a series of baffling serial murders … …

Kimura Tae as Nagasawa Miwako
A psychiatrist. Hidaka Eisuke’s ex-girlfriend. Back when they were dating, they encountered the abduction of an infant. The child survived thanks to Hidaka. Although she and Hidaka went separate ways after that, she is reunited with a homeless Hidaka 12 years later.

Ashina Sei as Hidaka Hiroe/Hotta Yuko
Hidaka Hiroe: The daughter of Hidaka Eisuke’s superior. She married Hidaka and gave birth to a son. But the boy died of illness. Despairing of this life, she jumps to her death in front of Hidaka.

Hotta Yuko: A resident of one of the streets that Hidaka Eisuke drifts about and the neighbour of a woman killed in a murder. A chef at a bistro. She looks exactly like his late wife.

Imai Yuki as Kusanagi Masato
A junior high school student whom Hidaka Eisuke met at the library when under police surveillance. There is a part of him that is cold. He gets close Hidaka thinking that talking to Hidaka rather than studying will allow him to learn about the world. In fact, he and Hidaka have a strong connection to each other from the past. He possess the mysterious ability to hear people crying in their hearts.

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