Official Website
www.nhk.or.jp/drama/sumika
Broadcast
Sundays, 10.00 – 10.49 p.m. from 20 July 2014
Station
NHK BS Premium
Story
Asakura Tomoko obtained her MBA at an American university and is a rookie reporter for Tokyo newspaper Dainichi Shimbun’s local news desk. Although she is good at expressing things in numbers, she has no interest in understanding the feelings of her interview subjects. Furthermore, she has nothing but a lot of pride, and seems to have been branded an unqualified reporter by her superior because of this. In an attempt to overturn this perception, Tomoko decides to do a story on the merits of home nursing care, based on the reduction in social security payments and memories of her grandfather saying that “dying at home is the best” while he was alive. Tomoko’s editor as well as Harashima Daigo, a senior reporter, warn her that she will not get interviews on the ground. Tomoko shows up at Ginaikai’s Care Centre and asks the manager Akimoto Naoki for interviews with the elderly people receiving care. However, she gets overwhelmed by the harsh reality, and then the elderly people whom she had interviewed unexpectedly die one after another. Harashima has a suspicion because all three of the elderly had received house calls from the doctor Hirabayashi Akira who previously expressed his support for euthanasia. At that moment, Tomoko gets a phone call from Hirabayashi. He says he needs to speak to her. But he is not at the clinic when they get there … …
Characters
Kiritani Mirei as Asakura Tomoko
A rookie reporter with Dainichi Shimbun’s local news desk. She has obtained an MBA. While she is good at expressing things in numbers, she is not accustomed to understanding how her interview subjects feel and has been branded as an unqualified reporter because of that. She intends to write an article on the merits of home nursing care, but when the elderly people she interviewed start dying one after another, she attempts to find out the truth.
Okada Yoshinori as Akimoto Naoki
The manager of Ginaikai Care Centre. He draws up care plans for the elderly people receiving care. Wanting to get rid of solitary deaths, he gets Asakura Tomoko and reporters to write about the problems of home nursing care to make an appeal to society.
Hiraizumi Sei as Hirabayashi Akira
A doctor who makes house calls to give medical care. He lectures Asakura Tomoko who does not understand the feelings of the elderly people receiving care and offers support to those being cared as well as those giving care. He has even contributed a paper expressing an understanding of euthanasia.
Kato Toranosuke as Harashima Daigo
A reporter with Dainichi Shimbun. Asakura Tomoko’s senior. He thinks she is half-baked, but when he detects a whiff of murder in the series of deaths involving elderly people receiving care, he joins Tomoko in pursuit of the truth.
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