Saka no Ue no Kumo
Titling by Ryōtarō Shiba
Written byHisashi Nozawa
Takeshi Shibata
Mikio Satō
Directed byTakeshi Shibata
Mikio Satō
Taku Katō
StarringMasahiro Motoki
Hiroshi Abe
Teruyuki Kagawa
Miho Kanno
Satomi Ishihara
Takako Matsu
Mieko Harada
Yukiyoshi Ozawa
Takahiro Fujimoto
Kōji Matoba
Masaya Kato
Shinya Owada
Onoe Kikunosuke V
Tsurutaro Kataoka
Shirō Sano
Takaaki Enoki
Akira Takarada
Jun Kunimura
Ren Osugi
Masao Kusakari
Kyōko Maya
Masakane Yonekura
Akira Emoto
Keiko Takeshita
Naoto Takenaka
Hiroshi Tachi
Tōru Emori
Kōji Ishizaka
Toshiyuki Nishida
Shirō Itō
Go Kato
Hideki Takahashi
Tetsuya Watari
Narrated byKen Watanabe
Ending theme"Stand Alone" by Sarah Brightman
ComposerJoe Hisaishi
Country of originJapan
Original languageJapanese
No. of seasons3
No. of episodes13
Production
Executive producerYoshiki Nishimura
ProducersYasuhiro Suga
Koichi Fujisawa
Running timeapprox. 90 min.
Original release
NetworkNHK
ReleaseNovember 29, 2009 (2009-11-29) –
December 2011 (2011-12)

Saka no Ue no Kumo (坂の上の雲) (lit. “Clouds Above the Slope”) is a Japanese war drama television series which was aired on NHK over three years, from November 29, 2009 to December 2011, as a special taiga drama.[1] The series runs 13 episodes at 90 minutes each. The first season, with 5 episodes, was broadcast in 2009, while seasons two and three, each with 4 episodes, were broadcast in late 2010 and 2011. While most episodes were shot in Japan, one of the episodes in season two was shot in Latvia. The TV series is based on the 1968 novel of the same name by Ryōtarō Shiba and adapted by Hisashi Nozawa.[2]

Executive producer Yoshiko Nishimura acquired the rights to the novel from Shiba's widow Midori Fukuda in 2001, after decades of the author refusing to let anyone adapt his controversial work for the screen. The NHK officially announced their intention to adapt the novel in 2003, though shooting would only begin in 2008. The series is the first taiga drama to be mainly set during the Meiji era, thus its production encountered more difficulties than usual in achieving an accurate depiction of its setting. It is now the most expensive taiga drama ever produced.

The theme song of the drama series is titled "Stand Alone". It was composed by Joe Hisaishi, written by Kundō Koyama, and performed by British soprano singer Sarah Brightman.

Production

Production credits

Development

During the 1970s, executive producer Yoshiko Nishimura read the 1968 novel Saka no Ue no Kumo by Ryōtarō Shiba when he was a student at the University of Tokyo.[3] Though he dreamt of what the novel would look like on screen, his seniors at the NHK drama department thought that adapting the work was inconceivable; Shiba continuously refused throughout his life to let anyone adapt his controversial work for the screen.[3]

By the 1990s, Nishimura would travel to Hollywood to study filmmaking, gaining inspiration to mount an epic narrative on television that would elevate the status of the medium in Japan, which was considered by people to be inferior to cinema.[3] In 2000, Nishimura visited Shiba's widow Midori Fukuda to give his condolences, and presented to her his argument for a television adaptation of Shiba's novel: that it would encourage young people to read the novel after seeing the story onscreen. After a year of deliberation, Fukuda relented and provided Nishimura with the novel's adaptation rights.[3] The NHK would officially announce their intention to adapt the novel as a taiga drama by 2003.[3]

Writing and filming

Preparations for Saka no Ue no Kumo took three times as long as a regular NHK taiga drama.[3] The series was originally scheduled to begin its broadcast by 2006, but the suicide of writer Hisashi Nozawa in 2004 lead to the postponement of production.[4] The usual taiga drama production would first have one-third of the total number of scripts finished before shooting, with audience reception taken into account as the rest of the series is written; Saka no Ue no Kumo only began shooting in 2008 once all 13 ninety-minute scripts were finished.[3]

The Meiji era had never been depicted as the main setting of a taiga drama before, thus the television crew encountered more difficulties than usual in creating the visuals for the era due to a lack of familiar images.[3] Research into the military background of the time especially highlighted the differences between the Meiji military and the Shōwa military; according to Nishimura, no visual image of the Meiji era's military has ever been made that has actually stuck in the Japanese' imaginations, while the Shōwa era has been the default image in their minds.[3]

In adapting the novel for television, the crew addressed the lack of female characters in the original work by including scenes which depicted what the women were doing and thinking about in Japan during both the First Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War. For Nishimura, "those scenes are one of the things worth noticing in a special drama like this one."[3]

The series has since become the most expensive taiga drama ever produced by NHK.[5]

Cast

Akiyama family

Masaoka family

Army officials and their family

Politicians and their family

Ordinary people

Foreigners

Others

Series overview

SeasonOriginally airedDVD release datesDiscs
Season 1 2009 March 15, 2010 5
Season 2 2010 Spring, 2011 4
Season 3 2011 Spring, 2012 4

Season 1 : 1868 - 1900

Season #Episode #TitleDirected byRatingOriginal airdate
1 1 "Shōnen no Kuni" (少年の国) (Country of Youth) Takeshi Shibata 17.7% November 29, 2009
2 2 "Seiun" (青雲) (High Ambition) Takeshi Shibata 19.6% December 6, 2009
3 3 "Kokka Meidō" (国家鳴動) (Rumbling of the Nation) Takeshi Shibata 19.5% December 13, 2009
4 4 "Nisshin Kaisen" (日清開戦) (Outbreak of the Japan-Qing War) Takeshi Shibata 17.8% December 20, 2009
5 5 "Ryūgakusei" (留学生) (The Exchange Student) Ryūji Isshiki 12.9% December 27, 2009

Season 2 : 1900 - 1904

Season #Episode #TitleDirected byRatingOriginal airdate
1 6 "Nichiei Dōmei" (日英同盟) (The Japan-Britain Alliance) Mikio Satō 14.7% December 5, 2010
2 7 "Shiki, Yuku" (子規、逝く) (The Passing of Shiki) Mikio Satō 15.0% December 12, 2010
3 8 "Nichiro Kaisen" (日露開戦) (Outbreak of the Japan-Russia War) Takafumi Kimura 14.7% December 19, 2010
4 9 "Hirose, Shisu" (広瀬、死す) (The Death of Hirose) Takafumi Kimura 9.7% December 26, 2010

Season 3 : Russo-Japanese War

Season #Episode #TitleDirected byRatingOriginal airdate
1 10 "Ryojun Sō Kōgeki" (旅順総攻撃) (General Assault on Ryojun) Taku Kato 12.7% December 2011
2 11 "203 Kōchi" (二〇三高地) (Hill 203) Taku Kato 11.0% December 2011
3 12 "Tekikan Miyu" (敵艦見ゆ) (Enemy Vessels Sighted) Takafumi Kimura 11.1% December 2011
4 13 "Nihon Kai Kaisen" (日本海海戦) (The Battle of the Sea of Japan) Taku Kato 11.4% December 2011

Soundtrack and books

Soundtrack

  • "Saka no Ue no Kumo" Original Soundtrack (December 18, 2009) EMI Music Japan

Books

  • NHK Special Drama, Historical Handbook, Saka no Ue no Kumo (October 30, 2009) ISBN 978-4-14-910729-5
  • NHK Special Drama Guide, Saka no Ue no Kumo Part 1 (October 30, 2009) ISBN 978-4-14-407160-7
  • NHK Special Drama Guide, Saka no Ue no Kumo Part 2 (October 25, 2010) ISBN 978-4-14-407173-7

Accolades

Year Award Result
2010 International Emmy Award for Best Drama Series Nominated
2011 Nominated

References

  1. ↑ "「坂の上の雲」 作品紹介とあらすじ".
  2. ↑ "Nhk松山放送局 坂の上の雲".
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Shinozuka, Jun, ed. (January 2011). "Feature 1: JQR Interview – Yoshiko Nishimura". Japan Quality Review Vol. 0-1. Retrieved 7 August 2019.
  4. ↑ Shiga Nobuo (2004). "TV and Radio in 2003". Theatre Year-book 2004. ITI Japanese Centre. p. 104. Retrieved 2 June 2020.
  5. ↑ Benesch, Oleg (2014). Inventing the Way of the Samurai: Nationalism, Internationalism, and Bushido in Modern Japan. Oxford University Press. p. 220. ISBN 978-0-19-870662-5. Retrieved 2 June 2020.
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