Something to watch tonight: Friday 14 March

Asura (Kore-eda, 2025)

Apologies for missing an update yesterday. We were experiencing technical difficulties.

The Japanese writer-director Hirokazu Kore-eda is a particular favourite in this house.

The first of his films that I saw was I Wish* in 2011, about two young brothers in different cities after their parents’ separation. They believe that if they can see two of the marvellous new bullet trains pass each other at top speed, they will get their wish to be together again granted. I then went back to Nobody Knows (2004) based on the true story of a group of five children having to fend for themselves after they are abandoned by their solo-parent mother and Still Walking (2008) about a family coming together for the annual commemoration of the death of a child.

Like Father, Like Son (2013) was a speculation about the effects on two families of the discovery that their children had been accidentally swapped in the hospital birthing unit. Spielberg had plans for a Hollywood adaptation of that one. In 2015, Our Little Sister was about the posthumous discovery by three sisters that their father had a daughter from another relationship and the attempts to incorporate this new younger sibling into their lives.

That’s the one that I thought of while I was watching Asura, Kore-eda-san’s new miniseries. It’s set in Tokyo in 1979 and it’s about the disruption to a family of four adult sisters when one discovers that their father has been cheating on their mother.

As the seven episodes progress, we learn so much about these distinctive women. Tsunako (the eldest), played by Rie Miyazawa, is a widowed ikebana teacher in an affair of her own with a local restauranteur. Second sister Makiko (Machiko Ono) is married with two children but suspects that her husband Takao (Masahiro Motoki) is in a relationship with a co-worker. Third sister Takiko (Yū Aoi) is a shy librarian who ends up falling for the private detective (Ryuhei Matsuda) who has been tailing her father. And the boyfriend of impetuous youngest sister Sakiko (Suzu Hirose) is a young professional boxer (Kisetsu Fujiwara) straining for the big time.

Over a year or so, we see these people as they gather for meals, funerals, weddings, and we grow to appreciate the complexity of these sisters – the competitiveness, the judgement, the disapproval, and the overwhelming love they have for each other. Every episode has at least one moment of hilarity between them as they finish each others’ sentences or gang up on one of the hapless men in their lives. But they also drive each other nuts.

It’s also about the simmering human emotions that Japanese culture tends to keep hidden. There’s a lot of talk about appropriateness or propriety. Tradition binds communities – every show has at least one family meal – but it can also make straightforward communication about difficult subjects harder than it should be.

Apart from Kore-eda, we chose this because we wanted a change of pace from the violence and fantasy of most of what we’d been watching recently (we had just finished The Penguin) and it turned out to be just the tonic. But it also took a while to get through because it absolutely does not demand to be binged. Even though all the episodes are sitting right there, we were completely content to watch one a week and let it just sit and simmer in-between.

Kore-eda’s previous Netflix series, The Makanai: Cooking for the Meiko House was a recommendation here back in September 2023. It’s more romantic and less dramatic – almost dreamlike – but still one my favourite shows of all time.

*I was in the process of introducing the editor-in-chief to I Wish a few weeks ago when it literally blew up the Blu-ray player. It’s back now, repaired and with the disc still inside it, so we’ll finish that beautiful story this weekend.

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Where to watch Asura