Release date: December 3rd, 1980
Director: Shintaro Sobue
Studio: NTV
Cast: Kaori Momoi, Ryuuzou Hayashi, Etsuko Ichihara, Nijiko Kiyokawa, Tanie Kitabayashi, Midori Kiuchi, Eri Ishida, Shiro Kishibe, Akihiko Hirata, Minori Terada, Senri Sakurai et al.
Availability: VHS release, no official streaming; available on archive.org in full. (You will want to fix the aspect ratio in VLC.)
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What we're looking at today is fairly rare: as I've mentioned many times, most of the work Hirata did towards the end of his career(/life, I guess) was in television, but very, very little of it is preserved. Fortunately, though, due to both its individual popularity and its place in a long-running series which was also popular, Kanebo Human Special: Pediatric Ward stuck around.
(Do note that this is entirely unrelated to the other "pediatric ward" movie Hirata was in, which is the 1983 Monday Wide Theater original Tearful Pediatric Ward. It's not surprising that he'd be in two of these, considering he got cast as a doctor all the time.)
Kaori Momoi plays Hatsuko Yamazaki, a nurse who, along with her friend Reiko Ogawa (Midori Kiuchi) is transferred into a pediatric ward. Yamazaki's troubles are initially limited to dealing with unruly children, but while she's still new at the job, she's taken to a private room and shown a baby boy who was born without hands, feet, or the use of his eyes, ears, and speech. At first, she's disturbed by the boy (who the hospital nicknames "Taro"; the go-to generic male name in Japan), even describing him as a "lump of flesh", but she quickly develops a deep affection for him. While everyone else at the hospital considers him barely human and certainly beyond help, Yamazaki cares for Taro, advocates for him, and treats him like a person.
Now, of course, if this were real life, every single person working at this hospital would be in massive trouble. Taro's parents end up in the picture midway through, and when his mother demands to see her son (whose real name is Junichiro), hospital staff shows her a random baby who supposedly is too fragile to leave his glass-walled room, and then eventually tells her the baby died. Yamazaki also takes Taro on a little excursion outside the hospital at one point, during which she discovers that her boyfriend is cheating on her, which is the only part of the movie that felt really ridiculous.
But, in my opinion, any good daytime TV drama about a pediatric ward should have you yelling "No, girl! Don't steal that baby!" at the screen at least once.
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| I was honestly so captivated by this fake soundstage park at dusk. |
What surprised me most about this movie is that it is actually good. I was expecting it to be your standard sappy daytime drama, but Momoi elevates the whole thing beyond what it might otherwise have been. Her rapport with "Taro", played alternately by a big blanket (for shots when Yamazaki is carrying him) and a deeply disturbing anatomically-correct dummy, is highly believable. And it's not just me saying this is a good one: Pediatric Ward had the highest viewership rating for a drama special in the Kanto region in 1980.
(A word about that dummy: according to Yomiuri Shimbun, staff became so attached to it that at the conclusion of filming, the dummy was ritually purified and then given a funeral. As we'll see, Yomiuri Shimbun had a vested interest in Pediatric Ward, so you can decide whether or not to trust them yourself, but I don't see why someone would make that up.)
Unfortunately Akihiko Hirata's role in Pediatric Ward amounts to basically a cameo; a single brief scene where he plays a surgeon named Dr. Tanigaki. His is not the only cameo, either - Senri Sakurai of the band Crazy Cats (who I have featured quite frequently here) also has a very brief appearance as a guy who's trying to jump off the hospital roof. Some other notables with slightly larger roles are Minori Terada as Taro/Junichiro's dad and Shiro Kishibe as a technician. Etsuko Ichihara, a favorite actress of mine, also has a role as a nurse, but it's not her best work and honestly I didn't even recognize her at first.
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| Not how you're supposed to wear that, but okay. |
Pediatric Ward was the very first installment of the Kanebo Human Special series of TV movies, which ran for 20 years and was solely comprised of adaptations of works that had won Yomiuri Shimbun's "Women's Human Documentary Award". The lone sponsor of this series (and supporter of the award itself) was Kanebo Corporation, a huge-ass company who got its start in the 1880s producing textiles and eventually reached its tentacles into other industries such as cosmetics, food, and everyday goods. Kanebo Human Special was only one of many programs sponsored or co-sponsored by the corporation.
Yomiuri Shimbun and Kanebo's intent with their documentary award - the winners of which were the source material for each production in the Kanebo Human Special series - was specifically to highlight the role of women in society and in building the future. In fact, only women applicants were allowed. This focus on women is very noticeable in Pediatric Ward, which has essentially no important male characters, aside from Yamazaki's useless boyfriend and a doctor with main character energy.
The original work that the TV movie was adapted from was published in Yomiuri Shimbun in May of 1980 as a serial novel, and then collated in book form in October. Considering our movie came out in December, that's a pretty quick turnaround from serial novel to book to movie. The TV adaptation changes the ending: in the original, Taro dies. The main character's name is changed as well. Not having read the book, I can't say whether there were more changes than those.
Egawa based some of the patients who appear in her novel on real people, but notably, she actually visited them to obtain their consent before writing about them. (It's unfortunate that this is notable, but many writers wouldn't even bother.) Egawa was also a regular participant in strikes meant to draw attention to the problem of nursing shortages, but was conflicted about these strikes due to feeling that they amounted to abandoning patients in need. This was what led her to write Pediatric Ward and participate in Yomiuri Shimbun's contest: an effort to find other ways of publicizing issues within nursing that didn't require leaving her patients.
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| Book version of Pediatric Ward featuring Kaori Momoi. |
After hearing that the entirety of the Kanebo Human Special series was sponsored by a large corporation, one may assume that their intent was purely profit-driven, which may have been the case later, but from what I can gather it sounds like the production of Pediatric Ward was a matter of personal investment over profits. Several people who worked on getting the novel onto television screens were concerned that its subject matter would be too off-putting, but the Kanebo director whose idea it was to adapt the work told his production team to basically just do the thing without considering ratings (absolutely anathema for TV networks in Japan; see Yoshiki Onoda getting salty about it).
The script for the TV adaptation was written by Akira Hayazaki (real name Yoshisuke Tomita), a prolific screenwriter who was apparently very good friends with Tora-san's Kiyoshi Atsumi. Hayasaka himself has been depicted in docudramas twice, played by Ken Ishiguro and Kei Yamamoto. As for the movie's director, Shintaro Sobue, I can say basically nothing; he seems to have worked in television for at least thirty years (between 1968 and 1998) but no biographical information about him has come to light in my research. Sobue may also have directed Hirata in Downtown Story, but Downtown Story is unfortunately one of a few series where I've been unable to determine how often or when Hirata appeared in them, so it's possible they never crossed paths.
The score - which is, to be honest, weird as hell; I was getting Vangelis vibes - was done by Jun Fukamachi, a fairly well-known synth/jazz composer who collaborated with Casiopea. There doesn't seem to have been any separate release of his score, which is too bad; it's great.
Pediatric Ward was released to VHS in 1987 (also sponsored by Kanebo); this remains its only home media release and tapes seem to be very expensive from the few I've seen up for sale or auction. I'm not sure about re-broadcasts - I found one source that seemed to suggest networks didn't want to re-air this due to its subject matter, but that source was most likely only speculating.
Normally here is where I'd say "That's about all I can give you for this one" and end the post, but I've actually got an issue of Kinema Junpo on order that contains a review of Pediatric Ward. I will have to add that in after this post has already been published because it's not in my hands yet (you know how it is with Neokyo), so watch this space if that sounds vaguely interesting to you.
(And, yes, this is going in my Crazy Cats tag.)