All Night Diner and other Japanese TV Greats

This little video is the opening for the JDrama All Night Diner, in my opinion one of the best TV shows to come out of Japan in the last decade.

There's something about Shinjuku that drew me in from my first visit (literally the first day I arrived in Japan, in July of 1998), and keeps me coming back, as you know if you've followed my blog even a little. In many ways it feels like a doorway to an older Japan that now really no longer exists. I'm not talking about the Japan of samurai and ninja or geisha and lords. For that there are a lot of other places you can visit. I'm talking about the crumbling but vibrant, sleazy but also pure, very much alive Japan of the post-war pre-bubble era.

Of course I was only a baby when this was all happening, but I've certainly consumed enough media from the era to have a feel for what it was like, or what it was like seen through the lens of a camera.

All Night Diner (深夜食堂) is about a quiet man who runs a little hole in the wall bar somewhere in Shinjuku, probably Kabukicho, and the various pimps, hookers, scam-artists, drag queens, and all sorts of people who drop into each episode. The lead, played by Kaoru Kobayashi (小林薫), is almost never the focus of the show. Instead, each episode has a star, someone who pops in and then out. Each story feels very familiar, because they're almost all intentionally cliched plots you've seen a million times, but like the title sequence they're done just right to make you feel for the characters because they're someone you know, or feel like you know, and acted well enough that they sink into the richness of the world around.

I write about this show now because it's available on Hulu Japan. If you have a subscription, check out the series. Each 25 minute episode is one of the best written, most concise and especially beautifully filmed shows you're going to see in Japan. The show's homepage is also still up here.

As a bonus, I also want to mention the two other shows that I think fit in perfectly.




First we have River's Edge Okawabata Detective Agency (リバースエッジ 大川端探偵社), starring Joe Odagiri (オダギリジョー) as a mostly burned-out detective who specializes in finding people and finding about people. It's a quiet, slow-paced show set down in the old downtown area near Ueno and Asakusa, one of my other favorite stomping grounds.

Spiritually it feels very much like a sequel to greats such as Detective Story that starred the legendary Yusaku Matsuda (松田優作), a show that basically invented the detective show in Japan. Like the All Night Diner, the show centers around a single main character (plus his boss and their sort of secretary), with each episode featuring a new client and often a completely different feel.

Very much worth a watch, for the story and Odagiri's solid action (he also played a recurring character in All Night Diner and was a lead in Yae no Sakura), and also the great music. You can find the homepage here - it's on TV now, TV Tokyo Friday late night around midnight.

And last, we have a show that sits between the other two in both time and feel.



This is the official preview video of Mahoro Ekimae Bangaichi (まほろ駅前番外地), which stars the exceptionally talented Eita and Ryuhei Matsuda (Yusaku's son) as a pair of benriya (便利屋 - a Japanese term for someone who's like a cross between a handyman/fixit and a detective). In reality, they're a couple of losers who can barely scrape the rent together, but somehow survive by taking all kinds of cases.

The main charm of the show is watching the two interact on screen together, often failing in their missions and finding new ways to get the crap beaten out of them. The locations and camera work are also great, as is (again) the music.

In many ways it's like a dirtbag version of River's Edge, which jokingly told the audience in an early episode what the difference is between a benriya and a detective, IMO highlighting the fact that both shows are quite similar.

The show's homepage is here or you can check their link page for sites where you can watch the show streaming (for a fee).

If you have the time and can find a way to watch all three, there's a great kind of symmetry in feel and style to the sort of trilogy. Enjoy. Trust me, after watching each episode you'll want to watch more, and also head out to the city and find the wonderful locations yourself.