is a novel by

Renzaburō Shibata was a Japanese author and Sinologist. He graduated from Keio university. He wrote a number of historical novels, and published a new Japanese translation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms in 1959. In 1951,he won Naoki Prize. He is famous for his ...

. The protagonist of this '' jidaigeki'' is Matsudaira Zankurō, a low-ranking gokenin in the service of the Tokugawa shogunate. He lives with his mother Masajo in the shogunal capital of

Edo Edo ( ja, , , "bay-entrance" or "estuary"), also romanized as Jedo, Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of Tokyo. Edo, formerly a ''jōkamachi'' (castle town) centered on Edo Castle located in Musashi Province, became the ''de facto'' capital of ...

. Other characters include his fiancée Matsudaira Sumi, old friend Nishio Denzaburō, and favorite geisha Otsuta. From 1995 to 2002 ''Gokenin Zankurō'' was also a prime-time television series on the Fuji Television network in

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

. Ken Watanabe played the lead, with Kyōko Kishida as his mother and Mayumi Wakamura as the geisha (Tsutakichi in the series). Watanabe directed the final episode.

References

External links

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Fuji Television site
Jidaigeki television series Fuji TV dramas 1995 Japanese television series debuts 2002 Japanese television series endings Television shows based on Japanese novels Japanese novels Year of work missing {{Japan-tv-prog-stub