(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. 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
Latvia ( or ; lv, Latvija ; ltg, Latveja; liv, Leţmō), officially the Republic of Latvia ( lv, Latvijas Republika, links=no, ltg, Latvejas Republika, links=no, liv, Leţmō Vabāmō, links=no), is a country in the Baltic region of ...
. The TV series is based on the
1968 novel of the same name by
Ryōtarō Shiba and adapted by
Hisashi Nozawa.
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
The is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912.
The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization b ...
, 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
Sarah Brightman (born 14 August 1960) is an English classical crossover soprano singer, actress and dancer.
Brightman began her career as a member of the dance troupe Hot Gossip and released several disco singles as a solo performer. In 1981, ...
.
Production
Production credits
*Based on the novel by –
Ryōtarō Shiba
*Script –
Hisashi Nozawa
*Music –
Joe Hisaishi
*Titling –
Ryōtarō Shiba
*Historical research – Yasushi Toriumi
*Narrator –
Ken Watanabe
*Production coordinator – Yasuhiro Kan
*Casting –
Mineyo Satō
Development
During the 1970s, executive producer Yoshiko Nishimura read the 1968 novel ''
Saka no Ue no Kumo
, or "Clouds Above the Hill" is a Japanese historical novel by Shiba Ryōtarō originally published serially from 1968 to 1972 in eight volumes. A three-year NHK television special drama series based on the novel and also entitled '' Saka no U ...
'' by
Ryōtarō Shiba when he was a student at the
University of Tokyo.
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.
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.
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.
The NHK would officially announce their intention to adapt the novel as a
taiga drama by 2003.
Writing and filming
Preparations for ''Saka no Ue no Kumo'' took three times as long as a regular NHK taiga drama.
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. 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.
The
Meiji era
The is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912.
The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization b ...
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.
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.
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."
The series has since become the most expensive taiga drama ever produced by NHK.
Cast
Akiyama family
*
Masahiro Motoki as
Akiyama Saneyuki
*
Hiroshi Abe as
Akiyama Yoshifuru
**
Shōta Sometani as young Yoshifuru
*
Shirō Itō as
Akiyama Hisataka
Akiyama (written: lit. "autumn mountain") is a Japanese surname. Notable people with the surname include:
*, general in the Imperial Japanese Army and considered father of the Japanese Cavalry
*Denis Akiyama (1952–2018), Japanese-Canadian actor ...
*
Keiko Takeshita as
Akiyama Sada
Akiyama (written: lit. "autumn mountain") is a Japanese surname. Notable people with the surname include:
*, general in the Imperial Japanese Army and considered father of the Japanese Cavalry
*Denis Akiyama (1952–2018), Japanese-Canadian actor ...
*
Takako Matsu as
Akiyama Tami
Akiyama (written: lit. "autumn mountain") is a Japanese surname. Notable people with the surname include:
*, general in the Imperial Japanese Army and considered father of the Japanese Cavalry
*Denis Akiyama (1952–2018), Japanese-Canadian actor ...
Masaoka family
*
Teruyuki Kagawa as
Masaoka Shiki
*
Miho Kanno
is a Japanese actress and J-Pop singer. Her nickname is ''Kanchan'' (菅ちゃん). She was born in Sakado, Saitama, Japan.
Career
In 1992, Kanno made her debut as a member of a group called ''Sakurakko Club'' after passing the orientation f ...
as Masaoka Ritsu
**
Riko Yoshida as young Ritsu
*
Mieko Harada as Masaoka Yae
*Ichiro Shinjitsu as Ōhara Kanzan
*Yūto Uemura as Katō Tsunetada
Navy officials and their family
*
Takahiro Fujimoto as
Takeo Hirose
*
Tsurutarō Kataoka
is a Japanese television personality, actor, artist, and former professional boxer. For his role in the 1988 film '' The Discarnates'', he won the award for best supporting actor at the 31st Blue Ribbon Awards, at the 13th Hochi Film Award, and ...
as
Yashiro Rokurō
Baron was an admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy and Minister of the Navy of Japan, Navy Minister, succeeding the last of the Satsuma Domain, Satsuma-era naval leaders of the early Meiji period.
Biography Military career
Yashiro was born in Ga ...
*
Tetsuya Watari as
Tōgō Heihachirō
*
Kōji Ishizaka as
Yamamoto Gonbei
*
Masao Kusakari as
Katō Tomosaburō
*
Hiroshi Tachi as
Shimamura Hayao
*
Masaya Kato as
Arima Ryokitsu
*
Akira Nakao as
Hidaka Sōnojō
Baron was an admiral of the early modern Imperial Japanese Navy, known primarily for his role in the First Sino-Japanese War.
Biography
Hidaka was the second son of a samurai in the service of the Shimazu clan of Satsuma Domain, and was born in ...
*
Kisuke Iida
This is a list of characters for Tite Kubo's manga and anime series ''Bleach (manga), Bleach''. It takes place in a fictional universe in which the characters are split into various factionalized fictional races. They are subdivisions of humanity ...
as
Takarabe Takeshi
was an admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy, and served as Navy Minister in the 1920s. He was also the son-in-law of Yamamoto Gonnohyōe.
Biography
Takarabe was born in Miyakonojō city in Miyazaki Prefecture. He graduated at the top out ...
*
Hidekazu Akai as
Kantarō Suzuki
Army officials and their family
*
Kōji Matoba
Koji, Kōji, Kohji or Kouji may refer to:
* Kōji (given name), a masculine Japanese given name
* Kōji (Heian period) (康治), Japanese era, 1142–1144
* Kōji (Muromachi period) (弘治), Japanese era, 1555–1558
* Koji orange, a Japanese cit ...
as
Gaishi Nagaoka
*
Hideki Takahashi as
Kodama Gentarō
*
Tōru Emori as
Yamagata Aritomo
*
Masakane Yonekura as
Ōyama Iwao
*
Akira Emoto as
Nogi Maresuke
*
Kyōko Maya
is a very common feminine Japanese given name. Not to be confused with Kiyoko.
Possible writings
The final syllable "ko" is typically written with the kanji character for child, 子. It is a common suffix to female names in Japan.
The first sy ...
as Nogi Shizuko
*
Shinya Tsukamoto as
Akashi Motojiro
*
Jun Kunimura as
Kawakami Soroku
*
Takehiro Murata as
Ijichi Kōsuke
Baron was a general in the Imperial Japanese Army in the First Sino-Japanese War and Chief of Staff of the Japanese Third Army during the Siege of Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese War. His wife was the niece of Marshal Oyama Iwao.
Biography
Ij ...
*
Takaaki Enoki as
Mori Rintarō
*
Daijirō Tsutsumi as
Iguchi Shōgo Iguchi (written 井口 literally "well mouth") is a Japanese surname. Notable people with the surname include:
*Bryan Iguchi, a professional snowboarder
* Miyuki Iguchi, Japanese athlete
* Motonari Iguchi (井口 基成), pianist
*, Japanese film d ...
*
Atsushi Miyauchi as Fujii Shigeta
Politicians and their family
*
Go Kato as
Itō Hirobumi
*
Toshiyuki Nishida as
Takahashi Korekiyo
*
Naoto Takenaka as
Komura Jutarō
*
Ren Ōsugi
, born was a Japanese actor. For his work in ''Cure'', ''Hana-bi'' and other films, Osugi was given the Best Supporting Actor award at the 1999 Yokohama Film Festival. He often worked alongside Takeshi Kitano and Susumu Terajima. In the DVD comme ...
as
Mutsu Munemitsu
*
Shinya Owada as
Inoue Kaoru
*Toshiki Ayata as
Katsura Tarō
*Kanta Ogata as
Kaneko Kentarō
Ordinary people
*
Shirō Sano as
Kuga Katsunan
*Kenzō as Kojima Ichinen
*
Yukiyoshi Ozawa as
Natsume Sōseki
Foreigners
*
Julian Glover as
Alfred Thayer Mahan
*
Marina Aleksandrova
Marina Andreevna Pupenina, known by her pseudonym Marina Aleksandrova (russian: Мари́на Андре́евна Пупе́нина; born 29 August 1982) is a Russian actress, best known for her role as Catherine the Great in the television ...
as Ariadna
*Timofei Fyodorov as
Nicholas II of Russia
*Norbert Gort as
Jakob Meckel
*Tim Wellard as
Prince George of Greece and Denmark
*Gennadi Vengerov as
Yevgeni Ivanovich Alekseyev
Yevgeni Ivanovich Alekseyev or Alexeyev (russian: Евге́ний Ива́нович Алексе́ев ( – May 27, 1917) was an admiral in the Imperial Russian Navy, viceroy of the Russian Far East, and commander-in-chief of Imperial Rus ...
Others
*Onoe Kikunosuke V as
Emperor Meiji
, also called or , was the 122nd emperor of Japan according to the traditional order of succession. Reigning from 13 February 1867 to his death, he was the first monarch of the Empire of Japan and presided over the Meiji era. He was the figur ...
Series overview
Season 1 : 1868 - 1900
Season 2 : 1900 - 1904
Season 3 : Russo-Japanese War
*Rating is based on Japanese video research(
Kantō region
The is a geographical area of Honshu, the largest island of Japan. In a common definition, the region includes the Greater Tokyo Area and encompasses seven prefectures: Gunma, Tochigi, Ibaraki, Saitama, Tokyo, Chiba and Kanagawa. Slight ...
).
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)
*''NHK Special Drama Guide, Saka no Ue no Kumo Part 1'' (October 30, 2009)
*''NHK Special Drama Guide, Saka no Ue no Kumo Part 2'' (October 25, 2010)
Accolades
References
External links
NHK website*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Saka No Ue No Kumo (Tv Series)
2009 Japanese television series debuts
2011 Japanese television series endings
First Sino-Japanese War
Russo-Japanese War
Taiga drama
Television shows based on Japanese novels
Television series set in the 1860s
Television series set in the 1880s
Television series set in the 1890s
Television series set in the 1900s
Works by Joe Hisaishi