(lit. “Clouds Above the Slope”) is a Japanese war drama television series which was aired on

NHK , also known as NHK, is a Japanese public broadcaster. NHK, which has always been known by this romanized initialism in Japanese, is a statutory corporation funded by viewers' payments of a television license fee. NHK operates two terrestr ...

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. The TV series is based on the 1968 novel of the same name by

Ryōtarō Shiba , also known as , was a Japanese author. He is best known for his novels about historical events in Japan and on the Northeast Asian sub-continent, as well as his historical and cultural essays pertaining to Japan and its relationship to the r ...

and adapted by

Hisashi Nozawa was a Japanese screenwriter and mystery novelist. He won the Kuniko Mukōda Prize in 1998 for his screenplay ''Nemureru Mori'' (A Sleeping Forest) and '' Kekkon Zen'ya'' (The Night before the Wedding). He also won the Edogawa Rampo Prize in 1997 ...

. 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, 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 , known professionally as , is a Japanese composer, musical director, conductor and pianist, known for over 100 film scores and solo albums dating back to 1981. He is also known for his piano scores. Hisaishi's music has been known to explore ...

, written by

Kundō Koyama (born 1964) is a Japanese writer. He is best known for scripting the television series ''Iron Chef'' and the 2009 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film recipient '' Departures''. Koyama has also worked under the pen name Udon Kumayakko, ...

, and performed by British soprano singer Sarah Brightman.

Production

Production credits *Based on the novel by –

*Script –

*Music –

*Titling –

*Historical research – Yasushi Toriumi *Narrator –

Ken Watanabe is a Japanese actor. To English-speaking audiences, he is known for playing tragic hero characters, such as General Tadamichi Kuribayashi in '' Letters from Iwo Jima'' and Lord Katsumoto Moritsugu in ''The Last Samurai'', for which he was nomi ...

*Production coordinator – Yasuhiro Kan *Casting – Mineyo Satō

Development

During the 1970s, executive producer Yoshiko Nishimura read the 1968 novel '' Saka no Ue no Kumo'' by

when he was a student at the

University of Tokyo , abbreviated as or UTokyo, is a public research university located in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Established in 1877, the university was the first Imperial University and is currently a Top Type university of the Top Global University Project b ...

. Though he dreamt of what the novel would look like on screen, his seniors at the

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

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 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 The First Sino-Japanese War (25 July 1894 – 17 April 1895) was a conflict between China and Japan primarily over influence in Korea. After more than six months of unbroken successes by Japanese land and naval forces and the loss of the ...

and the

Russo-Japanese War The Russo-Japanese War ( ja, 日露戦争, Nichiro sensō, Japanese-Russian War; russian: Ру́сско-япóнская войнá, Rússko-yapónskaya voyná) was fought between the Empire of Japan and the Russian Empire during 1904 and 1 ...

. 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 Masahiro Motoki (本木雅弘 ''Motoki Masahiro'', born December 21, 1965) is a Japanese actor. He portrayed protagonist Daigo Kobayashi in '' Departures'', which won the 81st Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film. His performance earne ...

Akiyama Saneyuki was a Meiji-period career officer in the Imperial Japanese Navy. He was famous as a planner of Battle of Tsushima in the Russo-Japanese War. The Japanese general Akiyama Yoshifuru was his elder brotherDupuy, Encyclopedia of Military Biography ...

* Hiroshi Abe as

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as young Yoshifuru *

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as Akiyama Hisataka *

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as Akiyama Sada *

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as Akiyama Tami

Masaoka family

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* Miho Kanno as Masaoka Ritsu ** Riko Yoshida as young Ritsu *

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as Masaoka Yae *Ichiro Shinjitsu as Ōhara Kanzan *Yūto Uemura as Katō Tsunetada

Navy officials and their family

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* Tsurutarō Kataoka as Yashiro Rokurō *

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Tōgō Heihachirō Marshal-Admiral Marquis , served as a '' gensui'' or admiral of the fleet in the Imperial Japanese Navy and became one of Japan's greatest naval heroes. He claimed descent from Samurai Shijo Kingo, and he was an integral part of preserving ...

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as Yamamoto Gonbei *

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as Shimamura Hayao *

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Akira Nakao is a Japanese actor, TV personality, and artist from Kisarazu, Chiba. Nakao is represented by the Furutachi Project agency. Biography Nakao attended Chiba Prefectural Kisarazu High School from 1958, and entered Musashino Art University from 19 ...

as Hidaka Sōnojō * Kisuke Iida as Takarabe Takeshi *

Hidekazu Akai Hidekazu (written: 秀和, 英和, 秀一 or 英一) is a masculine Japanese given name. Notable people with the name include: *, Japanese rower *, Japanese manga artist *, Japanese voice actor *, Japanese comedian *, Japanese composer and arrange ...

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Army officials and their family

* Kōji Matoba as Gaishi Nagaoka *

Hideki Takahashi is a Japanese actor. Born in Kisarazu, Chiba near Tokyo, he attended Ichikawa Gakuen and later Nihon University. Career Takahashi made his debut with Nikkatsu and acted in youth-oriented films. Takahashi made film debut with ''Kōgenji'' directe ...

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Tōru Emori is a Japanese actor, voice actor, and theater director. He has appeared in more than sixty films since 1965. Career Emori entered the acting school at the Bungakuza theater troupe in 1962 and came to fame with the play ''Ōmugiiri no chikin s ...

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Masakane Yonekura Masakane Yonekura ( ja, 米倉斉加年; 7 October 1934 – 26 August 2014) was a Japanese stage director, actor, author and illustrator who was one of the central members of the Gekidan Mingei theatre company. Death On 26 August 2014, Yonekura ...

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* Kyōko Maya as Nogi Shizuko *

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as Ijichi Kōsuke *

Takaaki Enoki is a Japanese actor and artist from Isa District, Kagoshima. He is known for his role as private detective Mitsuhiko Asami in the ''Asami Mitsuhiko Series''. He attended Musashino Art University but left before graduating and joined the Shiki The ...

as Mori Rintarō *

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as Iguchi Shōgo *

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as Fujii Shigeta

Politicians and their family

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Komura Jutarō was a Japanese statesman and diplomat.

* Ren Ōsugi as

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*Toshiki Ayata as

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*Kanta Ogata as

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Ordinary people

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*Kenzō as Kojima Ichinen * Yukiyoshi Ozawa as

Natsume Sōseki , born , was a Japanese novelist. He is best known around the world for his novels ''Kokoro'', ''Botchan'', ''I Am a Cat'', '' Kusamakura'' and his unfinished work '' Light and Darkness''. He was also a scholar of British literature and writer ...

Foreigners

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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 Nicholas II or Nikolai II Alexandrovich Romanov; spelled in pre-revolutionary script. ( 186817 July 1918), known in the Russian Orthodox Church as Saint Nicholas the Passion-Bearer,. was the last Emperor of Russia, King of Congress Polan ...

*Norbert Gort as

Jakob Meckel Klemens Wilhelm Jacob Meckel (28 March 1842 – 5 July 1905) was a general in the Prussian army and foreign advisor to the government of Meiji period Japan. Biography Meckel was born in Cologne, Rhine Province, Prussia and joined the Prussia ...

*Tim Wellard as

Prince George of Greece and Denmark Prince George of Greece and Denmark ( el, Γεώργιος; 24 June 1869 – 25 November 1957) was the second son and child of George I of Greece and Olga Konstantinovna of Russia, and is remembered chiefly for having once saved the life of hi ...

*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

Series overview

Season 1 : 1868 - 1900

Season 2 : 1900 - 1904

Season 3 : Russo-Japanese War

*Rating is based on Japanese video research( Kantō region).

Soundtrack and books

Soundtrack

*''"Saka no Ue no Kumo" Original Soundtrack'' (December 18, 2009)

EMI Music Japan , formerly , was one of Japan's leading music companies. It became a wholly owned subsidiary of British music company EMI Group Ltd. on June 30, 2007, after Toshiba sold off its previous 45% stake. Its CEO and president was Kazuhiko Koike. When ...

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