``Fireworks, Should We See It from the Side or the Bottom?” A TV drama that has returned to its original home = movie theaters

Great achievement of becoming the first TV drama to win the Japan Film Directors Association Newcomer Award

Animation ` `Fireworks, Should We See It from the Side or the Bottom? The original version by director Shunji Iwai, which was also the basis for ``If Moshi #15'' (2017), was aired in 1993 in a one-hour drama series called ``If Moshi'' (Fuji TV). Fireworks, Should We See It from the Side or the Bottom?”. It was later released in theaters and was released in the movie ``Fireworks, Should We See It from the Side or the Bottom?” (hereinafter referred to as “Fireworks”). Nowadays, when a TV drama becomes a hot topic on social media, it tends to catch people's attention, but this work has taken a unique path.

This work, which was broadcast at 8:00 pm on August 26, 1993, quietly gained popularity. Coincidentally, word of mouth from people who had seen the program gradually spread, and Shunji Iwai won the 34th Japan Film Directors Guild Newcomer Award in 1993 for this film the following year. This is the first time a TV drama has won the award since Nagisa Oshima won the first award in 1960 for `` A Cruel Story of Youth .'' Since then, there have been feature films and documentaries that have won the award, but the award given to ``Fireworks'' is all the more remarkable because all of them have been movies.

This year, the selection committee chairman for the Japan Film Directors Association Newcomer Award was Kazuhiko Hasegawa, who directed The Murderer of Youth (1976) and The Man Who Stole the Sun (1979). At a time when young Japanese film directors tended to focus too much on their own inner world, the world they portrayed became smaller, and ``Fireworks'' was praised for its images that were created using solid technology. Nagisa Oshima, who was the director of the Directors Association at the time, said, ``I felt uncomfortable with the long titles of television works.'' However, after watching the film shown at the presentation ceremony, I was struck by the fact that ``If Moshimo'' is a unique work with a fresh sensitivity that makes it hard to believe that it was created as part of a series.'' (ibid.) He praised it. Of course, neither the directors who made the selection nor Nagisa Oshima knew that Shunji Iwai would start making films right after this, and that two years later he would completely shift his focus to films. However, I was impressed by the fact that ``Fireworks'' was a movie-like work that was completely different from the TV dramas I was used to seeing.

Why was the TV drama released in theaters?