 is a 2014 television drama that first aired on Nippon Television (NTV) on January 15, 2014. It follows the stories of ten children living in an orphanage. The drama stars child actresses Mana Ashida and Rio Suzuki, who are noted for their roles in the television dramas "Mother" and "Woman" respectively.
The series aired for nine episodes and garnered an average viewership rating of 12.85% in the Kanto region. The series was embroiled in a controversy due to its depiction of orphanages, which was criticized by Japanese welfare organisations.
Plot.
9-year old Maki Watanabe was left in an orphanage, named Kogamo no Ie (コガモの家, Japanese: "Duck's House") after her mother was arrested for involuntarily causing hurt. Here, she meets "Post", a girl who was left at a baby hatch after birth and other children who have been abandoned by their parents or are taken into care due to child abuse or child abandonment. The orphanage is run by 50-year-old retired detective, Tomonori Sasaki, an eccentric housekeeper who runs the orphanage with an iron fist.
Every week, Sasaki holds "trials", which are foster parent applications, and he trusts the children to essentially choose their own parents based on their preferences. The children then spend 1–2 days with their selected foster parents, and then decide whether or not they want to be adopted or not.
The children at the home face discrimination from society as well as the psychological trauma of being abandoned at the home. While most of the children harbour the hope of eventually being adopted into a loving family, Maki clings onto the hope that her mother would return one day to claim her from the orphanage.
In the end, some children are adopted, some go back to their birth parents, and some even choose to stay at the orphanage.
Reception.
"Ashita, Mama ga Inai" garnered a viewership rating of 14% in the Kanto region for its first episode. However, due to the controversy it was embroiled in, the viewership rating for its second episode fell to 13.5%. Overall, the series garnered an average viewership rating of 12.85% in the Kanto region.
The cast's performance was well received by viewers, with 50.8％ of the viewers expressing high satisfaction with the performance of the main cast in the series's first episode in a survey carried out by Oricon.
Controversy.
After the first episode of the drama aired on January 15, 2014, there were widespread complaints from foster care associations, orphanages and Japan's only hospital that accepts abandoned children via a baby hatch, Jikei Hospital (慈恵病院). Jikei Hospital criticized the depiction of such abandoned children, and in particular, against the naming of an abandoned child character "Post" because this constitutes "mental abuse" against children who were actually left at a baby hatch. The controversy escalated on January 21, when Japan's national association for orphanages and other related organisations requested that NTV cancel the series. The series was also mentioned during a session of the Japanese legislature, when then-Welfare Minister Norihisa Tamura mentioned that "There were reports about a girl living in a children's home having hurt herself (after watching the drama)".
Due to the controversy, Japanese advertisers such as Mitsubishi Estate and Kao announced that they would withhold their sponsorship of this series. Thus, on January 22, the second episode was aired with none of the usual sponsorship credits. while the third episode was shown with public service announcements in place of commercials.
The controversy was resolved when Nippon Television offered to "give greater consideration to children" by making unspecified changes to the drama's script in a statement made to the nursing home council on February 4, 2014. The next day, the president of the national council for children's homes, Koichi Fujino, acknowledged the broadcaster's statement, and hinted that he will watch the series until its last episode.
References.
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