Waves of Spring

NHK

MAIN CHARACTERS:

Fukuzawa Yukichi....you know who he is

Fukuzawa Fusako....Fukuzawa's daughter

Iwasaki Momosuke...Fusako's fiance

Sada Yakko....a geisha

Kawakami Otojiro....an actor

THE STORY SO FAR:

Momosuke, a student of Fukuzawa Yukichi, has been studying abroad. He is engaged to Fusako, but before he left Japan, he was passionately in love with Sada Yakko, an apprentice geisha. Now, however, he is determined to forget this youthful passion and build a good life with Fusako.

Unfortunately, Fusako found out about Sada and now believes Momosuke is only marrying her out of a sense of obligation to her father.

Sada Yakko, the geisha, is now the consort of Ito Hirobumi, but secretly she still loves Momosuke.

Kawakami Otojiro is an actor who left Kabuki to promote the Popular Rights Movement. He and Momosuke were students together at Keio University, but Kawakami got expelled for stealing books. Actually, he took the rap for Momosuke. He has had an early success with a protest song, "Oppekepe," and is now trying to develop a new form of theater for the new Japan. [The real Kawakami actually did create a new form of theater in the late 1890s, but at the time of this episode, he obviously hadn't gotten it right yet.] He once saved Yakko from a difficult situation, but he hasn't seen her since and he doesn't know about her love for Momosuke.

AKAGE: Red Lion