Manga and Drama: The Historical Sci-Fi Medical Drama 'JIN'

With the broadcast of spring dramas being suspended one after another due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many past masterpieces were rebroadcast between April and May. Among those masterpieces, the one that achieved the highest viewership ratings was the historical sci-fi medical drama 'JIN'.

Despite being aired on weekend afternoons, a time slot where high ratings are not typically expected, the re-edited version 'JIN: Legend' recorded double-digit viewership ratings for all six episodes, with a peak of 11.9 percent, a high rating comparable to prime time.

In addition to being an excellent work as a drama, it is thought that the content of the drama, in which the protagonist, a modern neurosurgeon named Jin Minakata who time-slips to the Edo period, fights against infectious diseases such as cholera, resonated with many citizens currently suffering from the COVID-19 disaster.

The original work is a masterpiece by Motoka Murakami, alongside 'RON'. It is no exaggeration to say that the original work itself is a monumental achievement in medical humanism manga, and it was a work of extremely high quality.

The drama was also an outstanding production worthy of being called a TBS 60th anniversary commemorative program, and I felt the enthusiasm and spirit of the staff to create a magnificent drama that would not shame the original work.

The script, direction, cast, sets, music, and CG were beautifully fused, and the sets that recreated the streets of Edo, which must have cost a lot of money for a television drama, and the vast number of extras realistically recreated the lives of the common people of Edo at that time with a sense of presence.

The first season achieved the highest viewership rating among all commercial broadcast series dramas in 2009 (the second season finale was second only to 'Kaseifu no Mita'), becoming a rare good example where the content of the work and the viewership ratings matched, and it was exported to over 80 countries and highly acclaimed overseas.

Now, let's add a little analysis of the work from here.

Modifying the original work is something that is widely and generally done when making a movie or drama, but unfortunately, it is not rare for this to result in a change for the worse. It is a common case where you were moved by the original novel or manga, but were disappointed when it became a movie or drama.

Since it is impossible to dramatize all the episodes of the vast original work (the original version has 20 volumes in total) within a limited time frame, there is no choice but to cut some parts and keep others.

Also, it becomes necessary to add new ideas or make adjustments as needed to ensure consistency in the content. The way you divide, prioritize, and change things is the key, and if you get this wrong, it can lead to disastrous results.

In that respect, in the case of the drama 'JIN', it is truly magnificent. In the drama, the fact that a sick lover who looks exactly like Nokaze exists in the original era (an important foreshadowing for the future), and the fact that the photos of the two change or are about to disappear like in the movie 'Back to the Future' are examples of adding new ideas. Also, the episode depicting Nokaze's childhood successfully expands on the original work, and thanks to the good performance of the child actor, it leaves a vivid impression.

However, isn't the biggest difference the character setting of Dr. Jin Minakata? The Jin in the original work is relatively dry and is a 'person of decisiveness and action' who cuts through and solves problems even when facing difficulties (that's why he doesn't understand women's hearts?). Also, even if he is suddenly sent to the Edo period, he doesn't seem to get homesick much and seems to be a person with rich environmental adaptability.

In contrast, the drama version is depicted as a 'person of indecision' who is quite wet, worries about this and that when facing difficult problems, thinks too much, hesitates, and cannot easily make decisions.

He gets homesick (because he left his sick lover in the Heisei era?), cries often, and has a character setting that is quite cowardly. Since I had read the original work first, I felt a considerable sense of discomfort at first.

So, why did they change the character of the most important protagonist? Perhaps the staff was worried that if they depicted Jin Minakata as a 'perfected personality' as in the original work, it might end up being a common 'super doctor' story.

As a modern cutting-edge medical professional, Jin Minakata is literally a 'Super Giant' in the Edo period in terms of knowledge, information volume, technical ability, rational/scientific thinking, and information gathering ability.

Since he knows the history of the future, he can even be a prophet, right?

Perhaps the producers wanted to make this drama a youth and growth story for both Jin and Saki by setting Jin as an 'incomplete personality' rather than a 'hero story' where he solves difficult problems one after another with such outstanding problem-solving skills. And that modification seems to have been a brilliant success as a drama.

To tell the truth, I watched it as if it were a digest version of the original work until about the third episode. It was from the fourth episode of the first season, where Jin meets Nokaze, that I changed my evaluation to 'Oh, they're actually pretty good!'.

The scene where the two meet in this episode was exceptionally vivid, and with the help of the wonderful set design, I felt that the quality of the work suddenly jumped up a notch or two from this episode onward. The episode about Nokaze's childhood that I mentioned earlier was also inserted into this fourth episode.

The fifth episode, which depicted the battle against syphilis and the production of penicillin, was also very powerful. The author, Motoka Murakami, stated in his own book that his motivation for starting the serialization of 'JIN' was, 'Because I wanted to write about syphilis, which was rampant in Edo at the time.'

And then, a masterpiece scene awaited in the seventh episode. Toward the end, Jin visits Koan Ogata, who is nearing death from severe tuberculosis. Koan, who had harbored some suspicions about Jin's true identity, asks Jin a question as a parting gift for his journey to the afterlife: 'Doctor, you are a person who came from the future, aren't you?'

The cinematography, which depicted the two of them in tense bust shots with short, alternating cuts, was wonderful, and the interplay and timing between them were exquisite, making it a very compelling scene that stood out as a highlight among all the episodes in the series (Tetsuya Takeda gave a great performance! Although I hate his right-wing remarks). The skill of the staff in expanding this scene, which was only five pages in the original work, to nearly ten minutes in the drama, and turning it into a heart-wrenching scene where the foreshadowing laid out up to this episode was resolved all at once, is extraordinary.
As described above, the changes—such as altering the settings of the original work, boldly cutting some episodes while adding new scenes and lines, and dramatically expanding parts that were originally glossed over—were a brilliant success, making this drama moving and of high quality.

A little digression.
Makoto Fujita was originally scheduled to play Tatsugoro Shinmon, who would later play an important role. However, unfortunately, just before filming, Makoto Fujita had to step down due to illness, and it was changed to Atsuo Nakamura. As I feared, Atsuo Nakamura was indeed poor and lacked gravitas. I really wanted to see Makoto Fujita's Tatsugoro Shinmon.

Nokaze's courtesan dialect is nice, isn't it? It seems that after this drama aired, Nokaze's way of speaking became popular among women and children, and 'I feel like it's becoming a habit for me too.'

Finally, regarding the original manga, it seems that after the drama adaptation was decided, the author was rushed to finish it to match the final episode of the drama, and it was a pity that the ending felt very rushed and wrapped up in a hurried, slapdash manner.

I felt a little disappointed, thinking that if it hadn't been adapted into a drama, or if it hadn't committed more than necessary to famous historical figures of the end of the Edo period like Ryoma Sakamoto and Takamori Saigo or political events, and instead continued to calmly depict the lives of ordinary Edo citizens, the battle against disease, various social problems of the time, the conflict between traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine, and interactions with foreign doctors as it did in the beginning, it could have continued for longer.

I wanted to keep reading it for longer, forever.