Getsu-9 Romance
Japanese drama has a way of naming things you rarely see elsewhere in the world: Getsu-9. Monday at nine, and nothing more. Not a title, not a network — the broadcast slot itself became the byword for a kind of romance drama. Fuji TV started putting dramas in this slot in April 1987.
How strong it really was is left in the run of the numbers. Read down Video Research's table of the highest-rated dramas and several Monday 9 p.m. shows appear — Hitotsu Yane no Shita (under one roof) 37.8%, Long Vacation 36.7%, HERO 36.8%, 101 Kaime no Puropozu (the 101st proposal) 36.7% (all Kanto region, household, programme average). The habit of switching on the television at nine on a Monday night genuinely existed in this country.
Tokyo Love Story (1991) is the doorway. The script was by Yuji Sakamoto — the work of a man in his twenties who would later be known as the writer of chatter rather than incident (→ The Age of the Screenwriter). The person who made this band is, thirty years on, writing "time in which nothing happens" at the other end of it. The spine of Japanese romance drama comes into view fairly well just by following this one writer.
Romance dramas are still made, but the places they are put have widened. Nigeru wa Haji da ga Yaku ni Tatsu (The Full-Time Wife Escapist) was TBS at ten on Tuesday; silent was Fuji at ten on Thursday. Neither is Getsu-9. The era when a slot was strong enough to become a name ended, and the love stories scattered out across the days of the week.