One great thing about back when I was subscribing to NGN was that besides the great Fuji Television shows, they’d also show a lot of older shows especially in the genre of the samurai/wandering swordsman variety, and one of the ones I really enjoyed watching was Choshichiro Edo Nikki starring great actor Satomi Kotaro (whom I just LOVED as Dad Mochizuki in the NHK asadora AGRI) as said swordsman a la Abarenbo Shogun.
The thing I loved about it was that although it aired in the eighties, it had the style and feel of the early 1970’s, and every time I watched it, I felt transported not so much as back to ancient Japan times, but to my own childhood here in Hawaii! I especially loved the ending song, sung by Satomi himself, as it had the feel of those records my Japanese grandparents would listen to whenever we’d visit their house, and the sights and sets of the show had all the feel of childhood trips to Shirokiya’s or Daiei-
As a kid, going to those stores really made you feel like you’d been transported TO Japan what with all the food, paintings, music and merchandise…(heck, the outside architecture of Shirokiya’s ALONE woulda done it, y’know?) You’d be in search of Kikaida paraphernalia and have to walk past huge posters of cherry blossoms over Japanese gardens or elaborate Shrines and wade through crowded tables with those expensive dolls in those glass boxes…Truly an experience for a kid!
I remember the first time I was watching Choshichiro Edo Nikki, I at once wondered if it was a show I’d watched at my grandparents’ as a kid, it looked SO nostalgic! The style and grain of the show placed it in my mind as around 1972 or 1974, which would have fit right in with the timeline of my youth. But looking it up I was surprised to find that these episodes I was watching were from the 1983-84 era, almost ten years later!
