Mainichi Broadcasting Systems TV drama, winning Grand Prize in the TV Program Award Division of the 28th Hoso-Bunka Foundation Prizes in 2002.

This drama was made by Director Hiroyuki Yabuuchi in commemoration of the 50 th anniversary of the broadcasting station. Yabuuchi was laureled by the HBF annual competition for domestic radio and TV programs with the personal award for Direction and Script since he made planning, scenario writing and directing of the drama by himself.

The TV program takes up such social problems in Japan as the organ transplants and the determinations of brain death in the form of drama, depicting the feelings of bereaved families in a documentary touch. It is very difficult in Japan to produce a documentary concerned with such problems because Japanese regulations prohibit a meeting between the bereaved family of donor in an organ transplant and the organ receiver. This drama causes strange affections for the viewers by using a small number of actors and actresses, instead real professionals including a medical doctor who tells the death of brain of a patient to a playing bereaved family.

The program has also been awarded with the Gold Nymph for the Best Television Film as well as the Amade Prize and the SIGNIS Prize in the 42 nd Monte-Carlo Television Festival, and the TV Drama Section Prize in the 56 th Art Festival by the Japanese Cultural Agency.

In an episode of the production of the TV program, it is attracting interests of professional cameramen because the drama was the first ever made by a digital camera taking 24 frames of picture a second namely SONY Digital Camcorder HDW-F900.

For further information about this program, please make contact with Mr. Hiroyuki Yabuuchi of Mainichi Broadcasting Systems, Japan. (mailto:yabu2@mbs.co.jp)