Friday's Wives
金曜日の妻たちへ
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
The suburban-affair drama that spread furin as Japan's everyday word for an affair, and taught television that housewives had desire.
The first series, in 1983, follows three couples in the new suburbs west of Tokyo. Hiroshi Nakahara, who works for a trading company, and his wife, Hisako, who sells door to door to help pay for their new terrace house; Takamasa Muragoshi, who runs a foreign-car dealership, and his wife, Eiko, a former flight attendant and a strict mother; and the bickering, childless Tamuras. Friends for ten years, they meet almost weekly to eat and drink like one family, until Muragoshi asks Eiko for a divorce. He is in love with Reiko, a young model. The friends close ranks against her, but the divorce goes through, the Muragoshis' daughter chooses to live with her father, and Reiko becomes pregnant. Eiko goes home to Kamakura, washes dishes in a restaurant and, lonely, begins an affair with Hiroshi, who has quietly loved her for years. Kayo, a woman from the local bar who wanted Hiroshi for herself, tells Hisako, who takes the boys to Ito, where she and Hiroshi went before they married. To end the affair, Eiko takes a job with a Japanese chef in Bordeaux and leaves alone; Hisako comes home, and ordinary life resumes.
The second series, in 1984, is a new story. Four families move into new white houses on a hill at Chuo-Rinkan, and Hayato Koyama finds that his neighbour, Kazuko Sano, is the older woman who vanished from his life when he was a student. They pretend to be strangers, but his feelings grow and the neighbours notice. Hayato leaves home, and in the end Kazuko's mother-in-law finds proof that she has been unfaithful and drives her out of the house. In the last episode another family moves into the Sanos' house.
The third, in 1985, follows four women who were at school together in Sendai from kindergarten to junior college and now live near one another outside Tokyo: Ayako, called Take, a model wife with a demanding mother-in-law; Yoshiko, called Okoma, who runs a restaurant; Noriko, called Noro, whose husband works away in Sendai; and Kiriko, divorced, who subtitles films and lives alone. Take's husband, Keiichiro Akiyama, was once Kiriko's lover; she left him after his mother told her she was fit only to be a mistress. At a party the old love revives, while Noro falls for Fujimori, Kiriko's married colleague. Take finds out, and Akiyama leaves home. Noro decides to give Fujimori up. In the last episode the four women hold a party. When Take says she will give Akiyama back, Kiriko cries that if he were her home she would take him without hesitation, but he is not. Take goes to fetch her husband, holds him, and they walk home together.
Starring
Ikko Furuyaas Hiroshi Nakahara (1983); Keiichiro Akiyama (1985)
A husband in both series: first a trading-company man drawn to his wife's friend, then a construction-firm architect whose old love returns.
Ayumi Ishidaas Hisako Nakahara (1983); Kiriko Okada (1985)
First Hiroshi's hard-working wife, betrayed by her friend; then Kiriko, divorced and alone, who finds her old lover married to her friend.
Tomoko Ogawaas Eiko Muragoshi (1983); Yoshiko Yamashita (1985)
First a strict mother left by her husband who falls into an affair; then Okoma, a remarried restaurant owner at the centre of her friends.
Hiroko Shinoas Yoko Nishimura (1984); Ayako Akiyama (1985)
First a harried mother of five in the new suburb; then Take, the model wife who discovers her husband's affair with her friend.
Keiko Takahashias Kazuko Sano
In the 1984 series, a proofreader married to a remote husband, whose former young lover turns out to be her new neighbour.
Kazuko Sano’s story
Kazuko is thirty-one, a proofreader who still works from home for a Tokyo publisher. Years ago she went to Nagoya every week to see Hayato, a university baseball player seven years younger, then ended it with a letter and married Ichiro in an arranged match. Now she, Ichiro and his sharp-tongued, jealous mother move into a new white house at Chuo-Rinkan, and Hayato is her neighbour. They pretend to be strangers, and she has no wish to begin again, but chance and the neighbours' gossip draw them together as her doubts about her marriage grow. After Hayato leaves home, his wife, Midori, gives Kazuko a note of where he is staying. Finally her mother-in-law finds proof of her infidelity and drives her out of the house, and in the last episode a new family moves into the Sanos' house.
Ryoko Moriyamaas Noriko Endo (Noro)
In the 1985 series, a gentle housewife whose husband works away, and who falls for a married younger man.
Why it matters
Friday's Wives is about the suburban dream of Japan's baby-boom generation and what it could not contain. Its couples have the new house, the loan and the weekly party, and each series asks what happens when one of them wants someone else. The series is credited with making furin the everyday word for an affair, displacing an older word for a wife who strays, and it was said that housewives would not answer the telephone on Friday nights at ten. Its writer, Toshio Kamata, said he wanted to show the ache of it: to understand both the love and the wish to protect the home, until everyone is trapped. By 1985, the year Japan passed its equal employment law, his heroines had work of their own, and he argued that choosing for themselves made their situation harder, because they could no longer simply blame a husband. It leaves open whether a home can hold everything its people want.