7 Rules
セブンルール
Storyline
The whole story, ending included.
One working woman a week, seven rules she lives by.
7 Rules was a weekly half-hour documentary-variety programme made by Kansai TV and East Factory for the Fuji TV network, broadcast on Tuesdays at eleven from 18 April 2017 to 28 March 2023. Each episode followed one woman working in some field, looked for seven things she always does, her rules, and asked why she holds to them. Its producer, Sayaka Matsumoto, who also produced Terrace House, said she wanted to show not only famous women but people still on their way, and the hard days behind a glowing photograph.
The first episode followed the dancer Koharu Sugawara. Later ones followed a young historian who had won over students at Harvard, a pianist at home in Berlin, an office worker who boxed professionally, a fourth-generation maker of Edo wind chimes, a woman training as a furniture maker under a master, a doctor on an air ambulance, a Kabukicho hostess who also advised on property, the model Saeko and the actress Mio Imada. In the studio, the Akutagawa Prize-winning novelist Yukiko Motoya, the actor Takahiro Aoki, the comedian Masayasu Wakabayashi and the actress and television personality YOU watched each film and argued over the rules, and over their own. Wakabayashi left in June 2020, and the musician Sekaikan Ozaki and the singer and actress Neru Nagahama joined. The narration passed from the musician Kengo Kakudate to the voice actor Kensho Ono in 2019.
After six years, 283 women and more than 1,900 rules, the show ended when Fuji TV turned its slot into a drama slot. The final episode went back to six earlier subjects the studio wanted to see again, among them the oldest woman the show ever filmed, who runs an okonomiyaki restaurant in Osaka. A two-night revival special aired in the Kansai region in September 2024.
Starring
YOUHost
An actress and television personality, one of the studio hosts for the whole run, reacting to each woman's rules.
Yukiko MotoyaHost
An Akutagawa Prize-winning novelist and playwright, taking her first regular variety role as a studio host.
Takahiro AokiHost
An actor and one of the original studio hosts, watching the films alongside the women on the panel.
A comedian of the duo Audrey, a studio host from the first episode until he left in June 2020.
Sekaikan OzakiHost
The singer of the rock band Creep Hyp, who joined the studio in July 2020.
Neru NagahamaHost
A singer and actress, formerly of Keyakizaka46, who joined the studio in July 2020 in her first regular show since leaving the group.
Why it matters
7 Rules turned the question of how a woman builds a working life into a weekly half hour, and answered it through small, concrete habits rather than speeches. Over six years it filmed 283 women, from craftswomen and doctors to dancers and a Kabukicho hostess, many of them not famous. Its producer said that was the point: to show people still on their way, and to show that the hard, unglamorous days behind a glowing photograph are part of the shine. For viewers used to lives cropped into perfect squares, it offered the unedited middle. Its studio, where four people talked each week about a stranger's rules and their own, leaves the programme's quieter question open: whether a rule is a freedom a woman chooses for herself, or one more standard to measure herself against.