Cut It Short

At first, to Japanese radio listeners, American-style soap opera was a popular import. But by last week the pleasant novelty was wearing thin. The sad fact is that Japanese audiences do not enjoy the soap opera's daily cliff-hang ending. As one top Japanese radio-TV official says: "They love intense drama, but it has to be short and complete."

Outstanding current soap operas in Japan are Himawari Musume (Sunflower Maiden), about a teen-ager who has just got an office job and is spatting with her mother over unchaperoned dates; Saku-ranbo Taisho (General Cherry), a war orphan who was in hot water last week because he made fun of the school principal's bald head; and the liveliest of the lot, Eriko To Tomo Ni (Together with Eriko), starring 26-year-old Michiko Ari.

Last week Eriko, a secretary, was being bawled out by her boss for an unforgivable error: she had mistaken one of the boss's concubines for his wife, and escorted the concubine unannounced straight into the boss's office. Would Eriko be fired? Would her boy friend walk out on her? All of a sudden, Japanese listeners seemed to have lost interest. Moreover, some were downright disgusted. Complained one housewife: "I had been led to believe that Eriko would be happily married by this time. I don't like the program any more."

Scriptwriter Naoya Uchimura and Producer Hiroshi Nagayama had done their best to get Eriko married off. Last year they had it all set: Eriko and her suitor would wed, live happily ever after, off the airwaves. But radio men at the U.S. Civilian Information & Education office were horrified, adamantly "recommended" that the show go on. Eriko, they felt, had a mildly democratizing influence on listeners. Says Nagayama: "It was most sorrowful. We couldn't fight back; it was practically an order." Dutifully, Uchimura wrote the groom out of the script, replaced him with a dawdling suitor who would obviously be around for years to come.

But U.S. recommendations to one side, Author Uchimura finally gave in last week to his Japanese audience. Eriko, he announced, would call it quits come March. As a matter of fact, said Uchimura, Eriko could be disposed of with ease: "The script is so complicated now that we can end it any time. No one will even know the difference."

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