To the Shining You, Final Episode "Beyond the story"Synopsis & Whatever I want to say this week
As Mahiro sits at Michinaga's bedside as he is dying, he weaves a new story about Saburo and Mahiro.
"A Storm is Coming" is a premonition of a new era. A heart-warming, moving ending.
I'm a masochist. Finally, this day has come. It's the final episode. The final episode was a one-hour special, but I wish it was two or three hours long. But it was still amazing. It was a strong final episode that not only brought together the various stories up to that point, but also gave us a glimpse of what's to come.
"How long have you been together, my lord?" Michiko asked calmly, but with a blade in her eyes. Scary!!
"How long have you been together with my lord?" Michiko-sama asked calmly, but with a hint of a sharp edge hidden deep inside. It was obvious by the second half. You don't have to be Michiko-sama to understand.
Mahiro was forced to confess due to the unusual behavior of Michiko, but she managed to keep secret the fact that Kenko was her child with Michinaga. If she had revealed the truth, Kenko's position as a lady-in-waiting to Akiko would have been compromised, so as a mother, she protected her daughter.
In fact, at first, M-man wondered what the point of pursuing this development in the opening was, and whether it was a waste of the story. But if he thought about it carefully, he couldn't create the setting for Mahiro to visit Michinaga's bedside on his deathbed without the premise that Michiko had half-acknowledged the deep relationship between Mahiro and Michinaga that had lasted for many years, to the point of asking him to become her concubine. In a sense, it was a natural summons from behind the gym.
But I feel like it's a bit of an exaggeration to say, "You took advantage of Akiko's heart and took that child away from me. We were all in your hands." Mahiro hadn't thought of anything like that, Lady Noriko. But as the legal wife, it must have been so heartbreaking that she wanted to say something like that.
Even the author of "Sarashina Nikki" appears. A genealogy of stories passed down through generations
The lively daughter of Takasue Sugawara, who would later become the author of "Sarashina Nikki," appears. Hmm, I was also overwhelmed to see "Sarashina Nikki" appear. Not knowing that Mahiro was the author of "The Tale of Genji," she reads the last part of the 40th chapter of "The Tale of Genji," "Maboroshi."
In fact, in the "Sarashina Diary," there is a part where the author, Takasue Sugawara's daughter, reveals that she was a "Tale of Genji" otaku, so it may not be strange to have a scene like this. Why did "Tale of Genji" end like this? Mahiro just smiles at the interpretation of a young woman of a different generation. However, the exchange in this scene leads to a conversation with Michinaga on his deathbed.
Speaking of young women of different generations, there is also Kenko. She invites Michinaga's son into her office. I want to say, "Hey, they're half-siblings, isn't this incest?" but it's nothing the two of them knew about so there's nothing we can do about it.
Historically, Kenko is known as a woman who had many love affairs, so that kind of thing may have been commonplace. However, I will forgive her for not scattering the "Murasaki Shikibu Collection" that Mahiro entrusted to her. In fact, Kenko eventually became a great poet, not inferior to her mother, and lived to be nearly 80 years old.
He and Sei Shonagon overcame their grudge and made amends.
He also makes amends with Sei Shonagon. I'm glad. Even though it's fiction, it's hard to settle down if they remain at odds. It's a relationship that truly transcends gratitude and hatred.
The conversation between the two is quite refreshing. "Don't you think that Lady Mahiro and I have accomplished something great?" asks Sei Shonagon. By "great thing," she means that the story they created moved Emperor Ichijo's heart and government. Mahiro responds, "Like rice and water, books are indispensable to people."
Historically speaking, at that time, books written in classical Chinese were considered to be worth reading, and works such as "The Pillow Book" and "The Tale of Genji," written in kana, were considered to be one rank lower, a kind of popular literature, even though men also read them.
Now, it is read as the pinnacle of Heian women's literature. You can be prouder, both of you. And of course, Akazomeemon, the author of "Eiga Monogatari," who has turned gray-haired. And Mahiro's words, "Books are indispensable to people," lead to the scene of Michinaga's death.
Michinaga is comforted by Mahiro's embrace. What a beautiful scene. Tears, tears.
This is the scene of Michinaga's final moments. With permission from Lady Noriko, Mahiro is at his bedside. What is revealed there is the secret of the ending of The Tale of Genji, which was also brought up in the exchange with Takasue Sugawara's daughter. We all knew that "Hikaru-kimi" was Michinaga, but Mahiro himself never revealed who the model was.
Mahiro confesses that Michinaga was the shining prince. "I didn't draw the scene of the shining prince dying because I wanted the illusion to last forever." That illusion is now about to disappear.
Just when you think that this is finally the end of the story of Mahiro and Michinaga, the power of the story continues to shine even in this situation.
Leaning his body into Mahiro's arms, Michinaga mustered all his strength to have a final conversation, albeit brokenly. Mahiro gently embraces him. More than the sutras being chanted by many monks, or being connected to Amida Buddha by five-colored threads, Michinaga must have found peace in Mahiro's arms. Mahiro was Amida Buddha himself. And how beautiful this scene is. I'm already in tears.
Stories have the power to keep lives going. A new story of Mahiro and Saburo's "The Thousand and One Nights" begins.
Mahiro begins to spin a new story, and keeps Michinaga, who is about to burn out, alive by saying, "I'll continue this tomorrow," a line reminiscent of Scheherazade from the Arabian Nights.
"Books are indispensable to people," recalls a conversation he had with Sei Shonagon. The new story is the story of Saburo and Mahiro. But this time it's not The Tale of Genji. It's a completely new world, a story of salvation for Saburo, who faces death while gripped by self-blame, asking himself, "What have I done?"
"Saburo felt a joy he had never experienced before." Michinaga must have been very happy to hear this from Mahiro.
However, "The girl he met by the river left without telling him her name. When Saburo gently held out his hand, the little bird landed on his palm. I'll continue this story tomorrow," says Michinaga as he sets off on his journey on a snowy night.
Could Kotori be Mahiro? Could it be that the two of them are finally able to be together in a new story? This makes me think deeply.
The next morning, Lady Michiko noticed that Michinaga had died. His hand was sticking out from under the covers. He was probably reaching for Mahiro's hand. Lady Michiko must have felt heartbroken. At this point, she wondered if it was Mahiro that she was after, and not her. However, Lady Michiko remained calm and slowly placed the cold arm back into the covers. Lady Michiko was sad in her own way.
It would be far too much to imagine Mahiro being at his side until the end, but it also seemed strange to have Lady Noriko at his side, so I think it was an extremely appropriate, calm and dignified death for Michinaga to meet his end alone.
Amazingly, Sanesuke wrote about Yukinari, who died on the same day as Michinaga, in his "Koyuki." "Koyuki" is a very concise record of only the facts. Sanesuke, the author, was always calm and collected, and a very intelligent person, but when he wrote about the deaths of the two men, something lit up in his eyes. This scene was also very moving.
The birdcage is shattered. Mahiro and Saburo's story has come to an end. But Mahiro continues to look forward.
After Michinaga's death, the birdcage hanging in Mahiro's house falls and breaks. If you think about it, this story began when Mahiro came to the banks of the Kamo River to search for the bird that had escaped from the cage and met Saburo.
This was actually a superimposition to the scene where Hikaru Genji and Murasaki meet, but the birdcage, which had remained hanging for a long time and was already rotting, fell to the ground and shattered into pieces.
But Mahiro was also trying to remove the birdcage. In other words, the story of Mahiro and Saburo has literally come to an end. But Mahiro is not depressed. He turns into a bird and tries to go on a new journey. Don't worry, Otomaru is with him.
Mahiro sets off on a new journey in search of freedom, and the horse-riding warriors overtake him. A thrilling ending.
Mahiro, who is traveling with Otomaru, occasionally writes something down along the way. Perhaps he has come up with an idea for a new story. The story never ends. As long as Mahiro is around, new stories will be born.
Mahiro and his friends are suddenly passed by mounted warriors. To their surprise, it is Sojumaru. A war has broken out in the eastern provinces, and he is on his way to join the Imperial Court's punitive force.
What is significant here is that the warriors did not pass him by, but overtook him. This means that Mahiro was also heading east. It would have been one thing to head to the west, but to the east, which was still an unexplored region.
As Mahiro sees off the group of warriors, a gust of wind blows. Catching the wind, Mahiro calls out to Michinaga in his mind. "A storm is coming." The video ends with a close-up stop-motion shot of Mahiro walking into the wind...
What an amazing ending! Up until now, most of the taiga dramas have ended with a happy ending. In contrast, this one depicts the end of the era of the nobility and the arrival of a new, but turbulent, era of the samurai.
Not only that, but the close-up of Mahiro's face, which is indescribably complex and full of various emotions, makes you feel anxious, but also curious to see this new era and even to make it into a story. Applause for Yuriko Yoshitaka's performance.
The complex expressions are wonderful. The ending is comparable to the ending of "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence," in which Sergeant Hara, Beat Takeshi, was laughing and crying. Has there ever been such an emotional ending (in a good way, of course) in a taiga drama? It's simply wonderful.
It's been a long but short year. To get out of this loss...
A year that seems long but is short has come to an end. I am overwhelmed with emotion. "Say Whatever You Want" started as a way to find fault and get irritated, but before I knew it, I was so immersed in it that I couldn't wait for the next episode to air, and it had become like a deep "swamp."
As I have written many times, the story, which had been a slushy drama of intrigue at the Imperial Court, seems to have shifted to larger, more universal themes, such as "Why do we write?" and "What is a story?", from the point where Mahiro began working on "The Tale of Genji." This struck a chord with me as a masochist.
I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Oishi Shizuka, the cast, and all the staff involved in "To You, the Light." Thank you very much.
Actually, I'm a masochist and I really like "Hyakunin Isshu" and when I was a kid, I used to play Karuta desperately. I even memorized "Musume Fusahose".
One of the benefits of this Taiga drama is that the characters from the Hyakunin Isshu, such as Udaishogun Michitsuna no Haha, Akazomeemon, Daini Sanmi, Emperor Sanjō, and Fujiwara no Kinto, who I had only known in words for many years and had never really thought about their personalities, have come to life vividly, even if they are fictionalized on television.
Of course, there are also Murasaki Shikibu, Sei Shonagon, and Michinaga, who is not included in the Hyakunin Isshu.
This New Year, I plan to spend my time gazing closely at the reading cards with pictures on them, ruminating on the drama, and trying to heal the sense of "loss" that I don't think I'll be able to shake off anytime soon.
Thank you for bearing with my poor writing for the past year. When I reread my part, I realize there were some parts that were completely off the mark, which is embarrassing.
Sooner or later, I plan to have a special compilation retrospective with Ms. N in a literal "say whatever you want" interview, so please wait a little while longer.
What is the review of “To Shining You”?
"Premium Japan Literature Club" (exaggeration) was formed by people who love literature within the Premium Japan editorial department. For literature lovers, the 2024 taiga drama ``Hikaru Kimi e'' was a perfect opportunity to discuss this and that. Volunteers from the editorial department will continue to freely review articles. Editor S and Editor N reviewed the differences between historical facts and dramas, a deep dive into foreshadowing, and more!
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