Asura

About this title

Asura is a Netflix series in which Hirokazu Kore-eda directs and adapts a new version of Ashura no Gotoku (1979, 1980), the NHK drama written by Kuniko Mukoda. Set, like the original, in 1979, it follows the four Takezawa sisters after they learn that their father is having an affair.

Netflix released all seven episodes at once on January 9, 2025. The original was an NHK "Saturday Drama" written by Mukoda and directed by Ben Wada and others; three episodes aired in January 1979, followed by a four-episode sequel in January and February of the following year. Haruko Kato, Kaoru Yachigusa, Ayumi Ishida and Jun Fubuki played the four sisters, and in 2003 director Yoshimitsu Morita made it into a film. The Netflix version, like the NHK one, has seven episodes in total. The credits list Mukoda for "original story and screenplay" and Hirokazu Kore-eda for "direction, adaptation and editing." Yasuo Yagi is credited with planning and producing, and Bunbuku is the production company. Cinematography is by Mikiya Takimoto, and the music is by fox capture plan. The Netflix Korea page rates it 15+.

Kore-eda said that in the 1970s, when he was absorbed in television drama, Mukoda, So Kuramoto and Taichi Yamada stood at the top among screenwriters, but that he never got to meet Mukoda, and that this remake may have been an attempt to understand more deeply what Kuniko Mukoda was. He also said that although he made a four-sister story first with his film Our Little Sister (2015), in his mind Ashura no Gotoku came first. Yasuo Yagi, who developed the project, recalled working with Mukoda as a rookie assistant director on the 1978 drama series Kazokunetsu; when he went to collect her final script, he asked whether he might ask her to work with him once he had become a full-fledged professional, and Mukoda said, "Sure." He explained that he felt no one but these four could play the sisters, so he contacted them, and then entrusted the direction to Kore-eda.

Rie Miyazawa plays Tsunako, the eldest, a widow who makes a living teaching flower arranging; Machiko Ono plays Makiko, the second sister, a full-time homemaker who lives a seemingly peaceful life with her office-worker husband and two children; Yu Aoi plays Takiko, the third sister, a librarian who is awkward in love; and Suzu Hirose plays Sakiko, the youngest, who works at a coffee shop and lives with an aspiring boxer. Jun Kunimura plays their father, Kotaro, and Keiko Matsuzaka plays their mother, Fuji, with Masahiro Motoki as Makiko's husband, Takao; Ryuhei Matsuda as Katsumata, a private investigator; and Kisetsu Fujiwara as Jinnai, the boxer Sakiko is seeing. Episode 1 opens one winter day, when a phone call from the usually composed Takiko brings the four sisters together for the first time in a while. Takiko reveals that their aging father has another woman and a child, and the sisters promise to keep it from their mother. In episode 2, the sisters learn that a reader's letter about their father's affair has been printed in the newspaper, and an uproar breaks out over who wrote it.

Kore-eda said that Mukoda's dramas are rich because the poison on the surface of the conversations coexists with the love hidden behind it, and that filming was a pleasure because all four actresses could pull that off. He compared the father's affair to a small stone tossed into a pond, saying that conflict was already simmering beneath the surface, and pointed to how the sisters' conversations in episode 1 reveal problems the family has long carried as one of the pleasures of the script. He also said that while he kept the period setting, he adjusted the characters slightly for today's viewers, giving all four sisters greater independence and self-esteem. Of Suzu Hirose, with whom he worked for the third time after Our Little Sister and The Third Murder, not counting commercials, he said she comes to set with her lines perfectly memorized and never looks at the script again there. Yasuo Yagi said that although the period setting is the same as the original's, thanks to Kore-eda it became a drama of today. By Netflix's figures, the series ranked No. 4 in the series category of Japan's weekly Top 10 in its release week (January 6–12) and No. 6 the following week.

See alsoThe Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House 2023Our Little Sister 2015

Drama Lineup editors · Fact-checked against: netflix.com, cinematoday.jp, Japanese Wikipedia, realsound.jp, about.netflix.com · 2026-10-18