Five women born around the same time and in the same country unite for a common purpose decades later.
This sounds like the premise for a new Super Sentai Series tokusatsu action superhero drama – but is, in fact, a true story.
The women in question are Mai Oishi, Yuki Nagata, Sumiko Tanaka, Michiko Makino and myself. The first four have portrayed main characters in Super Sentai Series dramas.
Oishi played Change Phoenix in “Dengeki Sentai Changeman,” Nagata played Yellow Mask in “Hikari Sentai Maskman,” and Tanaka and Makino were Yellow Four and Pink Five, respectively, in “Chodenshi Bioman.”
I, meanwhile, used to watch those shows with great enthusiasm in the face of my mother, who would say in anger, “Sentai dramas are nothing more than kid stuff!”
On Nov. 18, the five of us will hold an event at the Shinjuku Loft/Plus One club in Tokyo under the title: Bijukujobu Matsuri (A festival of the club of beautiful and mature ladies).
The three dramas they starred in were all broadcast in the 1980s: “Bioman” in 1984, “Changeman” the following year and “Maskman” in 1987. But except for Tanaka and Makino, who appeared in the same drama, the women had no connections.
They all retired from acting at one point. All this was long before the age of the internet, and even Tanaka and Makino soon lost touch with each other.
Over the past decade or so, the four started appearing at the tokusatsu events I produce. One by one, as if at the mercy of fate.
It all started like this: Ryosuke Sakamoto, who played Red One in “Bioman,” tracked down Makino and brought her to one of my events. Then they found Tanaka. And in the past couple of years, Oishi and Nagata were “discovered” through other participants of my events.
The four women all initially declined invitations to appear, saying they had already retired or didn’t feel like performing before an audience. I asked them to come see the events as members of the audience.
Thankfully, they gradually began speaking onstage about their memories from the dramas. I guess this was partly because they found that the events have a reunion-like atmosphere. But most of all, it was because they realised how much audiences still love the Super Sentai Series.
As the five of us began to talk frequently, we also found we are more or less the same age. We all spent our 20s in the same “realm,” four as tokusatsu drama cast members and one as a fanatic.
We can all relate to each other.
For example, if one of us mentions the Japan Action Club (now Japan Action Enterprise Co., an organisation that produced countless action stars and great stunt performers) or Hiroyuki Sanada (one of the nation’s most active stars on the international film scene who trained at the JAC), the conversation inevitably goes like this: “Remember when NHK’s morning news programme showed him jumping off a castle tower during the shooting of a film?” “I saw that! That made me dream of becoming a JAC member!”
We really started to get on well with each other, and began eating out together. The forthcoming event was born through a dinnertime chat.
Each of us has had a different experience and different thoughts from the 1980s up through today. I’m sure there’s a meaning to us getting together, after all these years.
The five of us – bound together by tokusatsu dramas – hope to bring cheers and smiles to everyone at the event.
Suzuki is a Yomiuri Shimbun senior specialist and an expert on tokusatsu superhero films and dramas.
