Actress Ueto Aya (24) is going to portray the life of the 28 year-old blind singer-songwriter Tatemichi Satoko in Fuji TV's upcoming drama special called "Ai wa Mieru".
Ueto spent one month practicing all the gestures of visually impaired people and will try her best to play the role modeled after Tatemichi, a devoted musician and mother. "Whenever she had to climb over another obstacle, her family was there to support her," she admired their family bond.
Tatemichi was a premature baby and only weighed 850g. Additionally she had retinopathy of prematurity, an eye disease that affects prematurely born babies and caused her to be blind right after she was born. However, at the same time she got blessed with a perfect pitch and eventually managed to make a major debut as a singer-songwriter. In 2004 she got married to man she met in a school for blind, a man suffering from total blindness just like her and in 2006 she even gave birth to a son despite all the criticism from the people around her. She did all that without letting go of her dream to be a musician. Ueto truly is going to play of an amazing and very strong woman.
The producer about their choice to cast Ueto for that role, "There was no better choice than Ueto for portraying the ever cheerful and strong Satoko who never stops being positive despite all the obstacles in her life." Koide Keisuke (26) is going to play her husband who eagerly tries to support his wife by working as a guitarist and masseur despite his own blindness.
Ueto and Koide both practiced together with the staff of an organization that helps blind people and learned how to use a blindman's stick and how to move like a blind person for a whole month. They also visited Tatemichi and her husband at their apartment in Tokyo and talked with them to find out more about living together as a blind couple, including the arrangement of the furniture and all kind of goods you need in your daily life. Both of them tried their best to portray their roles as realistically as possible and Ueto even had to act out the birth of their son.
The human drama "Ai wa Mieru" will air sometime this September on Fuji TV.
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Written by: KawaiiJoyuu
Sources: Sanspo
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i will link this to a fan community of aya and a japan fan community on jivejournal :3 i will give credits :3 thanks
I LOVE YOU
LOVE IT!!!! Finally!!! Something different…
I looooooooooooooove this like no other <3
Aya is amazing XD and we will see even more from her
great great <3
So excited to see this! I know Aya will blow us away with her performance!
Sounds interesting. Agree with tinyamaki – finally something different.
If only it was fulfledged dorama, it would be even better.
Zettai Reido was also different
>_> nobody watched that D:
I wonder if she can carry it. She utterly failed to carry Azumi, twice, which was also very different to what she usually plays. Ueto is good in certain parts, but she’s not really versatile. Comedy with a spunky character? Yes. Drama or a badass/evil character? Not so much.
“She even gave birth to a son despite all the criticism from the people around her.”
If that was about the child having a high probability of inheriting their blindness, the criticism was full justified. It’s no different from drinking alcohol and smoking during pregnancy, yet when a woman does that we don’t call her “an amazing and very strong woman.”
@tokyojesus
I think it’s more about how a blind couple can even think about raising a child. Though, I don’t know the chances of inheriting diseases that only get prematurely born babies.
Anyway, I get your point, but I think it’s still justified to call her an amazing and strong woman.
Well, I am sceptical of a blind couple raising a child. I can think of many things that could go wrong.
It’s also misleading to talk about how “strong” she is for doing this, as if the only issue here is the challenge of raising the child. The child’s well-being is also on the line, but this is seen as completely inconsequential.
tokyojesomething :
instead of looking at this like that I will remind to you of this OLD
american show called “The house in the little prairie” or something like that with Laura Ingles (or however they spell it there .. i watched the dubbed version in my country)
during a time when EVEN the technology was not as good Maria , a blind woman, married to a blind man and they also had children and together they raised it fine O_O , if you know that old show O_O … i wish i could remember the english title
@ Higuma
aya hadn’t had a role like that before, so you cannot know that :p
and from what i remember in this small drama with kimutaku at smapxsmap she played the vengeful ex girlfriend very well xD
@ bubblegum
I watched first episodes of Zettai Reido and dropped it only because Aya played the same rookie type character she played in her like 5-6 dramas for the past 4 years. I love her very much, but it’s time for her to grow up.
bubblegum, that’s a fictional story. Not reality.
@madmax
did you even care to finish it to see that it is not the same type of ROOKIE role? -_- whatever
@ tokyojesus
lol NOBODY complained about it though :p so why do you complain about the fictional story here? :p I believe that instead of syaing “omo this is impossible” why don’t you just wait for this drama and watch it even if you say it is impossible :p
@bubblegum to tokyojesus,
I agree… all we have to do is to wait until we see the result of this drama…. We just don’t have to jump in conclusions… let’s just wait and see
@ bubblegum
but it is a rookie role. LOL
[...] will air sometime this September on Fuji TV. Once i find out when i will put it here O_O My source __________________ OHNO SATOSHI is my Husband O_O …. like.. he is mine O_O. You can have Jae [...]