‘Asura is the best Netflix drama in years': this strikingly beautiful show will leave you salivating

The Guardian

29-01-2025

Trust Netflix to make absolutely no fuss whatsoever about Asura, which could be the best drama it has put out in years. The lack of fanfare for the series, quietly released in early January, is genuinely baffling. It comes from the Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda, who previously made the gorgeous The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House for the streamer and was nominated for an Oscar for his majestic 2018 film Shoplifters, which also won the Palme d'Or. You would think those credentials might have earned this a bit of a push. Instead, we must rely on word of mouth, so here it is: this is a fantastic television series, and it would be criminal to let it pass you by.
Asura is an adaptation of a novel by Kuniko Mukôda, which was turned into a popular Japanese TV series in 1979. In Kore-eda's reimagining, the four Takezawa sisters represent a different vision and version of womanhood and femininity during this period. Takiko (Yû Aoi) is a civil servant, working in a library, who is as buttoned up as her youngest sister Sakiko (Suzu Hirose) – a waitress with a deadbeat boxer for a boyfriend – is flamboyant. They are frequently at each other's throats in some of the show's funniest scenes. Oldest sister Tsunako (Rie Miyazawa) is widowed with an adult son, and arranges flowers for a local restaurant, while Makiko (Machiko Ono) is a housewife, the mother of two teenage children, and the centre of these women's firm bond.
Despite the constant scrapping between Takiko and Sakiko, the sisters are a solid unit throughout. It begins with a phone call from Takiko, urging them all to get together so she can share some important news. They suspect that she may finally be getting married, but the big reveal is even more explosive: she has spotted her elderly father Kôtarô (Jun Kunimura) with another woman, and a small boy, whom she overheard calling their father 'papa'. There is proof, in the form of clandestine photographs taken by the private detective she has hired to follow him. How should they handle this revelation, and what does it illuminate about their own lives?
There are seven hour-long episodes, and each is as strikingly beautiful as the last. It is stunningly shot, the sort of show where you want to linger on every detail. For non-Japanese speakers, like me, it urges a second watch, to catch those delicate moments you may have missed when reading the subtitles. The sisters express their personalities through their clothing, their homes, the things they eat and how they eat them. And there is a lot of food here, as should be expected from Kore-eda. This is not a series to watch when even remotely peckish. Food is ceremonial, bonding, a plot driver and a focus. There are Fuji apples (for their mother, Fuji), rice cakes, pickled cabbage, endless platters of sushi. Food is savoured and shared. I have never been so desperate to gobble up everything on the screen.
As with food, phones are a focal point, too. The drama kicks off with Takiko's phone call, summoning her sisters, but as this is set in the late 1970s, the telephone is the instigator of many dramatic moments: one call brings terrible news, another – a wrong number of sorts – sows the seeds of suspicion that form deep roots. The initial call, about their father's big secret, could have been played for tragedy, but here it is both significant and not: the lightness of the sisters' discussion about it, which zigzags between shock and amusement, hints at the show's careful balancing of comedy and tragedy. Its sense of humour is consistent, even in dark moments. It is much more laugh-out-loud than I expected it to be, and as a result, much more touching when the chips are down.
All of this is a testament to how much Asura makes us care about the sisters, and how quickly it achieves this. In 1979, the behaviour of men is difficult for the women to confront, let alone question. But they quietly question it, in turn revealing hidden truths about their own moral compasses. There are affairs, difficult relationships, imagined infidelities and real ones. Following the news of their father's affair and a possible fifth sibling, a letter appears in the newspaper, outlining the family's predicament, with only a few minor details changed. The sisters suspect that one of them has written it, though its author remains mysterious. The letter builds towards a climactic question, which is really the driving force behind the series: 'Is it really happiness for women like us to live without making waves?'
The Takezawa sisters make waves, some large, some smaller, each gathering up the turmoil of the moment and letting it crash down, before starting again. Asura is full of heart, full of joy, a remarkable, empathetic drama that deserves far more attention than it has been given so far.
Asura is on Netflix now.