We’re only two months into the year, but there’s already been a bounty of great television: Severance, Yellowjackets, The Pitt, Mo, Common Side Effects, and White Lotus, just to name a few. Considering this opening barrage, it’s no surprise that certain series have gotten lost in the shuffle, and it’s even less surprising when it comes to Asura, a quiet Japanese language drama even more silently released by Netflix. It’s quite a shame that it’s gone largely unnoticed by wider audiences because this tale of family is masterfully crafted, boasting a rich cast, nuanced portrayals of gender roles, and delicate direction courtesy of one of the most thoughtful filmmakers around, Hirokazu Kore-eda.
Based on Kuniko Mukōda’s TV series Ashura no Gotoku, it follows the daily life of four sisters living in 1979 Japan as they learn that their father, Kotaro Takezawa (Jun Kunimura), has been cheating on their mother for years. While several of the sisters try to brush off this revelation at first, deflecting or hiding from the truth, over the following months, this scandal intersects with each of their lives, calling to attention the unfair expectations they face in a patriarchal society.
Of the siblings, there’s Takiko (Yū Aoi), a stern librarian who discovered the affair after hiring a private investigator, Makiko (Machiko Ono), a housewife who hopes that ignoring the news will make it go away, Tsunako (Rie Miyazawa), the oldest sister who takes a somewhat wishy-washy position due to her own complicated love life, and Sakiko (Suzu Hirose), the youngest who blames their mother for being cheated on because she’s “too square.” As they struggle to decide if they should tell their mom, Fuji (Keiko Matsuzaka), they each face circumstances that recontextualize this situation, forcing them to reckon with their beliefs and relationships with one another.
While it takes a few episodes to kick into gear (and even then, it’s more a slow cruise than an all-out drag race), everything falls into place by the third episode or so as these characters become increasingly complex. Every member of the Takezawa family has flaws and redeeming qualities, even if the bad outweighs the good for some. For instance, while Sakiko is needlessly mean to her sister Takiko, whom she berates for being single, she eventually goes through tough times that cast her behavior in a different light. Meanwhile, Takiko struggles with her lack of self-confidence over the course of a prolonged meet-cute as she struggles to balance her desire for independence against other wants.
These sisters bounce off one another the way that only family can, poking at old wounds and confiding about new ones as these actors pull us into the nitty-gritty of these households. Tsunako and Makiko, the two oldest, have a particularly well-portrayed relationship, and Rie Miyazawa and Machiko Ono get across their long shared history. Even the father, Kotaro, is given depth thanks to Jun Kunimura’s stolid take on the character; he wavers between shamelessly repeating his mistakes and frankly admitting his own unfairness.
It’s one of those scripts that feels derived from observed details of everyday life and personal experience rather than an assemblage of tropes, and Kore-eda elegantly adapts Mukōda’s story to make us empathize with the cast and their struggles. These many little scenes paint a contemplative portrayal of daily life that gets at the tangled inseparability of family, defined by setbacks, minor slights, and a bracing realness.
And while the narrative avoids outright vilifying anyone, it still fully grapples with how Kotaro’s affair causes grave harm, as it draws attention to the underlying inequity of gender roles in late ‘70s Japan (and implicitly, towards contemporary wrongs). As these daughters witness the ongoing effects of this cheating firsthand, they see how their mom is essentially forced to stomach this situation due to societal expectations, culminating in a particularly crushing scene where a keepsake underlines how Fuji’s loyalty was routinely taken advantage of.
Later, this scenario becomes more personal for the sisters, emphasizing how this situation isn’t just a one-off triste but a symptom of a male-dominated culture. Specifically, Makiko is slowly consumed by suspicions of an affair that affects every interaction with her husband, these doubts weighing on her and corroding her daily life. This situation even bleeds into her otherwise close relationship with her older sister Tsunako, a widow who is on the other end of an affair with her former employer. While Makiko pokes at her sister for doing what’s being done to her to someone else, we also see how Tsunako is engaged in this affair because she has suppressed sexual desires, just like men do. Since she isn’t interested in becoming remarried after the death of her husband, she doesn’t have a lot of other options.
Beyond the multifaceted acting and strong script that gets across these grounded concerns, it also helps that this subject matter is laser-targeted at Hirokazu Kore-eda’s strengths as a director. From Shoplifters to Still Walking, he’s consistently displayed a knack for depicting family life with an inquisitive, introspective eye, simultaneously engaging with both the ugly and beautiful things that come from these kinds of inescapable bonds. Carefully framed mise-en-scènes make us feel in the room with the characters, the camera peering between bookshelves or lingering on suggestive views barely concealed.
And while undeniably methodically paced, there is a sense of purpose to virtually every scene because each conversation adds texture to these relationships and reveals these characters’ underlying thoughts. It also helps that while individual episodes hone in on details, there are often time skips in between episodes, moving us through the most interesting moments in these people’s lives; these breaks also help the story come across as a TV show and not a seven-hour movie.
It all results in a richness that’s hard to find in most TV dramas, pulling us into quotidian, everyday concerns with a deft hand. However, because of these quiet qualities, Asura is the kind of show that seems doomed to get lost in a maze of “content.” The next time you find yourself listlessly scrolling through Netflix, you owe yourself to check out this well-considered take on family, infidelity, and the weight of cultural expectations.
Elijah Gonzalez is an assistant Games and TV Editor for Paste Magazine. In addition to playing and watching the latest on the small screen, he also loves film, creating large lists of media he’ll probably never actually get to, and dreaming of the day he finally gets through all the Like a Dragon games. You can follow him on Bluesky @elijahgonzalez.bsky.social.
