For the second year in a row, NHK commemorates the end of the Pacific War with a drama special based on a novel by Hisashi Inoue. Last year, it was Inoue's epic about a Tokyo family, "Aozora no Tango." Sunday at 9 p.m. on NHK-G, it will be a more lighthearted tale set shortly after the war.
"Yake-ato no Home Run Ball (A Home Run Ball in the Ruins)" takes place in 1946 and is about a baseball team of sixth-graders in Yamagata Prefecture. This is a team from the poorer side of town; a team that has never won a game. The members rightfully believe that at least part of their problem is their equipment, which is almost nonexistent. They don't even possess a real baseball (or, more exactly, "soft baseball," since kids then weren't allowed to play hardball until they reached junior high school). They use a ball made out of scraps of plants bound together.
The boys become obsessed with the idea of owning a real baseball and even try to steal one from a local museum exhibit. When they fail, five of them embark on a journey to Tokyo where they plan to obtain the genuine article from a factory that makes sporting goods.