I once did a story on a psychiatric hospital in a Tokyo suburb, in what now seems like a previous life. After an interview with the hospital director, I toured the wards and chatted with the patients. One, a middle-age housewife type, told me frankly that she was there for alcoholism. She struck me as starved for company but was otherwise indistinguishable from the supposedly "normal" masses shopping in the aisles at Itoyokado.
She wasn't a rarity then — or even now, I suppose. Drug and alcohol rehab centers based on the U.S. model, including the pricey spalike establishments where celebrities sober up, are still not common in Japan, leaving the mental hospital or ward as the default institutional alternative.
That is where Asuka (Yuki Uchida), the heroine of Masuo Suzuki's "Quiet Room ni Yokoso (Welcome to the Quiet Room)," ends up after a booze- and sleeping-pills session leaves her in a coma. She awakens three days later to find herself strapped to what looks like an operating table in a white-painted room. A steely-eyed nurse informs her that her live-in boyfriend Tetsuo (Kankuro Kudo) discovered her and brought her to the hospital. When she asks when she can leave, the nurse coolly informs her that it all depends on the decision of her doctor and "caregiver (hogosha)," whoever that may be.