How to rebuild when you've lost everything? In the immediate aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake of March 11, 2011, as many thousands of people in northeastern Japan sought to answer that question for themselves, public broadcaster NHK began looking for a historical figure whose story might provide some inspiration — someone whose life it could depict in the 2013 edition of its yearlong Sunday-evening taiga drama series.
They came up with a ripsnorter: a 19th-century gunslinger who was also an English speaker, a Christian-convert, a medic and a tea-ceremony master. And what's more, she was also a woman.
Meet Yae Niijima, nee Yamamoto (1845-1932), a little-known figure who, come 8 p.m. Sunday evening, will enter into the national consciousness in the person of model and actress Haruka Ayase. The 27-year-old Ayase is known for her fair complexion and fine features — currently put to good use in ads for SK-II cosmetics — but she is also reported to have a fierce work ethic and a steely will. She'll need to draw on both as she plays the firebrand Yae, who, despite losing everything on the battlefields of Japan's most recent major civil war — the Boshin War of 1868-69 — managed by the early 20th century to reinvent herself as a paragon of modernity.
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