"Abunai Deka" drama: Episode 22 of 51(!!!!) recap(season three, episode four)

 

 Air Dates: October 5, 1986 until September 27,1987 on NTV, Sunday nights at 9:00 pm

Director: Toru Murakawa, this episode's rating was 17.4%

Subs were once again done by GEO9875, this was one huge project to do so will give a huge thumbs up for doing the subs and hope the recaps gives the series it's proper justice. 

Main Cast:  The first two get the most screen time by far but the other four main characters are also very key to this drama. The setting is the Minato Police Station in the Naka ward of Yokohama and the station is part of the Kanagawa prefectural police. If you enjoy J-Pop songs then this show has some superb tunes, most know I'm a fan but do prefer the music from the 80's. Plus there's no beating the hairdos of women from that era! This series also goes by the name of....

 Hiroshi Tachi as Toshiki Takayama.... You'll see him referred to as Taka often in the screenshots. He's about a 35 year old man who is an investigator of serious crimes and the gangsters go out of their way to avoid him! Takayama has a bit of a 'cool persona' about him and is an ace with guns, he's the partner of Oshita but seems they didn't start working closely together until the first episode. While both are aces with guns their methods also get them in hot water with their superiors but the pair usually come out on top at the end as far as solving cases go.

Kyohei Shibata as Yuji Oshita.... About the same age as Takayama but looks younger. During the first episode Oshita blurted out he's got a bit of a shady past and it surprised many he became a sergeant. He knows how to pick a lock and some other methods criminals use, sure we'll find out more as time goes on. Like his new partner Takayama he is quite adept using all guns, unlike his partner Oshita isn't much of a 'people person' as Takayama is the one who often interviews witnesses, criminals or others. 

Atsuko Asana as Kaoru Mayama.... Member of the Juvenile Division which shares the same office as the Investigative Unit which Takayama and Oshita are a part of. Karou has gone out to crime scenes with the detectives but they never let her get in on the real action. However she is a tough woman who used to be a regular officer and knows how to use a gun well.

Toru Nakamura as Toru Machida.... Not a rookie but hasn't been an inspector for all that long. Machida is the best fighter in the unit and also the women swoon over him but he does have a girlfriend which he said in the first show.... that may have been a lie.

Shizuo Chujo as Takuzo Kondo.... Chief of the Investigation Unit, smart man but seems to be more concerned on what he'll be having for lunch! But at one time Kondo was feared by the Yokohama gangsters and has been on the force for thirty years.

 There's a few more minor characters such as the detective Yoshi, chief Tanaka and female officer Hitomi,  if their roles become larger will add them onto this list.

 

Previous recaps: There's 51 episodes but they were divided into six seasons, there was no break between them. Season one was episode one to nine, second season was ten through eighteen and this third will run from the nineteenth until the 27th episode. 

Episode one .... Episode two    Episode three .... Episode four .... Episode five

Episode six .... Episode seven .... Episode eight .... Episode nine .... Episode ten

Episode eleven .... Episode twelve .... Episode thirteen .... Episode fourteen

Episode fifteen .... Episode sixteen .... Episode seventeen .... Episode eighteen

Episode nineteen .... Episode twenty

 

 At the very top have the rating for each episode, this one received a 17.4% rating. As the series went along it often got above 20% and these days prime time dramas are lucky to get half of that but then again most aren't half as good as this drama is! Have noticed it all along but for some reason even more so in this episode. Which is how different things were 36-37 years ago and of course they would be. The styles back then were much more conservative, there were things like gravure magazines and photobooks but they weren't nearly as steamy or revealing back then which is not a bad thing. Plus the Idol music scene was entirely different, there were so few groups and most musical acts just had one to three singers, in a way I kind of prefer these older tunes to the ones that have come out in the last five years. You do hear plenty of mid-80's J-Pop in this show but never the entire song, this episode aired on March 1, 1987 so all of these tunes you hear are older than me and most(?) of you viewers. 

 The last two episodes the main focus was of the Ginsei criminal group and they're the arch enemy of Takayama but still not sure why. He did take out two of their main bosses and we'll be hearing so much more about them in future shows. This time around it was just a regular murder case but have noticed in these shows the cases are anything but regular! Our two main heroes Takayama and Oshita are constantly swoon over by the females but both are so unlucky in love. This episode began off with Oshita interrupting his partner's date, there's been a murder and both are needed at the scene. Taakayama was with an attractive woman so was very reluctant to leave her but he is very conscientious about his work and soon arrived at the crime scene. Where a man had been shot and pushed off the roof of a small building, this man's identity was unknown but did have a cassette in one of his pockets. On it was a conversation of a man trying to blackmail an unnamed woman for money, was this the voice of the murdered man? The Minato police station sent out a description of this person to the media and soon someone arrived at the morgue saying he may know who the victim was.

 You can see above that man did identify the man whose name was Shinsuke Komiya and lived right above a place called Jo's Bar where this man worked. His name is Noburo Hanaoka, didn't realize it at the time but he will be a very important character in this case, perhaps the most important. So now that the victim Komiya has been identified what about the woman on the cassette tape and why was he blackmailing her? Hanaoka had listened to the tape and did say it was Komiya but had no clue about who the woman was which turned out to be a huge lie. During the taped conversation Komiya had talked about the woman appearing on a TV show to discuss her children, that could be a huge clue for Takayama and Oshita to start from. Plus the other detectives at the Minato station feel that the woman had lured Komiya to the rooftop and shot him because of him trying to blackmail her, a wise deduction but it ended up being the wrong one. There had been a lot of recent TV talk shows about children and none of them had featured this mysterious woman as the voice on the tape didn't match up with anyone on the shows. A tip from the Juvenile Department investigator Kaoru saved the day as she told Takayama and Oshita to check at U-Station which was a minor one and they ignored it because of that reason.

 On the U-Station show there were a dozen women who appeared on it, Takayama and Oshita interviewed the first eleven with no success. But the duo hit pay dirt with the final women whose name is Kazue Suganuma and is 31 in age. On the show she gloated about her two teen children and how they're such fine, upstanding students. At one time the son Tateo, seventeen in age, had been in a motorcycle club but has cleaned his act up and is a decent young man. The daughter Yuki is fourteen in age and is such a model student plus her brains extend f ar beyond books. You maybe wondering that if Kazue is just 31 in age how can she have two teenage children? She doesn't as two years before she had married their divorced father who is 47 in age and is away at the moment on a business trip. Kazue had no clue what the investigators were talking about, she had never heard of the man named Komiya plus she wasn't being blackmailed nor had been. But it was easy to tell that Kazue was hiding something and she did look a bit frightened, Takayama and Oshita could tell that easily too. When the pair interviewed the dozen women from the TV show none of their voices had matched the one on Komiya's cassette tape, Takayama had secretly been taping all of them.

 Eleven voices weren't a match but the Forensics Unit said the voices on both tapes was a perfect match of Kazue, that's a key clue but what kind of proof do they have Kazue was involved in a murder? The Minato station has zero clues to date save for the cassette tape though many think Kazue is the culprit which is in an above screenshot. But an incident occurred which may clear her and lead the the station to the real killer. That night the bartender Hanaoka who had identified the victim Komiya had been roughed up badly by a pair of thugs, luckily the police were there to save the man. Hanaoka was brought back to the Minato station for some questioning but didn't want to file any charges as he claimed he didn't know who had attacked him, another lie by Hanaoka. Just leaving the Minato station at the time was Takayama and wondered what had been going on, Hanaoka was silent to Takayama about what had happened and soon slithered away. The two officers though recognized the two thugs as part of the Takada group, why would they want to rough up a bartender. Later on it was discovered that the goons had sold Hanaoka a gun but he had stiffed on paying them. It's now also a case for the Kanagawa prefect police and making a return visit to the cast was the chief Shibano, that's him standing in the second to last screenshot. Him and the other Minato detectives had discovered five years ago Kazue's maiden name was Tajima and had worked at a hostess club. Also working there was Hanaoka and the pair have known each other for at least five years, did something take place back then where he would want to blackmail Kazue? Almost forgot to mention that the reason Hanaoka had killed Komiya for he had known all about Hanaoka's blackmailing scheme for it was Komiya's voice on the cassette tape, the murder was also done to avert the attention of the police to what Hanaoka's real plan was and it did work for a while.

 Watching this drama you wonder if the police may have been better at sleuthing back then as they couldn't rely on computers to do their work. The detectives had to pound the pavement and do so much research so keeping good records was a must in the olden days. The Minato police are Aces at researching as it was discovered five years before Hanaoka had taken out a 70 million yen life insurance policy which I think was $188,000 in 1987. But the policy wasn't for Hanaoka but Kazue's boyfriend at the time Abe, wouldn't you know it that the man died in a car accident a month after the policy was taken out. Hanaoka had put Kazue's signature on the policy so only she could cash it and she was naturally against the plan at the time. So here it is five years later and Kazue still hasn't cashed in the policy, she had disappeared and during that time Hanaoka had been on the hunt for her. So now the police know why Hanaoka was blackmailing Kazue who was innocent of any crimes and just wanted to live a peaceful live.

 Five years ago Kazue had been an alcoholic but after her boyfriend's death she left the city she was in which was Kawasaki and entered a rehab. Kazue has been sober since and ended up getting a job as an OL at a firm where she met her future husband. So Kazue turned her life completely around and just loves being the mother to her two new children Yuki and Tateo, she'll do anything to protect her family. Her husband Suganuma is unaware of Kazue's past and she feels if he does learn about it he'll leave her. However her two children who do know a bit about her past just love Kazue so much as she's helped turn their lives around, they too will do anything to protect her and they do as we'll soon see. There's no way Kazue can allow Hanaoka to destroy her happiness and is prepared to get rid of this blackmailing creep. Takayama and Oshita are aware of this and once they learned of Kazue's past were mighty impressed with how much she loves her family but know that love could turn into murder as they say below. Above in the third to last screenshot the Juvenile Unit investigator Kaoru met up with the daughter Yuki and Hanaoka had given her two letters for Kazue though what was in them? Nothing good as Hanaoka is beginning to put an immense amount of pressure on Kazue to sign the insurance claim papers, he wants his 70 million yen and now! In the second to last screenshot above Kazue went to a store and bought a knife, she's at the point where Hanaoka has to be silenced once and for all!

 Final segment and as mentioned before these are so much easier to write up than a Korean drama which is often twenty minutes longer. Almost forgot to mention that Hanaoka had even shot the 17 year old son Tateo while he was riding his motorcycle. He wasn't hurt badly and the police knew Hanaoka fired the shot but he's disappeared and unless he can be found soon something very tragic could take place. Kaoru escorted the 14 year old Yuki back to her house and she told Kaoru, along with the detective Yoshi, that her new mother was planning on meeting Hanaoka at Yamashita Park, Takayama and his partner Oshita rushed to the location but there was no one there. A little more pressing by Kaoru towards Yuki revealed that the real location Kazue was meeting Hanaoka at was Hinode Wharf, also revealed during that questioning was that Kazue had left a suicide note in case she never returned! The climax scenes to this drama are often over in 3-4 minutes, that's about how much time is left in this show.

The son Tateo was also aware of where Kazue was going to meet Hanaoka and he also had a score to settle with this creep. At the wharf Tateo had managed to approach Hanaoka unnoticed from behind and slipped a noose around his neck. Tateo then jumped on his motorcycle and as you can see above was dragging the body of Hanaoka all around the wharf! As usual arriving in the nick of time were our heroes Takayama and Oshita who managed to stop Tateo's bike but the action didn't quite end there as somehow the very injured Hanaoka was able to pull his pistol out and aim it at Tateo. Just for a few seconds as it's impossible to pull a fast one on Takayama who pulled out his own revolver and felled the culprit with one shot, end of Hanaoka's blackmailing case and also the end of the episode. A bit more does take place in these shows which I don't talk about, no sense telling you about every minor thing that takes place and often those are in the screenshots. Five more episodes to go in this third season and should have the next pair of recaps within the week. The episode ended with that above bottom screenshot, Takayama once again trying to go on a date. Don't know all of the details but at the very detailed Ja.Wiki site for this drama it states that Takayama does eventually meet the love of his life towards the end of the sixth and final season. But something tragic did take place and that'll be a major storyline worth looking forward to.