Matsui Rena announced as one of the new performers for the NHK drama “Manpuku”

On October 1, 2018, NHK’s 99th continuous morning TV drama “Manpuku” will begin airing on television and will last through March 30th (a total of 151 episodes are planned).

The drama is modeled after Ando Momufuku, the Nissin Foods founder of Cup Noodle and his relationship with his wife Masako.

For those not familiar with Ando’s story, before founding Nissin Foods and creating Cup Noodle, he had several businesses.  From owning a textile company at the age of 22, a clothing company in 1933, convicted of tax evasion (for providing scholarships for students which was considered as illegal at the time) and served two years in jail in 1948,  lost his company due to bankruptcy and then founded Nissin, a family-run company producing salt.

But after WWII, Ando wondered why the US would supply bread to people during the food shortage instead of noodles.  He was told by the Ministry of Healthy that noodles were to small and unstable to satisfy supply needs.  So, in 1958, he started to expriment with noodles using a flash-frying method and marketed the first packaged precooked instant noodles with chicken flavor.  Although sold for Y35, it was considered a luxury item because it cost more than udon and soba at the time.

But at the age of 61, after observing Americans eating noodles by breaking them up into a cup and pouring hot water and eating with a fork, he was inspired to create a product with a styrofoam cup and would led to the creation of Cup Noodle.

As for the NHK drama, written by Fukuda Yasushi (“HERO”, “Ryomaden”, “Galileo”), “Manpuku” is set in Osaka before the war, Imai Fukuko a.k.a. Fuku (portrayed by Ando Sakura) is the youngest child of three sisters, raised with a lot of love, despite the family being poor.  Having lost her father at an early age, after graduating from a girls school, she had to support her family by working as a hotel telephone operator.

As her older sister Saki (portrayed by Uchida Yuki) is getting married, her second sister Katsuko (portrayed by Matsushita Nao) married early and left the house.

She meets a man, an inventor named Tachibana Manpei (portrayed by Hasegawa Hiroki) who has many ideas.  The two fall in love and get married but unfortunately, with each business he gets into, he runs into failure.

But Fukuko believes in her husband and he ends up creating an invention called “instant noodles”.

On June 4th, more actors and actresses who will be joining the cast were announced.

Among those announced was former SKE48 member, Matsui Rena.

In her blog post, Matsui wrote that today was at the press conference for a morning drama and that she was nervous.

Matsui wrote, “Starting in October, I will be appearing on “Manpuku”. Yay!  I will be playing the role of Fuku-chan’s friend, Kano Toshiko”.

Matsui wrote in a later blog that it has been a dream for her to work on a morning drama.  She has auditioned numerous times for NHK’s “Hanbun Aoi” (Half Blue) to no avail. She felt that because she was the last person in the audition, she felt like giving up because she thought she had no chance.

But now she is happy to be participating in a morning drama playing as one of Fukuko’s friends.

So happy about being cast for the role, Matsui went to the Cup Noodle Museum to learn more about the real Ando Momofuku where she made a Cup Noodle but respected Momofuku’s willingness to never give up, his kindness to do something for people and eventually creating instant noodles.

Matsui also wrote that while her goal has come true, she is still not satisfied because she wants to devote herself to going one to two steps forward than what she has already done.

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