Shinohara Ryoko talks about reprising her role in the sequel to "Haken no Hinkaku"

Shinohara Ryoko is reprising her role as Oomae Haruko in the 2007 drama “Haken no Hinkaku”.

The drama was a huge success with a viewership rating of 20.2% and with the spring drama sequel back on for production (many drama productions were postponed due to the novel coronavirus), Shinohara was recently interviewed of returning 13 years later for the drama.

Shinohara plays Oomae Haruko, an A+ temp worker who never smiles, does her job, leaves on time. And because she is a temp worker, she never interacts with people that has nothing to do with her work.

In the first drama, Oomae was placed in Satonaka Kensuke (portrayed by Kotaro Koizumi), the head of the S&F new marketing division with so-so subordinates.

For the sequel, Satonaka is now the sales planning manager and requests Haruko, who is now a special S-ranked temp worker to come back and work in S&F’s Sales Planning Department.

The strength of the original drama was how it shined the line on how companies are using temp workers versus regular employees and the attitudes between both temp workers and regular employees.

On reprising her role, Shinohara said, “I’m really looking forward to it. I was wondering if I don’t have the same power and energy I had at that time. I didn’t have confidence. Even if I wanted to do it, I wasn’t so confident in myself that I could deliver”.

“There were many people who wanted the drama to come back. People who said ‘Haruka is a great person’, ”ve always wanted to be like her’, ‘What would Haruko do?’, ‘I really admired her’. Because I kept that in mind, the pressure was great. But I wanted to do it now and once I began the scene, the anxiety disappeared”.

“Remembering that the staff during the scenes warmed me up, made me excited and the co-stars who I was familiar from the previous work, they made it easy for me to return back as Haruko and the new cast also brought a new feeling. I was able to use it in a fresh way as well, and I feel the response made things interesting for the shooting of the first episode. From Heisei to Reiwa… It is meaningful to revive the drama in this era”.

The sequel to “Haken no Hinkaku” (which was to air originally on April 15, 2020) will begin airing on June 17th.