Asadora heroine and the idealization of Furusato

Abstract Asadora (morning drama) has been considered an important part of NHK’s repertoire as Japan’s only public broadcaster. This paper problematizes a narrative pattern applied in asadora called jōkyō. This narrative pattern has the asadora heroine moving from her rural hometown to the urban capital city of Tokyo in the course of the story, as seen in Hiyokko (2017) and Ama-chan (2013). Such a pattern serves as a storytelling strategy used for emphasizing the ideal values of furusato (hometown). To get a holistic comprehension of this phenomenon, close reading method on the narrative is employed in the analysis. The finding of this research shows that asadora as a medium is utilized through the public broadcaster NHK to achieve socio-cultural sustainability.


Introduction
Asadora-officially, renzoku terebi shōsetsu (serialized television novel)-is a popular program produced by Japan's public broadcaster, NHK (Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai). Throughout its history that started in 1961, asadora has arguably established itself as a unique Japanese media product. The genre stands out among the many variations of fictional drama series made for television because of its specificity in format. As the vernacular term that derived from the words asa ("morning") and dorama ("drama") suggests, asadora airs every morning, six 1 days a week-making it a constant part of the Japanese people's routine. Its episodes are short, lasting only for 15 minutes. Because an asadora production is typically broadcast for a period of six months, an asadora series is constructed of an abundance of short episodes constituting a relatively large-scale narrative. Its daily presence in Japanese national television until today also makes asadora as one of the last remaining television programs in Japan that can still claim to have a "national audience" (Scherer & Thelen, 2017, 3).
Asadora's position within NHK's repertoire is related to NHK's mission as Japan's only public broadcaster. In general, public service broadcasting "should be of good 'quality' (a key term in ABOUT THE AUTHOR Bawuk Respati is a lecturer and researcher in Faculty of Film and Television, Jakarta Institute of the Arts. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in Film Studies from the same institution in 2015. Then, in 2019, she gained her master's degree in Japanese Studies, after completing her studies in School of Strategic and Global Studies, Universitas Indonesia. Her research interests include film and media studies, celebrity studies, and Japanese popular culture.

PUBLIC INTEREST STATEMENT
This article discusses the Japanese television drama, familiarly referred to as "asadora" (morning drama). The discussion especially focuses on how this specific type of television drama tells its story through mostly female character and exploration of the differences between the city and the village, to emphasize certain conservative values that exists in Japanese society. Through this research, we examine how Japanese television becomes an important tool in sustaining the values of Japanese society. recent debates) and responsive to the needs of all groups in modern culture" (O'Sullivan et al., 2006, 251). Harvey (1998, 139) has suggested that NHK's mission is related to education. One of the more specific agendas, as reflected in the article 81 of Japan Broadcast Act, is to assist the preservation of past Japanese distinguished culture. In this regard, asadora contains certain educational values related to the social and cultural life of Japanese society. These educational values are communicated through female-centered stories within a specific regional and historical context. Asadora is known for stories that champion "an ideology of 'social progress' with regard to the status of women . . . but at the same time holding up for emulation of traditional values such as filial loyalty and self-sacrifice" (Harvey, 1998, 133). The main protagonist is called the "asadora heroine" and her persona becomes an important factor that makes asadora popular. The stories are also framed within a specific regional context by focusing some parts of the story on certain (sometimes underexposed) areas in Japan, as well as a specific historical context by referencing "great national narratives" (Scherer & Thelen, 2017, 5), such as the World War II.
NHK's responsibility as a public broadcaster means that the production of asadora is inseparable from the agenda of influencing its audience, the Japanese people. According to Van den Bulck (2001, 57), "all PSBs [public service broadcasting] in modern industrial societies have contributed to the creation of an 'imagined community' for the modern nation-state." In this light, through its female-centered stories, which are contextualized within certain regional and historical contexts, asadora is consciously produced and broadcast to construct an ideal image of Japanese social and cultural life that "represents (no matter how implicitly) the national interest" (McQuail et al., 1992, 9, cited in Van den Bulck 2001. To be able to fulfill this objective, there must be certain aspects of asadora that are carefully considered and constructed. At the heart of a television program such as asadora, the narrative plays an important role in getting the message across to the audience, especially because the power of narrative "resides in its ability to create, form, refashion, and reclaim identity" (Rodriguez & Fortier, 2007, 7).
One of the recurring storytelling strategies used in asadora is a narrative pattern called jōkyō (translated: "going to the capital"). Harvey (1998, 143) calls this term "a kind of asadora sub-genre, " in which the stories always involve the heroine moving away from her rural hometown to the capital city. In these narratives, moving away from the comfortable, idyllic rural setting to the urban, metropolitan city results in a life-changing transformation of the heroine. A recent asadora titled Hiyokko (2017) is a prime example of the application of this narrative pattern. This story is set during the period of Japan's postwar economic growth in mid-1960s, and its heroine, Mineko, moves away from her village in Ibaraki Prefecture to Tokyo, in order to find employment. A variation on this narrative that somewhat twists the conventions of the pattern can be found in an earlier production, Ama-chan (2013), which has the heroine, Aki, a young Tokyo-born girl, discovering her mother's hometown in Iwate Prefecture, only to return to Tokyo mid-story to seek fame as an idol, 2 before finally coming back to her hometown as part of the relief effort after the devastating earthquake and tsunami in March 2011.
What is most interesting about this jōkyō pattern is that although an important turning point of the series is the move from a rural to an urban setting, the jōkyō pattern, as it commonly unfolds in asadora, can be read as a strategy to re-emphasize the idealism of rural life. As Scherer and Thelen (2017, 1) have suggested, asadora as an institution function in constructing a national identity that is related to a conservative concept of ideal Japanese life represented within a rural landscape. The jōkyō process, while it displaces the heroine to an urban setting, actually re-emphasizes ideal rural values as the heroine realizes and reminisces about the charm of the life and the hometown she has left behind. Through this displacement, there seems to be a kind of idealization of furusato (hometown)-a concept quite specific within the context of Japan. The concept of furusato in Japanese society relates to ideas about cultural identity and reflects the Japanese people's sense of belonging to a certain idea about the home.
In this paper, I will argue that the narrative pattern jōkyō forms and strengthens ideal rural values by contrasting them with urban values. I contend that the way in which asadora tells its story by highlighting the difference between ideal rural life and its urban counterpart, is an important strategy to re-establish the idea of furusato within the consciousness of the Japanese people. In other words, the main objective of this paper is to analyze the idea of furusato portrayed in asadora as one of Japan's efforts to maintain its cultural identity. Asadora as a television genre becomes central in understanding "how the concept of television as Japan's 'National Medium'" is still relevant even today, for it is through television that "the Japanese people re-constructed their national memory and identity, and also their image of the future" (Yoshimi, 2005, 546).
Analysis will be done on selected asadora texts-the two titles mentioned above-through a combination of close textual reading and discourse analysis. Because this research is mostly concerned with narrative patterns, the textual analysis focuses on the narrative aspects of asadora. Then the findings from the first phase of analysis are used in the discourse analysis to further explain the meaning behind rural and urban values as represented in asadora, as well as in the discourse of furusato itself.
Hiyokko and Ama-chan were chosen in particular for a number of reasons. First, because this research is mostly concerned with the narrative pattern of jōkyō, in which a portion of the story takes place in the capital city of Tokyo, these two titles represent asadora productions made by the Tokyo branch of NHK. Textually, both dramas also have a relatively equal balance between the rural setting (Ibaraki for Hiyokko and Iwate for Ama-chan) and the city of Tokyo, which I believe will be helpful in illustrating the importance of the move from one to the other. That said, these two dramas also represent contradictory jōkyō variations-Hiyokko is the quintessential classic version of the narrative, while Ama-chan represents a twist on its conventions. Though these two dramas initially offer contrasting values about the urban/rural divide, eventually both dramas deliver the typical asadora "feel-good" message about the importance of community.

Urban-Rural relationships and the concept of furusato
The two most important aspects of the jōkyō narrative pattern of asadora are the concepts of urban and rural. What exactly do these two concepts signify? Typically, the urban-rural connection is regarded as a dichotomy that leads to two opposing schools of thought (Davoudi & Stead, 2002, 2). At one end of the spectrum is the anti-urban view, which "idealized and regretted the disappearance of rural life" (2002,2). In this view, the countryside is portrayed as "a socially cohesive and a morally superior community of neighborly rural population" (2002,3). In contrast, urbanization is represented as a destructive thing. Conversely, there is the pro-urban view, which "considered urbanization as the engine of progress, innovation and modernization" (2002,2). It suggests that every nation must go through a boom in urbanization as they transition from agrarian to industrial societies. The rise of urbanization is thus viewed in relation to the advancement of civilization.
It is almost impossible to define the city without relating it to the countryside. As Jansson (2013) argued, "The meaning of the city always depends on its relation to its 'others'." Within this opposition, what ultimately determines the difference between the city and the country is not necessarily "a matter of landscape, but also, and probably more significantly, a matter of way of life" (2013,90). The general understanding of the city is a place of "complex organizations of flows, (trans)actions, and progress" (2013, 90). This understanding is only possible because there is a general awareness that there is also another way of life, "marked by entirely different qualities, such as rootedness, community, and tradition" (2013, 90).
In the case of Japan, the last century has seen the nation transforming into an urbanized country (Ortiz-Moya & Moreno, 2017, 4). Here, the significance of urban-rural relationship in Japan is characterized by the specific concept of furusato. Furusato is commonly translated into English as "hometown" or "native place." According to Morrison (2013), the idea of furusato is "tightly connected with feelings of nostalgia" and a "warm, fuzzy feeling." Though this "warm, fuzzy feeling" may be debatable, the general understanding is that furusato is not necessarily someone's birthplace. Whether one is born there or not, if a place evokes feelings of nostalgia, it can be called furusato. According to Ivy (1995, 104), furusato "resides in the memory, but is linked to tangible reminders of the past." It has also been pointed out that furusato has a temporal dimension (Morrison, 2013, 2;Robertson, 1998;495). The word furusato indicates a place from the past. A place can be called furusato only after it has been left behind. However, furusato also occupies a place in the future. In this regard, it becomes the place to which a person wishes to ultimately return. The wish to return can be said to be motivated by nostalgia and provoked by dissatisfaction with the present (Robertson, 1998, 495). Thus, it can be said that furusato embodies a place that is thought to be ideal by the Japanese people.
Furthermore, furusato can also be described as "a feeling, rather than an actual place" (Morrison, 2013, 3). It is argued that this concept of furusato began sometime after Japan's modernization in the Meiji period. During the rush to modernize the nation, much of what was known as "the traditional way of life" was lost. As the majority of Japanese grew further and further away from their rural roots-urbanization being the main factor, the notion of furusato expanded "to become a more capacious metaphor, . . . and thus there is now a proliferation of national, generalized furusato" (Ivy, 1995, 104).
In this regard, there is a transformation happening: furusato shifted from signifying the concrete birthplace of an individual, to symbolizing the home of the heart-a place accessible to every Japanese. As Ivy (1995, 103) already suggested, "The notion of furusato has thus proved to be labile and shifting one, open to conservative political uses as well as to sharply antiauthoritarian attempts to reimagine the democratic possibilities of community." Whether conservative or progressive, the term furusato ends up supposing a kind of homogeneity of Japaneseness and of countryside (Scherer & Thelen, 2017, 6).
Within the discourse of the urban-rural relationship, furusato represents warmth, naturalness, and basic human values. Meanwhile, negative qualities, such as coldness, artifice, and dehumanization are attributed to the city. In this regard, furusato and the city are positioned in binary opposition; they are two ends of a spectrum forming two halves of a whole, each with a distinct role and function. Regarded as pre-modern, furusato is generally depicted as a home in the countryside, thus the concept is closely linked with rural areas. The concept of furusato connotes "strong social bonds within the family and village community, [it stands] for tradition and modesty, and this functions as a counter-concept to urban life" (Scherer & Thelen, 2017, 6). Ultimately, furusato's development as a concept in modern society very much depends upon the existence of the city.
According to Morrison (2013), "Wrapped in ideas about nature, cultural identity, and the nation, furusato is a way to understand social, political, and psychological changes that resulted from Japan's modernization, and a reflection of the Japanese people's deepest-held beliefs about the home." Historically, the image of furusato has evolved to become more and more abstract. Along with this shift, furusato has also moved from the individual to the collective, and from a representation of localism to an emblem of the national. Consequently, furusato no longer belongs to a select few; it is now the possession of every Japanese.
Moreover, it is also important to note that the idea of furusato tends to be connected to maternal and feminine images-mostly related to the image of a "mother". According to Morrison (2015) who examined a number of literary texts concerning the image of furusato, the tendency of relating furusato with the image of a mother contains certain gender-biased aspects. Even when furusato is closely connected to the image of a mother, its discourse actually lacks female perspective. Robertson (1998) once emphasized that the concept of "furusato-as-mother" is closely connected to the patriarchal ideology hidden behind the process of furusato-zukuri (literally, "the making of furusato"). In this regard, furusato-zukuri can be considered as a technology "with power to control the field of social meaning and thus produce, promote, and 'implant' representations of gender" (1998,124). In other words, the discourse of furusato is actually male-dominated. These findings are interesting to consider in the context of asadora, because in asadora, the perspective used to idealize the idea of furusato is actually the female perspective, which is through its protagonist, the asadora heroine.

Identifying with the Asadora heroine
As already mentioned above, one of the main characteristics of asadora is its tradition of portraying female-centered stories. The asadora's specialization in female representation gave birth to the "asadora heroine," which refers to the main character as well as the actress playing said character. The term is interesting to examine, because it is the emphasis on traditional femininity in relation to the heroic figure that moves the asadora's narrative along.
In its early years, asadora did not specifically spotlight female characters as protagonists. However, pioneering productions such as Oshin (1983)(1984), which happened to be the first asadora written by female writers, presented viewers with a prototype of heroic female figures that audiences, especially women, could look up to. Based on a 2016 report by NHK Broadcasting Culture Research Institute, asadora tends to pick up biographical portraits of female characters because "the main target is viewers who can watch the 8:00 morning broadcast at home, namely housewives" (Saito et al., 2016). Focus on female heroines is supplemented by other womanly discourses in the themes of asadora, which revolve around familial, communal, and social problems that reflect contemporary Japan.
According to the same report, the prototype of the asadora heroine is the "woman who endures"-the kind of woman born in the early 20 th century who went through the political, social, economic, and cultural ups and downs during World War II and its aftermath, including the occupation of Japan. Oshin, the titular character of the asadora mentioned above, is a prime example of this kind of heroine. From then, responding to the changing position of women in society, the heroine shifts into the "pioneering woman" model-the kind of woman who thrives in male-dominated occupations. Shirooka Asa of Asa ga kita (2015) is a recent of example of this model of heroine, for she is portrayed as a woman who came of age during the Meiji Restoration era, and later established the first university for women in Japan. When women began to enter the workplace in larger numbers, becoming even more active in society and attaining a measure of gender equality, the heroine transforms into the figure of "career woman." That figure then transforms into the "everyday woman," who represents the daily life experiences of Japanese women in the modern era.
The heroine is one of the most important aspects of asadora and arguably what makes it popular. The character, nearly always a young woman, is portrayed within the context of her relationship with her family. The formula of the story is that the heroine must overcome some kind of hardship. For example, her family had often been visited by ill fortune. The heroine is also usually portrayed to have a particular dream that involves contributing to society in an untraditional way. The pursuit of the dream takes various forms, but essentially it involves a consideration of "what it means for a female to enter a male world" (Harvey, 1998, 136).
Because tradition is also important in asadora, choosing a traditional locale within which to place the heroine also becomes important. This highlights one of the main recurring themes in asadora, which is the struggle of a woman to overcome traditional restraints, in a sense to "rewrite tradition" (Harvey, 1998, 140), and to succeed in her chosen role. In the narrative pattern jōkyō, the heroine's quest to succeed requires moving away from the traditional locale to a more modern sphere: the city. Harvey also attributes the popularity of asadora to this narrative pattern (1998,143). As the term indicates, these dramas start in the provinces and finish in the capital.
The jōkyō pattern can be seen working in both the asadora chosen for analysis, Hiyokko and Ama-chan. Each drama involves a story about a young girl who has to move away from a rural, traditional landscape to the big capital of Tokyo. In general, both cases show that once the heroine is "displaced" to the big city, she is reminded of the charm and warmth of her hometown. By moving the protagonist away from her ideal hometown to the big city, the asadora can be seen as idealizing the hometown or furusato, especially relating to the ideas of family and community. In the big city, the heroine usually longs for similar kind of familial warmth she used to experience in her hometown. In some cases, the heroine builds her new community to fulfill this longing, but in other cases the heroine chooses to come back to where she originally came from.
The fact that this idealization of the hometown is especially visible through the heroine's journey is probably related to the fact that the heroine as protagonist is seen as the one figure whose presence can trigger audience's identification the most. The weight of choosing an asadora heroine can perhaps be likened to how the genre of denki manga (biographical manga) provides "a model with which the reader can identify and to which she can ultimately aspire" (Kawana, 2011, 202). It can be argued that an asadora heroine is cast with this function in mind, which is to establish a relationship between the audience and the screen personality. Andrew Tudor (1974, as cited in Dyer 1998 proposed a typology of this relationship into four categories: emotional affinity, selfidentification, imitation, and projection. In this regard, emotional affinity is the easiest to fulfill, for it is the most general and loose form of this relationship. Asadora's strong day-to-day presence contributes significantly to the establishment of emotional affinity. The heroine becomes the familiar face that the audience sees every morning, like having the same guest visit you each day. In this way, making an emotional connection with the heroine is easy and seems natural. In some cases, the audience connection to the heroine can reach the level of imitation. For example, in the cultural phenomenon of Ama-chan, the heroine's catchphrase spoken in the made-up local Iwate dialect ("je je je") was mimicked so much by the audience that it became one of the "Words of the Year" of 2013. 3 An asadora heroine must be able to represent the aspirations of everyday people, so it is important to make her relatable. This perhaps can be compared to the concept of the heroine in shōjo manga-another unique Japanese cultural product, who according to Oshiyama (2007, as cited in Kawana, 2011, is designed to be appealing (miryokuteki), which can mean "possessing certain 'likeable' qualities." Oshiyama noted that one of the objectives of shōjo manga is to "create an attractive heroine with whom mainly teenage readers can identify." Like shōjo manga heroines that are largely portrayed as young girls, one of the important factors in considering and determining the casting of an asadora heroine is the age of the actress. Heroines of asadora are often selected by auditioning actresses around the age of 20 years old.
There was once a tendency to cast unknown actresses for the lead roles, so that the asadora becomes the actress' debut appearance on screen. According to NHK, this practice was done with the principle of making the asadora production a kind of apprenticeship for young actresses. Through this method, the audience would then not only follow the heroine's journey and development, but also become invested in the actress's growth as a personality. However, recently there have been instances where the asadora heroine role is given to well-established actress if she is still relatively young. One of the examples is the drama Ohisama (2011), which cast Inoue Mao as its heroine. At the point of casting, Inoue was already a well-established actress with a significant body of work and steady fan base, having started as a child actress in the late 90ʹs. When Arimura Kasumi was cast in Hiyokko, she was also considerably established as an actress. Hiyokko was not even her first asadora credit, for she also appeared in Ama-chan, playing the younger version of the heroine's mother. Both cases show how actresses whose names are already well-known by the Japanese public for their numerous appearances in dramas, films, and commercials, are trusted to play the part of asadora heroine.
The recent trend of casting well-known young actresses as heroines seem to show a shift in NHK's preference when providing role models for society. No longer keen on making the asadora as an apprenticeship opportunity, NHK tends to choose young actresses with good reputation because she will also function as a kind of ambassador for the station. Asadora heroines are known to actively participate in NHK publicity events-sometimes they are even assigned the honor to host the yearend music festival, the Kouhaku uta gassen. Choosing well-known young actresses seem to be beneficial for NHK in its attempt to target the younger audience to tune in to the programs, likely in order to counter the public perception that the network is rather old-fashioned.

The cases of Hiyokko and ama-chan: the conventional and the twist
In the spring of 2017, NHK broadcast its 96 th asadora, Hiyokko. With original screenplay by Okada Yoshikazu, Hiyokko is considered the quintessential asadora that practices the jōkyō pattern. The drama tells a story of Yatabe Mineko, a girl born and raised in Ibaraki Prefecture, who comes to Tokyo for employment during the postwar economic growth. The story began in 1964, the year of the first Tokyo Olympics, which serves as the great narrative of this drama. Harvey observed, in order for the story to progress, the heroine is usually portrayed as lacking something at the start of the drama. In the case of Hiyokko, what is missing is Mineko's father, Minoru, a migrant worker in Tokyo who disappeared. Mineko, who originally preferred to stay in her village in Ibaraki, was forced to work in Tokyo; not only for financial reasons, but also to try finding her missing father.
In the beginning of the story, Mineko idealized her life in the rural landscape of Oku-Ibaraki village. At the beginning of the series, there is a scene where Mineko and her family work together in the rice field for the harvest. The unglamorous, tough work of harvesting is portrayed as a seemingly fun, communal ritual. It paints a picture-perfect view of idealized rural life. What is interesting about the beginning of Hiyokko, though, is how the rural-urban relationship is already, little by little, suggested. The characters within the Ibaraki setting-in other words, the village people-often talk about Tokyo. Mineko's father Minoru, who has to go back to Tokyo to continue working as migrant worker, embodying an urban narrative arc. Even Mineko's two best friends, Tokiko and Mitsuo, are already set to move away from the village to seek employment in Tokyo-Tokiko dreams of being an actress, which is only possible if she moves to a bigger city, while Mitsuo is a third son of the family, which means that no land or means of earning a living is available to him, so he has to look for employment outside the house. This situation leads the heroine, Mineko, to develop an animosity toward Tokyo, because all the people she cares about go there, leaving her behind. Mineko makes this explicit when she says, "Why can't everyone just stay in Oku-Ibaraki?" Mineko's dislike of the big city exists in contrast to her father's experience in Tokyo. Before Mineko goes through the jōkyō experience, her father went through it first. In a scene when Minoru was just about to go home to his village, he stops by a small restaurant in Akasaka, a district in Tokyo, specializing in Western-style Japanese food. The owners greet him and engage him in conversation, praising his work as migrant worker. At the end of this scene, the owners even prepared some katsu sandwiches for Minoru to bring home as a courtesy. In this scene, the owner Makino Suzuko remarked, "Please don't hate Tokyo." Mineko in Hiyokko is slightly different from the typical asadora heroine described by Harvey, for she did not carry a particularly untraditional dream. The main motivation of her moving to Tokyo was for work (in other words, to support her family), and to try finding her missing father. Moving to Tokyo did not serve as stepping stone to a better life, but rather as a choice that Mineko was forced to make. Nevertheless, Hiyokko does not necessarily portray Tokyo as antagonistic to its rural counterpart in the show. Upon moving to Tokyo Mineko finds work in a radio factory, and did in fact encounter some hardships of adjusting to her new life, but her journey always ends up in a new close-knit community that substitutes for the one she left at home. For example, during the time she worked in the radio factory, she forged a sisterhood with five other village girls who also went to Tokyo for work. Then, when the factory she worked for went bankrupt, Mineko ended up finding work in the Akasaka restaurant that her father Minoru once visited, thus forming a new tight-knit community with the people around the area.
What Hiyokko eventually portrays through Mineko is the idea of how one moves away from one's hometown to the city and eventually re-discovers oneself in that city. In many respects, especially in its portrayals of the Ibaraki setting and Mineko's family background, Hiyokko establishes an ideal picture of the rural, traditional life that is full of warmth and closely related to the concept of family. Ibaraki becomes a place Mineko can always return to when she needs it. It is a place of nostalgia, precisely because Mineko finds herself a new life in Tokyo by working there. In other words, this drama can be seen as portraying the urban-rural relationship in a balanced manner. It seems to be saying that while the hometown is a good place that one could return to anytime, the city is not too bad either. In fact, the city can become the place where one starts a new chapter of one's life, replicating the warmth and connection of the hometown. This can be seen by how the story ends up with Mineko choosing to stay in Tokyo to continue working, for she has found herself a new community she wants to support, as well as an opportunity to build her own family.
If Hiyokko was the classic example of the jōkyō pattern, then Ama-chan is a slightly different case. Ama-chan is the 2013 spring-summer asadora that became a cultural sensation at the time, contributing to the renaissance of asadora popularity. It tells a coming-of-age-story about a girl named Aki, who at the beginning of the story moves from Tokyo to her mother's hometown in Iwate Prefecture. There, she has the ambition to become an ama-san-traditional female diver who dives to catch sea urchins, following the footsteps of her maternal grandmother. However, after gaining popularity as a local idol and eventually scouted by a talent agency from Tokyo, Aki decides to move back to Tokyo with the goal of becoming an idol. Eventually, she makes her way back to Iwate right after the disastrous 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, which serves as the grand narrative that gives this drama its historical context.
In Ama-chan, instead of being displaced in the city, the heroine is actually displaced first in an unfamiliar locale that she would later claim as her hometown. At the beginning of the drama, Aki was shown in this unfamiliar environment slowly learning its customs, and even picking up the regional dialect. In some regards, the way Ama-chan unfolds in its first arc turns the jōkyō pattern upside down. Aki, who according to her mother, is a girl with no personality and does not stand out while in Tokyo, finds a new, more cheerful version of herself once she gets in touch with the rural landscape of the fictional Kita Sanriku, Iwate. Instead of a story of a village girl coming to the big town, Ama-chan is the complete opposite: it is a tale of a girl who could not adjust to the city, who eventually moves to the village and becomes happier.
Having said that, Aki's presence is balanced by another character, Adachi Yui, a village beauty who dreams of getting out of her hometown and becoming an idol. Yui's character is closer to a traditional asadora heroine, especially her aspiration to move to Tokyo. In other words, Yui becomes the antithesis of Aki. As the story progresses, Aki and Yui become best friends and enjoy considerable popularity as local singing stars. At one point, the two of them receive offers to come to Tokyo and sign up at a talent agency to join a newly developed group. In the end, Aki is the only one who makes it to Tokyo and thus goes through the jōkyō experience, because Yui has personal problems that prevent her from going. Back in Tokyo, Aki finds herself struggling as an aspiring idol, but she manages to prevail precisely because of the values she learned during the time she spent in her hometown-in the story, she gets a leading role in a film with a senior actress and former idol, Suzuka Hiromi. In a way, the Aki that moves to Tokyo to become an idol is not the same Aki who came from Tokyo to Iwate to become an ama-san. However, on the verge of success in Tokyo, Aki is compelled to come back to Iwate after the devastating 3/11 disaster hit her hometown.
Ama-chan is an especially interesting case, because it actually has many characters who want to move away from Iwate. However, most of them could not last long in Tokyo and eventually came back to Iwate. Aki's mother, Haruko, stands out in this category. The opening scene of the series shows how an 18-year-old Haruko made the trip to Tokyo back in 1984, on the day of the Kita Tetsu railway opened. This local train itself becomes an important point of interest, because its existence suggests that urbanization is only possible when the rural and the urban have been connected by transportation-the train becomes a metaphor for modernization.
Haruko is an extreme case, because she did not return to her hometown until 24 years after she left, when she took her daughter Aki with her, thinking that her mother, Natsu, was in critical condition. Haruko's presence as probably the first person from Kita Sanriku who moved away to Tokyo is vital in the overall Ama-chan narrative. For the majority of the story, Haruko repeatedly emphasizes how she prefers the city to her hometown. This is a completely different sentiment compared to Aki's. Aki was actually born in Tokyo, but prefers the hometown she discovered as a young girl. Considering the way Aki and Haruko's views of the concept of hometown are portrayed, we can identify in Ama-chan a tendency to side with rural values. This drama seems to be saying that the hometown is definitely better, or perhaps, the bestwherever one goes, one will eventually come back. Haruko, who supposedly hates her hometown, eventually comes back, while Aki, originally a Tokyo-born girl, finds herself longing for the hometown that she adopted.

The making of Furusato in Asadora
Based on the analysis of the two asadora above, there are several points that can be drawn about the rural-urban values that are portrayed in the series. Both Hiyokko and Ama-chan portray the rural life as something ideal, warm, natural, and positive. The rural life is always related to the idea of family, both in the context of immediate family and extended family (community). The rural values also relate to a sense of nostalgia-something that the characters leave behind, but always long for. In Hiyokko, because the story starts with the heroine in her own hometown, rural life becomes her roots, something that shapes her character; even in the big city, her rural values remain, and eventually move her to return. Meanwhile, Ama-chan positions the heroine as the explorer who discovers the ideal rural life, and thus these rural values become something that she gains through learning and changing her behavior.
Urban life is also featured in both dramas. In Hiyokko, it is clear that within the setting of the story, urban life-represented by Tokyo-holds positive values since it stands for the idea of modernization. The city becomes a landscape in which the heroine finds the possibility for a better life; it is a place in which she can establish a new community. Ama-chan, on the other hand, portrays Tokyo as something a bit more complex. It is a place of hope for some (like Haruko and Yui), but it is also a suffocating and confusing place for others (like Aki). Tokyo also stands for the idea of modernization in this drama, but it is portrayed in a slightly less positive light. Ama-chan makes sporadic comments to the effect that modernization is killing the tradition that is being preserved in rural areas. Overall, Ama-chan tends to side with rural values as evidenced by the fact that all the characters eventually come back to the hometown.
Taking this perspective, Hiyokko can be considered to be promoting a kind of social conservatism that suggests the urbanizing movement of the modern era is a positive thing, but only insofar as society continues to hold the ideal values of community and mutual support. Thus, Hiyokko is a kind of optimistic view that even though Japanese society that is mostly urbanized right now, the people are able to hold onto their traditional values. However, Amachan is more critical toward the influence of city life. Judging by the historical context of its production that was significantly influenced by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster in the Tohoku area (usually referred to as "3/11"), Ama-chan is designed to be a callout for regional revitalization. However, the commentary made through Ama-chan is not only bound to the context of the 3/11 disaster, but is also a reflection of the continuing depopulation of rural areas of Japan.
By considering the rural and urban values represented by these two asadora, we can examine further the meaning behind the idea of furusato. Both dramas involve a plot about leaving the hometown to move to the big city. This fits the concept that furusato refers to something that has been left behind by someone-a place from the past. Moreover, both dramas also portray the hometown as a place that the characters can always come back to, which fits the concept of furusato as not only a place in the past, but also a potential place in the future. Through the narrative pattern of jōkyō that the heroine goes through, the idea of furusato is thus achieved. Both dramas also suggest that furusato is not necessarily a birth town, but a place that symbolizes the home of the heart. Mineko's hometown will always be Oku-Ibaraki, not only because she was born there, but also because she is connected to the place through her family. However, a different reading could also point to the fact that perhaps Mineko, at the end of the story, ends up claiming Tokyo as her new "home", because she decides to settle down there. Meanwhile, Aki wasn't even born in Iwate, but she has made it her hometown, because she is connected to the place through her family and community. Not only that, she also builds on an emotional connection with Iwate because only there she could truly be herself and pursue the things that she loves, such as diving and becoming an ama-san. In both cases, furusato becomes the portrait of an ideal home that is filled with human connection, despite the presence of modernization that threatens to disconnect us all.
In another perspective, both cases also show that within the asadora universe, the heroine is given a space to define their own furusato. It can be said that the existence of the asadora heroine points to a quite significant female representation on media. This becomes an important point to consider in the process of understanding the ideals of furusato that are communicated through this particular medium. It can be said that, whereas conventional attempts to construct the meaning of furusato in Japanese society tends to happen within a dominant male point of view, the asadora, in a way, challenges this notion through the existence of the heroine. In asadora, it is not the man who gets to imagine his hometown as an ideal place; it is the heroine. Both Mineko and Aki, for example, showcases that within the asadora universe, the heroine can claim her own furusato.
The process in which the heroine of an asadora defines or claims her own furusato also contributes to the development of the idea of furusato itself. This perhaps can be connected to the term "furusato-zukuri," which is "a political process by which culture, as a collectively constructed and shared system of symbols, customs and beliefs, is socially reproduced" (Robertson, 1998, 494). If the process of furusato-zukuri in general is understood as something that promotes dominant patriarchal ideology, the making of the furusato within the asadora universe presents a kind of alternative. Furusato-zukuri through asadora is achieved by virtue of the trope of (re) discovery of the local, in which the countryside becomes "a projection space for an idealized Japanese lifestyle" (Scherer & Thelen, 2017, 6). This idealized lifestyle is particular, precisely because it is defined through a female perspective. In the asadora universe, the heroine negotiates with the dominant discourse and actually defines her own ideals in regard to the concept of the home.
Through asadora, regional identities and tastes remain strong, because of the influence of television that "strengthened rural identities and economies by broadcasting scenes from rural areas to a national audience" (Chun, 2007, 141). Having said that, it would be interesting to examine how the jōkyō process, while establishing the idea of furusato, can simultaneously reaffirm the capital city Tokyo as the center of Japan as a nation. In a way, the meaning of furusato, as understood by the heroine and by the audience, is constructed through the very existence of Tokyo as the cultural center of Japan. Solomon (2017) reminded that furusato tends to be treated as "an overdetermined symbol of nostalgia . . . created by the discourse-producing machines of the urban center." The primary discourse-producing machine is of course, television, and as argued by Chun (2007, 122), the rural provinces of Japan are bound to the cities precisely through the power of television. Furthermore, television has played "a crucial role in exposing rural Japanese to urban trends and also helping to define the very meanings of 'rural' and 'urban'" (2007. 123). Television connects rural viewers to urban life, and vice versa. The ideal rural life-the furusato-and modern cities enter viewers' homes every day. This process helps to overcome the alienation between rural and urban and construct a society with unified values.

Conclusion
The narrative pattern jōkyō, as practiced in NHK's asadora, reflects the social reality of the post-war modernization era in Japan, in which people from the rural areas move to the big cities for various reasons. In the context of asadora, the act of moving to the capital becomes an especially interesting case, because of asadora's tradition in telling female-centered stories. The asadora heroine becomes a vehicle for the many people who watch asadora religiously to experience the life-changing transformation that takes place when one moves away from one's hometown. By practicing the narrative pattern jōkyō, an asadora takes its time in portraying both rural life and urban life. These portrayals are an opportunity to contrast the two opposites by emphasizing their different values. As the cases of Hiyokko and Ama-chan show, rural life tends to be associated with the idea of family and community, while urban life is characterized by the idea of modernization, which can represent two opposing tendencies-it can be positive, meaning it stands for an advancement of an individual; or it can also be negative, suggesting the marginalization of tradition. In simple terms, the jōkyō narrative pattern is used to describe the relationship between the two (false) binaries.
Though understood as being diametrically opposite of each other, the two cases of asadora also show that rural and the urban values cannot be separated. They are interrelated, especially in the journey of the heroine. When the heroine goes through the jōkyō experience, the audience is exposed to how she perceives both rural and urban life. In some cases, the heroine is shown as preferring one to the other, as in Ama-chan, but in other cases, the two ways of life are portrayed in a balanced manner, as in Hiyokko. Whatever the case is, though, the relationship between rural and urban values represented in asadora is used to construct the idea of furusato as an ideal place that one comes from and to which one will eventually return.
Because the ideals of furusato represented and communicated through asadora are the ideals taken from the point of view of a woman, asadora can be viewed and considered as a certain vehicle for women to construct their own ideas of furusato. On the surface, this notion sounds very progressive. What we have here is a medium, which was created by depending on the female perspective, and for the female audience. However, we also have to be careful in considering the asadora heroine characteristic, for she has known to exhibit specific characteristics, such as possessing youth. By limiting the image of the heroine to a young girl, the producers also limit the female representation they are trying to champion. As progressive as it is, the female representation in asadora might not actually represent the complexity of the Japanese women's point of view.
In the end, the furusato portrayed in asadora does not only mean furusato for the heroine, but also represents furusato for the audience who identify with her. Since the heroine is written as an ordinary figure, the audience can easily share her journey. Thus, the asadora audience-the Japanese people themselves-is encouraged to imagine their own furusato. In this regard, it could be argued that furusato represents Japan itself as a homeland for the people. In this way, asadora is one of the methods by which NHK disseminates and reinforces the traditional values of Japanese culture and communicates those values not only to the Japanese people themselves, but also to the world. In a way, NHK, as a public broadcaster that has the responsibility to support the national interest, employs productions like the asadora to support the government's mission to achieve socio-cultural sustainability.