[ Japanese Television ]

Issue 49
March 1997



Mokugeki Dokyun
Eyewitness Dokyun-mentary
KBC Wed 7.00PM


(By Couch Jagaimo)

Have you ever wondered about all those copper headed kids handing out tissues for telephone clubs outside Fukuoka station. What kind of food do they eat? Are their parents salariman or construction workers? Can they spell (or kanji)? If they hand out tissues all day and ride motorbikes all night do they sleep? And what do those teenage girls do when they get pregnant? Well luck has it that a TV program brings you all this information and more on a documentary with a difference.

Mokugeki Dokyun is a program that follows the life of a girl, a rebel in her teens. Usually from a single parent family who caused no end of trouble to her parents. Stealing, bosozokuing, in trouble with police, you name it. And as nature will have it, most of these girls get pregnant. The daddy is usually not your straight A's student, but a strange sense of Japanese pride usually keeps him close by.
Soon these young mothers realise how hard looking after children can be. And they think back to how they treated their mother, all the shit they put them through. Tears fill their eyes as they build up the courage to go back home and say sorry.

And as usual these couples have missed out on that all so important Japanese tradition, the wedding ceremony. Being undereducated and young usually means a low income (but always enough money to buy cigarettes) However the generosity of the TV station overcomes the problem of poverty and gives the couple the opportunity to put on the nuptial robes and in a burst of emotion the mother and daughter make up after years of fighting.

This is one example of the human documentaries on this program, but they are all designed to make people feel better. It makes you feel better because it shows you that some people have a life a thousand times more miserable than your own.

Issue 49


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