First-day-screening event of new movie "Hachinengoshi no Hanayome Kiseki no Jitsuwa"

The first-day-screening event of new movie "Hachinengoshi no Hanayome Kiseki no Jitsuwa" was held at Marunouchi Picadilly on 16 December which was attended by the director Zeze Takahisa and cast members Sato Takeru, Tsuchiya Tao, Yakushimaru Hiroko, Sugimoto Tetta, Hamano Kenta and Nakamura Yuri. The movie is based on a true story about Nakahara Takashi and his wife Mai who live in Okayama. At the end of 2006 which was 3 months before the Nakaharas' wedding, Mai was diagnosed with the rare illness anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis which has an occurrence rate of 1 in 3 million people and fell into a coma for an extended period of time. However, Takashi did not give up and continued waiting for Mai to recover. When Mai resumed consciousness, she lost her memories of Takashi who did not give up which led to a miracle happening to them 8 years later when they finally got married in December 2014. The video of their wedding was recorded by the wedding hall's company and uploaded to YouTube in February 2015 thus attracting a lot of attention from the netizens. The Nakaharas' story was also published as a book in July 2015 with the title "Hachinengoshi no Hanayome Kimi no me ga sameta nara". Sato plays the role of Takashi while Tsuchiya plays Mai in this movie.


Sato reflected that they filmed the movie about one year ago in Okayama but he did not feel like he was acting and was instead living as a local there just like Takashi. Tsuchiya also spoke of the warm support from the locals while they were there and was filled with emotions now that the movie was finally released. The director then said that life challenges like what happened to the Nakaharas can happen to anyone and hoped that the movie can show how the couple overcame the odds with their own hard work and the support and love around them.

In line with the theme of the movie, a 8-tier Christmas cake was brought onto stage where Tsuchiya fed Sato with the first bite just like they were having a wedding. Sato also wrote a letter to Tsuchiya which he read aloud and expressed his thanks and joy to be able to work with her in this movie. In response, Tsuchiya said that she did feel stressed during the filming as she had been taking on projects consecutively but being able to act in this wonderful story with Sato gave her a lot of encouragement to move forward.

When asked about their ideal Christmas date plan, Tsuchiya said that she loves to see illuminations but wanted to avoid the crowds so would prefer decorating her house with illuminations instead. As for Yakushimaru and Nakamura who both expressed their lack of interest in celebrations like this, Yakushima said that she would deliberately cook Japanese dishes totally unrelated to Christmas to eat on that day but would still eat Christmas cake. As for Nakamura, she said that she would probably want to spend the night at an izakaya rather than drink wine on Christmas.

Sources: Natalie / Eiga.com