First-day-screening event of new movie "Kenen"

The first-day-screening event of new movie "Kenen" was held at Theatre Shinjuku on 10 February and attended by the director Yoshida Keisuke and cast members Kubota Masataka, Arai Hirofumi, Enoue Keiko and Kakei Miwako. The story which is based on the themes of envy, jealousy and hatred between family members, features two pairs of siblings who are on bad terms with each other. Kubota plays the role of Kanayama Kazunari who is a good-looking, honest and serious salesman of a publishing company but his elder brother Takuji (Arai) is the exact opposite i.e. a troublemaker who doesn't give a damn about anything and is just out of prison. On the other hand, Enoue plays the elder sister Ikuno Yuria who takes care of the family printing factory business and is secretly in love with Kazunari while her sister Mako (Kakei) is pretty and works as a gravure idol while helping out at home but is not very smart.


When asked about if they had any memorable incidents with their real siblings, Arai revealed that he has a younger sister who is 4 years younger than him and they used to watch the anime of Sylvanian Families and Kamen Rider on Sunday mornings and played video games together when they were kids. As for Kubota who has 2 elder brothers, he talked about how they fought with one another until they bled but despite this, there was once when he went insect hunting with his brothers and ended up being bitten by an insect. He was sad to find that his elder brother had disappeared somewhere after laughing at his plight so he was crying his heart out. Later, his elder brother appeared with a box of tissue from home and removed the insect from him. However, due to their numerous fighting episodes, he only recalled this heartwarming incident just now.

Kakei who has an elder sister and younger brother, revealed that she used to quarrel a lot with her sister who is her biggest supporter now. This led Kubota to remark that all siblings will be on bad terms at one point or another but everyone seems to become closer after growing up with the exception of Arai who has always been close to his younger sister. Enoue commented that this probably has to do with the fact that male and female siblings tend to be unable to quarrel but Arai immediately said that his sister used to be a delinquent while he was obsessed with table tennis which led the audience to laugh.

With regard to the highlight fighting scenes in the movie, Arai said that as Kubota has a lot of experience in this regard, he was very meticulous in making sure that the actions were done properly so that they wouldn't get injured. However, the ladies revealed how they went all out and even began cursing at each other which were not written in the script. Arai then poked fun at them that this method is usually used by actors who are still new to acting and that they used to go too overboard in the past as well.

Sources: Natalie / Eiga.com