From Oregon with Love

In the last post mention was made of the Japanese TV drama entitled "Oregon Kara Ai" ("From Oregon with Love"). I thought it might be a good idea to explain what that was all about since most people visiting this blog probably have little or no idea.

The series "Oregon Kara Ai" appeared on Japanese television in late 1984. As with virtually all Japanese TV dramas, it was only intended to last one season. There were a total of thirteen one-hour episodes. The story had a definite beginning, the plot followed a definite path of development, and it came to a definite conclusion.

The story centered on a nine-year-old boy named Akira. After his parents were killed in a car accident, his elder sister went to live with an aunt and uncle in Tokyo, and he was sent to live with his other aunt and uncle, who happened to have a farm in central Oregon. It was obviously a very difficult situation for Akira. He not only had to suffer the loss of his parents and separation from everything he knew, but he also had to deal with going from comfortable urban life to the middle of nowhere in a foreign culture. It was pretty hard on him, but he also did his best to make it worse. At first he rejected everything and was hostile toward everyone. His aunt and uncle's attempts to make him comfortable tended to wind up in the garbage. Coldly refusing even to try to interact with his new classmates, he made himself a target for bullying. He also tended to keep calling his sister in Japan on the phone (without permission) and try to get her to find a way to get him back to Japan. Another problem was the fact that his aunt and uncle seemed to have quite a network of Japanese acquaintances in Oregon...and some of them were openly contemptuous of their adopted home. (One woman went so far as to describe Oregon as being a trap from which there is no escape.) Despite it all, Akira does eventually come around. He finally comes to accept and appreciate his aunt and uncle. He also becomes more and more fond of Oregon, but apparently not enough to stay there. Thanks to his earlier efforts to return to Japan, he winds up doing just that...though he's not as happy about it as he'd thought he'd be.

It is a very heartwarming, family-style drama. The story is also accompanied by beautiful background music and stunning shots of the Oregon landscape, mainly focusing on the north-central area between the Cascades and the Columbia Plateau (Mt. Hood, Mt. Jefferson, the Three Sisters, the Blue and Wallowa Mountains, the Deschutes River, the John Day River, the Columbia River Gorge, Multnomah Falls, the Painted Hills, and Lake Billy Chinook, to name a few shots that I recognized). The show was an immediate hit in Japan, and it led not only to a surge in Japanese tourism to Oregon in the late 80s and early 90s but also inspired eight two-hour television movie sequels, the last of which aired in 1996.


The DVD cover for the sequel movie entitled "Oregon Kara Ai '87". The main characters are still the same.

It might be significant to note that "Oregon Kara Ai" was actually a sort of side project. The same production team, some of the same cast members, and, for the most part, the same background music composer were already producing another highly popular and even more successful series of TV dramas and sequel movies entitled "Kita no Kuni Kara" ("From a Northern Country"), a rather "Waltons"-like story set in Hokkaido. The original drama ran in 1981. The most recent sequel movie, which apparently brought the whole thing to a climax, aired in 2002.

Quick aside update (after Ladybug's comment): "Oregon Kara Ai" was mainly filmed in and around the "city" of Madras, Oregon (pop. 5,078 in 2000, though the actor River Phoenix is reportedly a native). (Hmm...the official city website uses Wikipedia as its main source about itself...!) While the series was being made, Madras was already famous for another reason. In 1981 a cult leader named Baghwan Shree Rajneesh arrived at a ranch his followers had bought in the tiny farm community of Antelope (pop. 136 at the time). He then set to work bringing in followers (who all wore red)and converts from all over the world (many illegally). First they seemed quiet and harmless, but they suddenly overwhelmed and took over Antelope, which they officially renamed (wait for it...) Rajneesh. They didn't stop there. After a few years it came out that they were engaging in all kinds of subversive activities (wiretapping, stockpiling assault weapons, experimenting with bioweapons to name a few) as part of an apparent effort to establish a Rajneeshi kingdom. When investigations of the cult increased, the city of The Dalles (county seat of Jefferson County, where Antelope/Rajneesh is located) suffered a suspicious mass salmonella outbreak for which Rajneesh's chief lieutenant openly claimed responsibility. Then Rajneesh himself went on record trying to blame all the subversive activity on his lieutenant. The FBI wasn't very sympathetic. Rajneesh was arrested and expelled from the U.S., taking his cult with him.

Madras is across the line in Wasco County, but at only 70 miles away it is the closest major town to Antelope. A lot of the Rajneeshi cult's activities took place through there, and it was their chief source of supply. It was also the main base of operations of legal (and illegal) and investigative operations against the cult, and for that reason Madras was indicated by Rajneesh himself (and later admitted as such by his lieutenant) as another intended target for poisonings and germ attacks if not a full-scale invasion. "Oregon Kara Ai" was made while all this was going on...and it all looks so peaceful!

Incidentally, on another totally different note (G#?), the English-language Wiki-drama entry says that an alternate title for "Oregon Kara Ai" is "Kita no Kuni Kara - Oregon Kara Ai" ("From a Northern Country - From Oregon with Love"), meaning "Oregon Kara Ai" is part of the "Kita no Kuni Kara" series. However, the Japanese-language Wiki-drama entry says that this is a mistake. Apparently there is a widespread misconception (in both Japan and the U.S.) that the two dramas are related since they are similar in nature, were made by the same team, and star some of the same actors. However, there is no direct connection between them. There is also no connection between the original, Japanese Godzilla and the pathetic imitation that appeared in New York not too long ago. Have a nice day.