As part of the contract with popular author Sakyo Komatsu, Toho had to create both a movie and a TV drama with TBS out of the Japan Sinks novel. When Submersion of Japan (1973) became a box office smash, the TV show, which was partly developed while the film was in production, suddenly became a hot commodity. Working with TBS as per the contract, the Submersion of Japan: Television Series was quickly launched less than 10 months after the film's debut.
The TV show was envisioned as a high budget production. In fact, it's budget equaled that of the 1973 film. Despite this, to the lament of the special effects crew, a lot of the budget was reserved for the large acting cast. In fact, ¥100,000,000 was earmarked for the show's various stars, which included Keiju Kobayashi (playing the role of Doctor Tanaka Tadokoro as he did in the film), Takenori Murano and Kaoru Yumi. The series also boasted a giant cast of guest stars for the various episodes, with well known faces such as Mie Hama, Yu Fujiki and Yoshio Tsuchiya.
Submersion of Japan: Television Series aired for six months, with a total of 26 episodes that played every Sunday. Each episode was almost an hour long at 55 minutes. Planning for the series was done by Tomoyuki Tanaka, much like he did for Zone Fighter (1973) although this time he skipped on actually producing the show.
The series had its debut and closing two episodes directed by Jun Fukuda. The television show was primarily written by Yuichiro Yamane and Nagasaka Shuukei. Special effects were directed by Koichi Kawakita, Yoshio Tabuchi and Koichi Takano. The show was scored by Lady Snowblood 2: Love Song of Vengeance (1974) composer Kenjiro Hirose. |
