"Kyoko Kikoku: Wasuresarareta Yometachi" ("Forced Repatriation: Forgotten and Neglected Brides"; TBS, Monday, 9 p.m.), a Cultural Agency-sanctioned program commemorating the 40th anniversary of normalized relations between Japan and China, dramatizes a 1993 incident when a group of women from China staged a sit-in at Narita airport demanding that the government allow them to settle in Japan.
The women were Japanese nationals who had migrated to Manchuria in the 1930s to marry Japanese emigrant men, but when the war ended they could not return and were forced to marry Chinese men just to survive. Because they could not locate surviving relatives in Japan, the Japanese government did not recognize them as returnees.
Tetsuya Watari plays Tadashi Kunitomo, a former spy for the Japanese military who helps the women in their quest for repatriation.