Word: soaps
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...American housewife with a command of Japanese would be perfectly at home listening to Kimi No Na Wa (What's Your Name?). A rich, ripe, full-bodied soap opera, Kimi has been running on Japanese radio for almost two years, has won more than 18 million devoted listeners, and is about to have three monuments erected to its memory at localities prominently mentioned in the script...
Into the Volcano. The show was originated and is written by Kazuo Kikuta, 46, whose own life reads like a soap opera. Born in Formosa, he was taken from his parents (described in the newspapers as "ogres") at the age of three, because they kept him trussed up like a ham and suspended from a beam in the living room. By the time he was twelve, Kikuta had gone through six foster fathers; the last one sold him to an Osaka pharmacist for $50. Escaping, Kikuta finally made his way to Tokyo, landed a job as assistant scriptwriter...
Since the Japanese, unlike U.S. listeners, demand that soap operas eventually be brought to a conclusion, Kikuta's present problem is how to wind up his show when it goes off the air next month. Forbidden by his employers, the Japan Broadcasting Corp., to reveal or even speculate on events to come, Kikuta will only say, "I should like to see a sad-happy ending." Radio listeners are predicting that 1) Haruki and Machiko will marry and she will then die in childbirth, or 2) Haruki and Machiko will both climb Mount Fuji and make a double suicide dive...
...privately owned company never discloses operating figures, it admits it wound up 1953 with a big loss (reportedly $5,000,000), while both Procter & Gamble and Colgate's increased profits. Reasons: poor sales, high operating costs, and a 13-week strike at Lever's Hammond, Ind. soap plant...
...others, some of them, such as Valley of the Sun (355,000 copies) and Sugarfoot (414,000 copies') runaway bestsellers. Others have made hit movies, e.g., Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. His most famous character, Scattergood Baines, has been the subject of five movies and a durable radio soap opera...