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A LONE SCALPEL

KOKO NO MESU

By Izuru NARUSHIMA

TOEI COMPANY, LTD. - as SALES All rights, World

Drama - Completed 2010

A humanist drama portraying a brilliant surgeon who single-handedly takes on a decadent hospital system in the belief that ‘patients come first’.

- Year of production
- 2010
- Genres
- Drama
- Countries
- JAPAN
- Languages
- JAPANESE
- Budget
- 1 - 3 M$
- Duration
- 126 mn
- Director(s)
- Izuru NARUSHIMA
- Writer(s)
- Masato KATO
- Cast
- Shinichi TSUTSUMI, Yui NATSUKAWA, Hisashi YOSHIZAWA
- Producer(s)
- Kazuhito AMANO (TOEI)
- Synopsis
- Published in 2007, Kokou no Mesu is a best-seller with sales of over 900,000 that digs deep into one of the great taboos of Japanese medicine. Author Toshihiko Ohgane is himself a doctor with more than 6,000 surgeries to his credit who currently works on remote Awaji Island in western Japan. He has long championed his patients against the medical system in such matters as swiftly informing cancer victims of the nature of their disease, and opening operations to patients’ families.
  The film is a humanist drama portraying a brilliant surgeon, uninterested in promotion or honors, who single-handedly takes on a decadent hospital system in the belief that ‘patients come first’. With out-and-out malpractice, and lack of qualified sending patients in ambulances from hospital to hospital in search of care, there is a growing lack of trust in the medical system. Taking an unflinching look at the confusion facing medical practice, this is a hospital drama that sounds a warning to the system over such matters as organ transplants and care in regional facilities outside of large urban areas.
- Beginning of shooting
- Jun 01, 2010