A few weeks ago, I finished watching TV drama series called ばけばけ/Bakebake/The Ghost Writer’s Wife. I first encountered the promotional poster of this drama during my trip to Matsue (Japan 2025). It was a very interesting series! It tells a story loosely based on Lafcadio Hearn‘s life. That’s why the setting of the drama is mainly in Matsue. Having been to Matsue and some of places of interest around, it was very interesting experience to watch and point out: “ooh, I’ve been to that place” and also “oh wow what’s that place I missed”.
This TV drama consists of 125 (!) episodes. It’s in the format called ‘asadora‘ (literally morning drama). Each episode is only 15 minutes long. Because of that, the show was pretty light on each episode and one can binge multiple episodes in one go.
Like many Japanese TV shows, it was quite difficult to access the show overseas. I had to join some community, get the trust of the community, and only then I was able to access to the “raw” files. They also provided Japanese subtitles and I used it quite extensively. I think I understood around 80% of the dialogues. The local characters spoke in Izumo dialect which took me a while to understand, and I think it was quite cute, even more than Kansai dialect.
The TV series portrays “Toki” as the main character (loosely based on Hearn’s wife Koizumi Setsuko) and “Heavin” (loosely based on Hearn) during the Meiji period. The first half of the show follows the life of Toki when she was still very young, growing up poor, and eventually met Heavin. I think the most interesting part is on how the of them met and got together.
I love that this story is pretty easy to understand. Since Heavin wasn’t good with Japanese language, he spoke in simple Japanese with no or little inflections. Although grammatically incorrect, it is impressive that he’s able to communicate with people around him.
The second half of the story was mainly after they moved on from Matsue: Kumamoto and also Tokyo, with quite a few time skips. It was in the second half of the story where they started a new family and grew older together. While not able to speak each other’s language properly, the two of them were able to communicate well enough to fall in love. It was very cute.
Most if not all of the story is set in Matsue and surrounding area, featuring many different famous spots, some of which I’ve visited, like Lake Shinjiko, Matsue Castle, and Izumo Taisha.
Another thing I like about this series is the music. it is composed by Kensuke Ushio! His composition is famously minimalist, and he applied it to this series as well, which I find very fitting.
So yeah, watching this TV series sort of extended my visit toMatsue to understand that place even deeper. While visiting Matsue has revealed that Hearn was really well loved by locals, watching this show reaffirms that belief. This show was pretty light, comedic at times, but also tearful and has good values throughout the conflicts. This show also portrays that one can make plans but sometimes life could get in the way and wouldn’t let you get the things that you want.
With that, I rate this show 9/10.