Ishi Tsubute episodes 1~4

 

My current favourite show to watch now is Ishi Tsubute which means stone throwing. The subtitle name of this 2017 WOWOW dorama is very straightforward as it says 'The men who exposed the secret of the Department of Foreign Affairs'. I would like to point out that since there was a female on the team played by Iitoyo Marie they should have used detectives instead.

Episode 1 was sort of bewildering as there is a lot of information to process and had to figure what was going on. The gist of it is that our main characters work for the information gathering division of the police. They look out for intel on corruption and then pass it on to the 'numbers' who are the section 4-6 of the police who take care of the interrogations etc. 

Once I get my bearings, Ishi Tsubute is a brick by brick account of how to uncover corruption. There is a lot of leg work involved since this is set in the 90s and I think this is based on a true story like The Journalist. There is a lot of distrust between the different departments in the police and among colleagues because there have been leaks.

It is also interesting to learn how the bad guy played by Kitamura Kazuki has been doing the corruption and how eager some people in Foreign Affairs and police are happy to protect him. 

Ishi Tsubute gets better and better with every episode. We have all seen corruption jdorams by WOWOW. The thing is the devil is in the details and WOWOW knows how to do the details very very well. This is basically a men in suits talking jdorama but I am hanging on every word in the dialogue and just enjoying watching this team of investigators try to piece together Kitamura Kazuki's money trail. I also like the details to show this is the 90s like how many ash trays are in the room above.

There is this hanko scene in episode 4 which is such a good payoff. Stories don't need too many twists and turns to be satisfying. They just need good set ups and pay offs.

Big thanks to HPriest for subbing and uploading Ishi Tsubute. If you like investigative stories that show you step by step how a case is built, then Ishi Tsubute is for you. Very, very watchable. I can't wait for next episode because it is only at the half way point.