Tehran’s hectic traffic grinds to a halt while Oshin is on TV.
#JAPANESE SOAP OPERA DRIVER#
The driver raced her to a cafe, where both sat down to see the program over a cup of tea. One Tehran woman who experienced an unexpected blackout on Saturday recently while Oshin was showing, called a taxi to take her to another part of the city where the power was still on so she could see the show.
#JAPANESE SOAP OPERA TV#
Just before the hour-long episodes, TV announcers ask viewers to switch off all unnecessary electric lights and appliances so the power supply will not be overloaded while the show is running. According to travelers from Tehran, it’s also a favorite name for new-born baby girls.ĭaily power outages, which last up to six hours in the larger cities, are never scheduled for Saturday nights, when Oshin is broadcast. Oshin has become a popular brand name for everything from shoes to electrical appliances. When the heroine couldn’t find enough rice to feed herself, sympathizers sent the TV station some of their own precious rice rationing coupons for her.Īn Iranian schoolboy who recently traveled to Cyprus brought with him a prized possession: a pocket-sized poster of Oshin, which he said he bought outside his school for about $2.50. Letters of condolence and telegrams poured in from all over the country.
#JAPANESE SOAP OPERA TRIAL#
Week after week, Oshin, struggles on despite food shortages and cruel relatives, loses her house in a fire, and faces trial after trial.Īfter Oshin’s father died in one episode, an Iranian newspaper published a full-page obituary. The drama, whose broadcasts began last year in Iran, was chosen by officials who thought Oshin an exemplary role model for Iranians suffering hardships that included Iraqi rocket attacks on Tehran and the loss of, by some estimates, a million of their countrymen. But those passions have not kept the soap opera from captivating Iranian television viewers. The revolutionary patriarch’s fierce reaction to the call underlined the religious passions that flow through Iran. The news agency, monitored in Nicosia, said Khomeini had stressed in a letter to the state-run radio’s director that ″if proven there was a deliberate insult″ the caller should ″receive the death sentence.″ The four executives were sentenced to prison terms by a Tehran court Tuesday for broadcasting the phone-in program.īroadcast Director Mohammad Arab Mazar-Yazdi got five years and each of the three others - Mahmoud Abulqasemi, director of Islamic ideology Hamid Khunmeri, head of supervision and Mohammad Rasekh, editor of ideological programs - received a four-year sentence and 50 lashes.īut the official Islamic Republic News Agency today quoted the daily newspaper Jomhuri Islami as saying Khomeini agreed to pardon the broadcasters on Wednesday after receiving an appeal on their behalf from Chief Justice Abdolkarim Musavi Ardebili. Traffic stops and blackouts are postponed during broadcasts of the serial, whose heroine, Oshin, suffers every imaginable hardship and setback.
Theology aside, the television show ″Oshin,″ which depicts a girl’s travails in devastated postwar Japan, is wildly popular among Iranians as they recover from their eight-year war with Iraq. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini angrily demanded the radio executives be punished for offending Islam and his wish was heeded.
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