A mother living on a slope.
Notable Actors/Actresses
Notable Actors/Actresses
Shibasaki Ko: Yamazaki Risako
The House on the Slope
[Ep1] The Story: Ando Mizuho is guilty of killing her eight month old baby. Yamazaki Risako, a mother of a three year old daughter, is selected into the jury to render an impartial verdict on Ando Mizuho. Mizuho and Risako cannot be more different than night and day – or that’s what you would assume when Mizuho killed her child and Risako is a loving mother but the more Risako hears Mizuho’s story, her insecurities of her own motherhood surfaces. Are they really different? Or are they living the same experiences?
Network: WOWOW
Episode Reviews
*Notes: I am done watching this but it’s easier for me edit in bits than in chunks so the episodes will be updated daily.
[Husband: Yamazaki Yoichiro] Risako is a full-time housewife. Her jury role takes a toll on her emotionally and so Yamazaki Yoichiro, her husband, tells her to take it easy. But. Oh. My. God. He does it in the most patronizing way that is simultaneously subtle which further drives me up the wall.
- Risako thanks him like so: “Thank you for always saying don’t work so hard.” At this point, she doesn’t realize this is emotional abuse (this is something revealed later so I’ll elaborate later). This line made me pull my own hair. If you don’t want someone to work too hard, you DO something to help them out. Saying stuff is meaningless.
- Yoichiro just sits there, waiting for beer to be served to his hand and then say don’t work so hard. Then he says he’s okay with oven-cooked meals since she’s busy with the trial but then the next night he’ll nonchalantly complain it’s salty. I. Am. Triggered. Is this scriptwriter living in my house? Details like this feel so real and takes me right into the story.
- Her husband continues to belittle her. He’d say things like “Don’t embarrass yourself on court.” He's stripping her of her confidence when she’s merely expressing her thoughts. This translates to her submissive behaviour during the jury meetings. She can’t even speak up about her opinions anymore.
[Risako Leaving Her Child] Ayaka, Risako’s daughter, is throwing a tantrum and won’t walk the rest of the way home. Risako pretends to leave her behind. Her husband misunderstands Risako ditched their daughter; he wouldn't even hear her explanation.
Isn’t this weird? For a husband to believe his wife would ditch their daughter? And for the mother to have to explain herself so desperately? Just what kind of relationship do they have?
[Ep2] [Ando Mizuho’s Mother-in-Law: Ando Kunie] There are flashbacks of how Ando Kunie would “softly” complain to Mizuho that her baby is watching too much TV or her baby isn’t smiling as much as other babies. There’s no Mom in this world who’s not affected by these comments no matter how “softly” or nicely worded they are.
[Parallel: Risako’s Mother-in-Law] Yamazaki Satoko is a kind mother-in-law to Risako – Not. She’s just as emotionally abusive as her son. So remember how Risako’s husband said oven-cooked meal was okay? Well now mother-in-law gives her easy and fast recipes that Yoichiro likes. Her husband must have complained to his momma. So goes for “I’m okay with oven-cooked meals”!!! Risako is insistent she doesn’t need it. Well, mother-in-law texts the recipe to her! So incredibly annoying. Risako deletes all the texts and rips all the recipes.
[Everyone Dotes on Ayaka But Risako] The grandparents and husband all spoil Ayaka making Risako the only "bad" parent who doesn't let Ayaka have her way. This in turn makes Ayaka even more of a brat who doesn’t listen to her mother.
[Nothing’s Wrong] Risako calls up her friend to tell her about her husband misunderstanding her for abandoning her daughter. Her friend laughs at that and dismisses her problem. Like I said, it’s weird for a husband to think of that of their wife. But it’s only weird because we’re seeing it from our perspective. We’ve seeing her world with our “regular” lens on and assuming Risako’s world is parallel to ours when in fact her life is currently on a slope – hence the title “The House on the Slope.” To truly understand Risako and (Mizuho) is to view her world at her angle.
[No Beer For You] Risako’s husband always has a beer but when Risako has a can for herself, he’s like, girl you’re going to be dependent on alcohol! The. Double. Standards!! He can have beer but she can’t! He drinks a beer a day but when she drinks a beer a day he calls her alcohol-dependent! Now this makes Risako so insecure. Still, she craves for beer to relieve her stress but now she has to secretly gulp it down in the corner of her kitchen.
P.S. I’m sick of our FL having to go “Gome-ne” at the beginning or ending of her every sentence. She did nothing wrong.
[Random Testimonies]
“Wouldn’t you be the first to realize that you’re an inferior mother and an inferior human being?”
[Ep3] [Gaslighting] Risako’s husband continues to undermine her. He snubs her for forgetting his student reunion when she wrote the note on the fridge. Meanwhile Risako thinks it was him who wrote the message on the fridge for the reunion to make her look weird. Is her husband lying or did Risako really forget?
[Parallels: Mizuho and Risako's Mother] Ando Mizuho’s mother testifies how her daughter would make up lies when in reality she wasn’t happy at all. The mother cries in court that she should have told her daughter it was okay to not show off. As Risako listens, she sees her own past unfolding. She too said the same words to her mother that her husband got a raise, and they’re going to buy a bigger house, all to make her life sound better than it was. It sucks when our own mothers are a source of our stress – and most of the time they're doing this out of love, which still sucks.
[Random Testimonies]
"Everything has an origin.""The normality demanded by society.'"The normality that was decided for you.""And the normality sought by actual mother’s."
It’s a norm to adhere to other people’s standards: your parents, your significant-other, your schoolteachers, your employer. They all expect you to reach a certain standard at a certain age or at a certain point in life. Then when a woman becomes a mother, she’s given added responsibilities like it’s expected of her, like it’s equipped in her to be a mother. When a woman can’t meet those standards, her failure becomes her problem. She is the outlier. This realization at this point in the drama hurts me a lot. The disparity these women felt about their “failure" to uprear their children did not stem from within. It is a multifaceted problem with both internal and external factors. What’s heart-wrenching is that these pressures often stem from the people closest to the mothers: their very own family.
[Parallels: Risako’s Husband Has An Affair?] During the trial, Mizuho’s husband testifies he would consult with his ex about his wife’s oddity. Risako begins to suspect her own husband of doing the same. Risako opens her husband’s phone... (cliffhanger episode).
[Ep4] [Risako’s Father-in-Law: Yamazaki Kazuhiko] The only kind man in the house. He apologizes to Risako for his pressing wife and thanks Risako for taking care of his son. Risako feels relieved she’s being acknowledged.
[A Case Worker Visits] The case worker received a report that there was potential abuse in Risako’s family. The social worker was supposed to be helpful but the way she cornered Risako gave me anxiety. That is not how you approach a mother. The social worker aggressively barges into the house and overwhelms Risako. Her husband quickly speaks up for Risako. His wife may have been stressed lately but he believes she would never abuse their daughter. When the social worker leaves Risako thanks him for speaking up for her. Yoichiro is like It’s not like I had a choice. OMG. He didn’t want their daughter taken away from them. Yoichiro doesn’t trust Risako at all. He even asks her where Ayaka’s bruise came from. Risako desperately called another mother to confirm with Yoichiro that Ayaka fell in the playground.
Risako explodes and reveals she knows he’s been talking to another female about her which means she reveals she looked into his phone. His reaction: “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” OH. MY. GOD. BREATHE. The toxicity in this man. This is HER problem now?
Risako now believes it is Yoichiro who filed the report on her for "abusing" Ayaka.
[Apathetic or Desperate?] It’s finally Mizuho’s turn to testify but all she says is “I don’t remember.” She’s not giving anyone eye contact. She’s completely apathetic to her future outlook. However, Risako sees Mizuho’s cries for help. She’s not apathetic. She’s desperate for people to understand her but no matter what she says it won’t get through just like how no one believes in Risako. It’s like we’re seeing a "before" and "after". Risako is the “before”, she’s desperate for people to understand her. Mizuho is the “after”, no one believes her anymore that she became reclusive.
[Ep5] [Risako’s Father-in-Law] Did I say he was nice? I was utterly wrong. He was the one who filed the report! Like father like son!
[Case Worker Visits Again] The case worker is much more understanding this time. She gets to the heart of the problem: Yoichiro’s emotional abuse on Risako that has rendered Risako dependent on her husband.
Risako’s words: I’m not good at anything // I’m overestimating myself // He’s just worried about me // It’s because of me.Case Worker: Is everything your fault? If that’s what your husband is making you think then that’s a form of violence. Always disapproving. Planting inferiority. Telling you you’re less than average. You’re controlled by your husband.
[Risako’s Past] The house in the slope. The witnesses. All those flashbacks from the very beginning were Risako’s. This shocked me. I should have known that these witness-scenes were Risako’s because the drama is from her perspective. These flashbacks all belong to her.
Risako is pushed to her limit when Ayaka wouldn’t stop crying. Risako wanted Ayaka to not tell her father that she left her at the subway and almost lost her. Ayaka wouldn’t promise and started crying (although I find Ayaka a brat 90% of the time, I wouldn’t blame her when her mother is this scary). As Ayaka shrieks, Risako remembers how her husband would complain “She’s crying again?” when Ayaka was just a newborn. As if a child crying is only the mother’s responsibility D: Then Risako finally remembers the most crucial past she forgot: she had purposely dropped Ayaka (a few months old) on the floor because she wouldn’t stop crying. Now this is a shocker.
Risako is almost in a trance as she remembers her past, all she hears is Ayaka crying. She takes a pillow and suffocates Ayaka. Thankfully, the case worker appears in time to save Ayaka.
[Ep6] [The Other Lens] There’s other jurors and I love how they all add their own lens to this trial just as us, the audience, have our own perception.
- Yamada Kazutake. His wife came from a rich family and she gives him attitude when he can’t give their daughter the same prosperous life she grew up in. She won’t let him come home before 10pm because he’ll wake up their daughter. He ends up having an affair with his coworker. Thus, his perspective on women (or mothers) aren’t very high. He concludes perhaps Mizuho intentionally killed her child because women are capable of doing that.
- Haga Matsumi is married but infertile. She wants a child but can’t have a child. She does not pity Ando Mizuho one bit. She can’t fathom how a mother would kill their own baby.
- Matsushita Asako is an associate justice. She’s also a mother of a newborn. Therefore, she’s a working mother with a husband who shoves everything to her like she doesn’t have a job. She’s the only one who is truly listening to Risako’s perspective.
[Risako’s Past] Risako dropped her baby but picked her back up. Phew. Risako remembers now. She wiped out that memory because she was so relieved she could give up breastfeeding (she wasn’t producing milk). Devastated that she almost killed Ayaka a second time, Risako leaves home. She wants a divorce.
[Risako’s Mother] Yasuda Noriko hugs Risako to comfort her.
Yasuda Noriko: I always knew this (divorce) was going to happen. This is how things turn out when you go against my objectives.
The truth dawns on Risako that her mother is relieved about her divorce. She wanted the worse of her for disobeying her. This emotional harassment of Risako began from her mother before her husband was even in her life. Risako was emotionally abused since a young age by her very own mother.
Risako: Is that what you want? You wanted to me be your poor little girl forever.
Yasuda Noriko is a single mother. She raised Risako by herself. She was afraid of her daughter drifting away.
[Risako on Jury] The judges are asking for the jurors last opinion before the sentencing. Risako finally speaks up. I’m paraphrasing some of Risako’s lines (better watched than reading this):
"Why would they deliberately say things just to drive a mother to a wall? It’s their way of keeping someone at their side. It’s very easy living according to someone else’s desires after all"
"Mizuho must have realized something was wrong and didn’t need someone telling her so. The harsh reality of living up to be society’s mother. Tormenting yourself to be a mother you can’t. Making mistakes out of love. Driven to disparity because of love."
Risako's emotional speech moves the jurors and the judges.
[Mizuho’s Sentence] 10 years of penal servitude. However, the judge has more to say. In consideration of the defendant being stripped of her self confidence, depriving her of the ability to call out for help – this is when Mizuho finally makes eye contact with the judge – the judge comes to a conclusion that with all the overlapping circumstances of everyone involved, the outcome was unavoidable. It is not right for Mizuho to bear all the responsibility. Mizuho cries. Her painstaking emotions have been recognized. Someone saw her problems at her level.
[The End] Our two mothers in a dreamlike world assuring each other that the development of their child is normal. It seems like Risako will live on with her family.
For me, the ending is with Mizuho’s sentencing and how everyone came to understand her. The last dreamlike scenes of the two mothers are what would have happened if someone, anyone, recognized "their house was on a slope” from the beginning.
Remarks
[Review] I was looking for something different to watch and obviously I wasn’t like I want to watch a drama on Postpartum Depression! Yipee! I sampled the first episode and I couldn’t stop watching after that. It’s been a long time since I watched something this profoundly raw yet with such a soft touch that feels so human and so relatable. It's not a drama that tears my heart apart but rather it expands my understanding into the infrastructure that forces a mother to do the most inhumane thing they can to their own child.
Although this drama is about Postpartum Depression (PPD), it isn’t depressing. I’d say it’s a slow thriller as we learn just how parallel these two mothers’ lives are. Risako is Mizuho; Mizuho is Risako. The parallel is uncanny and subtle. The way the drama captures Risako's insecurities makes me anxious with her. This is unbelievably gripping with a topic I never knew could be so captivating.
A part of how this drama manages to grasp me so tightly is because of it’s ability to capture the nuances of life. The oven-cooked meal in Ep1 drove me nuts. Then there are these family members that are so familiar even if they're not my family. It's like I've seen these people and I know these people. This is how the drama crawled into me.
[The Title] From the editing, the storytelling, the script, everything perfectly enhances the message right down to the title of the drama. The English translation is "The House on the Slope". At first I thought the mother who lived on this slope was Mizuho (the defendant) but closer to the end, I realize it was Risako – or both mothers. If we, regular people, look at this house from our lens at our parallel view, we're blinded by our own perceived reality of them, we'll never be able to clearly see what's inside this house that's on a slope. We'll never understand these mothers if we don't meet them at their level, at their angle.
These two "live on the slope". Risako's life is parallel to Mizuho’s; that's why Risako can clearly see Mizuho's cries for help when everyone else can only see Mizuho's apathy. The drama cleverly gives us jurors with different lens; there's a cheating husband, an infertile woman, a working mother, etc. As we approach the end, Risako manages to convey her understanding of Mizuho to the other jurors and judges, and how multifaceted the problem of PPD is.
The brilliance of this drama is how meta it is. We are the jurors. We are the audience judging Mizuho. With Risako being the narrator, she's actively shifting our lens. She's showing us the disparity of standardizing motherhood, the insecurities that the closest family members can bring to a mother, and the devastation a mother feels when she fails to meet what's deemed as "normal".
[OST] The Piano Piece. Initially the piece was soothing but as the drama went on and it accompanied scenes that were anguishing, that same piece gave me anxiety. It was the softness paired with the incessant notes at a constant beat followed by an elongated crescendo that was almost undetectable. It suffocated my heart which was fascinating because this one piece induced such a polarizing set of emotions depending on when and how it was used. It was as if the drama was using this music to make me listen to how these constant, ubiquitous, societal expectations of mothers were antagonizing them in a way that was almost undetectable.
[Verdict] This is six episodes of immersive storytelling. Saka no Tochu no Ie aptly grips you into the life of mothers living with PPD. However, the intended audience aren't current mothers or soon-to-be mothers. It is you – you who are a husband; you who are a friend, you who are mother-in-law of a grown child, etc. It is you who are a regular person with your regular lens that this drama wants to impress.
I normally don't rate non-Cdramas just 'cause I'm too lazy. It's not that easy quantifying my emotions in five numbers but this one is an easy 5/5. No doubt about it.
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