# Mother (2010)

> An elementary school teacher abducts a neglected student from an abusive mother and takes her on a journey across Japan.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/31869

## Facts

- Seasons: 1
- Episodes: 11
- Episode runtime: 54 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: drama
- Network: Nippon TV
- Cast: Yasuko Matsuyuki, Mana Ashida, Koji Yamamoto, Wakana Sakai, Kana Kurashina, Machiko Ono, Yôsuke Kawamura, Miwako Ichikawa
- TMDB rating: 8.3/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1632065/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: measured
- Intensity: strong
- Complexity: accessible
- Violence: mild
- Tone: tense, emotional, bittersweet, intimate

## Synopsis

Mother (2010) is a Japanese television drama series broadcast on Nippon TV, a single-season limited run of eleven episodes of roughly fifty-four minutes each. Yasuko Matsuyuki stars as Nao Suzuhara, an elementary school teacher who, after discovering that one of her pupils, Reina Michiki (Mana Ashida), is being abused by her mother, impulsively decides to take the girl into her own care. Nao's engine is a fierce protective instinct pitted against the law, the school, and the family systems that have failed the child, so every episode is built around the escalating risk of being found out as the two travel from Hokkaido toward Tokyo. Supporting characters, including Koji Yamamoto as Shunsuke Fujiyoshi, Machiko Ono as Hitomi Michiki, and Wakana Sakai as Mei Suzuhara, widen the emotional net around the pair. The tone is tender and anguished, a deliberately intimate domestic drama about motherhood, guilt, and what love demands when institutions look away. Its quiet Hokkaido landscapes give way to crowded Tokyo streets, grounding its emotional stakes in contemporary Japanese life. Fans of Big Little Lies and Broadchurch, and anyone drawn to emotionally driven Japanese family drama, will find resonance in its moral urgency and humane focus on a child caught between two mothers.

## Shows like Mother

- [Mother (2016)](https://ember.film/tv/60179)
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- [Mother (2018)](https://ember.film/tv/65925)
- [The Journalist (2022)](https://ember.film/tv/113979)
- [Usagi Drop (2011)](https://ember.film/tv/41067)
- [MISS KING (2025)](https://ember.film/tv/201035)
- [Until the T-Shirt Dries (2026)](https://ember.film/tv/1105184)
- [Hirugao: Love Affairs in the Afternoon (2014)](https://ember.film/tv/60334)
- [Long Vacation (1996)](https://ember.film/tv/5740)
- [Meet Me After School (2018)](https://ember.film/tv/70977)

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