What 'Kaze, Kaoru' Is: NHK's 114th Morning Drama

A new feature on NHK's 2026 first-half morning drama Kaze, Kaoru has laid out the show's full premise: a two-heroine story set in Meiji-era Japan, centered on Rin and Naomi, two graduates of the same nursing training school. The pair clash and support each other as they grow into trained nurses in a society where nursing is barely understood. The drama is the 114th installment in NHK's asadora morning serial.

Rin became a single mother at a young age after a run of bad luck; Naomi was abandoned as a baby and raised in a church. Their classmates each carry complicated backgrounds. Set around Meiji 18 (1885), when Japan's first formal nursing training school was established, the story introduces figures such as Oyama Sutematsu, known as the “flower of the Rokumeikan,” and the merchant Shimizu Uesaburo, who belonged to the Meirokusha intellectual society. After graduating, both heroines debut at the same university hospital. Rin soon loses her job, while Naomi starts imagining a system in which everyone can receive the same nursing care.

The production stresses that this is fiction built on real lives. The characters are inspired by Osawa Kazu and Suzuki Miyabi, two actual nursing pioneers, but the series has been “boldly reconstructed,” with names and organizations partly changed and no source novel. The original concept comes from Tanaka Hikaru's Meiji no Nightingale: Osawa Kazu Monogatari, and the credited directors include Sasaki Yoshiharu, Hashimoto Mayu, Nitta Shinzo and Matsumoto Hitoshi. Kaze, Kaoru airs Saturdays from 8:15 to 9:30 a.m. on NHK BS and BS Premium 4K.

How the Drama Turns History Into Fiction

History as Raw Material, Not a Script

The production has gone out of its way to mark the boundary between fact and invention. The real Osawa Kazu and Suzuki Miyabi were pioneering nurses in the early Meiji period, but the drama “boldly re-constructs” their story and those of the people around them, renaming some characters and organizations. In other words, viewers should approach Kaze, Kaoru as an original drama with historical roots, not as a biography or documentary.

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A New Profession on Screen

The choice of subject matters because Japanese nursing was itself new in the 1880s. The source material notes that the country's first formal nursing training school opened in 1885, and the heroines spend much of the story trying to establish a job that society had not yet accepted. That gives the drama a double arc: personal growth alongside the creation of a profession.

An Old Format, a Modern Question

The story also carries a broader theme. Rin and Naomi are described as asking what nursing is, what it means to face patients, and how to live happily and truthfully in a society that is changing by the minute. That fits the well-established asadora pattern of placing personal struggles against a historical backdrop, and it may be the element that connects the series to viewers who know little about Meiji-era medical history. This last point is interpretation; the rest reflects the production's own descriptions.

Watching 'Kaze, Kaoru': What Viewers Should Know

For viewers planning to watch the series:

  • Schedule: Kaze, Kaoru airs Saturdays from 8:15 to 9:30 a.m. on NHK BS and BS Premium 4K; the precise first-episode date has not been given in the source.
  • Expect fiction: The drama is inspired by real nurses Osawa Kazu and Suzuki Miyabi, but names and events have been altered, so treat its plot as drama, not history.
  • Context helps: Knowing that Japan's first nursing training school opened in 1885 (Meiji 18) will make the heroines' struggle to win recognition for nursing easier to follow.