Deciphering Japan

Journalist Yumi Araki explores her home country as it enters an era of great social and political transformation. She explores the hot-button issues that have both galvanised and polarised the nation, and meets the people at the forefront of change.  In the first episode, Yumi meets the women who are re-defining their roles in Japan's patriarchal society, and the men forced to re-orientate themselves in this new social order. In episode two, Yumi dives into the country's extreme work culture, visiting obsessive farmers, overworked salarymen and the therapists trying to keep them sane. Next, Yumi visits hip hop dancing grannies and other members of the nation's sunset generation to find out how this fast-ageing country is coping with unprecedented demographic change. In the final episode, Yumi hangs out with bartending Buddhist monks, psychedelic pop artists, and shunned biracial communities to explore a national identity in flux and to decipher what it means to be Japanese today.