ABSTRACT
Tokyo Love Story had many television firsts: it was one of the first dorama to be based on manga, to attract global fans, and to have an unhappy ending in terms of love. Since their development in their current format in the early 1990s as a means to attract female viewers in their twenties, Japanese primetime television dramas—known commonly as "dorama"—have featured working women. Since the beginning of television broadcasting, Japanese dramas have idealized the stability of the home and have positively presented characters who maintain the family. Three kinds of serials that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s, "home dramas", "morning television novels", and "historical dramas"—the latter two still thriving—presented the notion that women, even as they work, should prioritize roles of wife and mother. Home dramas, asadora, and taiga dorama turned women's employment into a television trope; primetime series of the 1980s and 1990s made jobs for young, unmarried women look fashionable.
