Psychiatrist Irabu series

The Psychiatrist Irabu series (精神科医・伊良部シリーズ) is a series of short stories by the Japanese writer Hideo Okuda that features the fictional psychiatrist Dr. Ichirō Irabu (伊良部 一郎).

The stories were originally published in the literary magazine All Yomimono from August 2000 to January 2006 and later collected in three tankōbon: In the Pool (イン・ザ・プール), "Flying trapeze" (空中ブランコ) and "Mayoral election" (町長選挙). Of these, Kūchū Buranko is particularly acclaimed, having won Okuda the 131st Naoki Prize (given for a book published in the first half of 2004). However, as of January 2011, only In the Pool has been published in English, though the other collections have been published in other languages, including German and French.

Works in other media based on the stories include a feature film, television drama, stage play and animated television series.

Premise
Ichiro Irabu (伊良部 一郎) is a psychiatrist of the Irabu General Hospital. He is pale-skinned, overweight and is overzealous in administering injections to patients. An unreasonable and rather immature person, he ignores Yamashita's plights while challenging him to mid-air trapeze flying due to his self-proclaimed "light-weightedness" in the story "Kūchū Buranko". During his student days, he frequently misunderstood his lectures. Treated as a general nuisance at the School of Medicine, he entered pediatrics soon after graduation. However, due to claims of tantrums and quarrels with child patients, he switched to psychiatry instead. Doubts remain about his actual grades.

Kūchū Buranko

 * "Flying Trapeze" (空中ブランコ)
 * Kōhei Yamashita (山下 公平) is a member of a circus troupe of seven years and is the leader of a flying trapeze team. Both of his parents are also members. After suffering repeated failures on the trapeze act, he visits a psychiatrist on his wife's and fellow members' advice. Because of his failure during an act, he believes his partner is harassing him. He has been played by Masato Sakai in the television drama, Kenji Sakamoto in the stage play and Toshiyuki Morikawa in the animated series.


 * "Hedgehog" (ハリネズミ)
 * Seiji Ino (猪野 誠司) is an underboss of the yakuza "Kioi family" from Shibuya. He suffers from such serious trypanophobia that he cannot use chopsticks and must instead use a spoon at meals. He takes a psychiatric test on his common-law wife's advice.


 * Gifu no Zura (義父のヅラ) (the first publishing "All Yomimono", October, 2003 issue)
 * Tatsuro Ikeyama (池山 達郎) is a university lecturer and is a doctor of neurology working in a university-affiliated hospital. His father-in-law is Dean of the School of Medicine, which could potentially aid in his future employment prospects. He was also classmate of Irabu's during their college days. He has a type of neurosis that compels him to force any place of tidiness into disarray. This disorder is so strong that, with just one glance at his father-in-law's wig, Ikeyama becomes agonized by the impulse of wanting to strip it off his head. Originally published in the All Yomimono with the title Kyōju no Zura (教授のヅラ).


 * Hot Corner (ホットコーナー) (the first publishing "All Yomimono", April, 2003 issue)
 * Shinichi Bando (坂東 真一) is a pro-baseball player and a ten-year veteran third baseman. He suffered from yips and leaves his first team by pretending to have an injured right shoulder.


 * "Chick Lit Writer" (女流作家)
 * Aiko Hoshiyama (星山 愛子) is a popular novelist known for her stories, which "express the subtleties of the hearts of today's urban men and women." While working on her newest story, she becomes ill at ease with writing new material. After relapsing into a continuous state of compulsive vomiting from which she had previously been cured, she consults psychiatry.

Film
In the Pool (イン・ザ・プール) is a 2005 feature film directed by Satoshi Miki, based on three of the stories by Hideo Okuda collected in the book of the same name, which stars Suzuki Matsuo as Irabu, Joe Odagiri as Tetsuya Taguchi and Seiichi Tanabe as Kazuo Ōmori. It was released in cinemas in Japan on May 14, 2005.

Television drama
Kūchū Buranko (空中ブランコ) is a 2005 one-off television drama based primarily on the story of the same name by Hideo Okuda, which stars Hiroshi Abe as Irabu. It was produced by Fuji Television and broadcast by them on May 27, 2005.


 * Cast
 * Ichiro Irabu (Hiroshi Abe)
 * Mayumi (Yumiko Shaku)
 * Kohei Yamashita (Masato Sakai)
 * Hiromi Yasukawa (Hitomi Satō)
 * Seiji Ino (Kenichi Endō)
 * Elly (Sachiko Kokubu)
 * Uchida (Seiji Iinuma)
 * Yoshimatsu (Yutaka Matsushige)


 * Staff
 * Planning: Akihiro Arai, Kenichiro Yasuhara (Fuji Television)
 * Script: Hiroshi Hashimoto
 * Producer: Shizuo Sekiguchi, Fumi Hashimoto (Kyodo Television)
 * Direction: Masanori Murakami (Kyodo Television)
 * Production: Fuji Television, Kyodo Television

Play
Kūchū Buranko (空中ブランコ) is a 2008 play by Yutaka Kuramochi based on the story of the same name by Hideo Okuda. The original production by theatre company Atelier Duncan was directed by Masahiko Kawahara and ran for 21 performances from April 20 to May 5, 2008 at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Space, then toured for the remainder of the month starting in Kōchi, Kōchi on the 8th and ending in Kamisu, Ibaraki on the 29th. The original cast included Hiroyuki Miyasako as Dr. Irabu, Eriko Satō as Mayumi, Kenji Sakamoto as Kōhei Yamashita, Yumiko Takahashi and Takashika Kobayashi, with supporting roles performed by, among others, the male idols Takashi Nagayama as Haruki, Ryūji Kamiyama and Ire Shiozaki and members of the G-Rockets acro troupe. It was produced with Dentsu and sponsored by Dentsu and TV Asahi.

A video recording was made, which premiered on July 11, 2008 on the television station WOWOW and has since been rebroadcast several times and released on DVD-Video on October 24, 2008.

Anime
Welcome to Irabu's Office (空中ブランコ) is a 2009 Japanese animated television series of 11 episodes based on the psychiatrist Irabu stories by Hideo Okuda, produced at Toei Animation under the series direction of Kenji Nakamura for Fuji Television's noitamina programming block. Though ostensibly an animated series, its visuals are more specifically a mélange of traditional animation with rotoscoped or otherwise processed live-action video and other imagery. Manabu Ishikawa's series composition adapts the stories to be set in Tokyo during about one week from December 17 to Christmas (corresponding with the original broadcast, which concluded on Christmas Eve) and for the chief characters of each story to appear also as supporting players in each other's narratives.

The plot of each episode follows a common thread. Irabu is consulted by a patient suffering from a psychological problem or a problem for which other medical approaches have been exhausted. Each of the patients' heads is morphed into an animal head in some scenes after Mayumi administers the vitamin shot to them. Each patient somehow ties into one another; for example, the first patient meets with the second patient and the seventh patient, all in the first episode.

The series won the Pulcinella award for Best Television Series in the "Young Adults" (14–17 years) division at the 2010 Cartoons on the Bay international animation festival in the province of Genoa, Italy. The jury of that year, presided over by Gary Goldman, commended it as a "unique representation of the complex inner world of adolescents." Noted animation blogger Benjamin Ettinger found it to be lacking in interest in the animation itself. In his opinion, the extreme eclecticism of the visual design was no substitute for the finely crafted world of Nakamura and character designer and chief animation director Takashi Hashimoto's earlier Ayakashi: Samurai Horror Tales and Mononoke. However, the series was still highly enjoyable thanks to excellence on the part of Nakamura and the episode directors. The series highlighted the incorporation of real-life gravure idol Yumi Sugimoto as Mayumi as a welcome subversion of moe.


 * Staff
 * Screenplay: Manabu Ishikawa, Isao Murayama, Tomoko Taguchi
 * Art design: Shoji Tokiwa
 * Color setting: Rumiko Nagai
 * CG director: Nobuhiro Morita
 * Photography director: Kazuhiro Yamada
 * Sound director: Yukio Nagasaki
 * Music: Hideharu Mori
 * Assistance of the direction: Kimitoshi Chioka


 * Theme songs
 * Opening theme: "Upside Down" by Denki Groove
 * Ending theme: "Shangri-La (Y.Sunahara 2009 Remodel)" by Denki Groove

Characters

 * Ichiro Irabu (伊良部 一郎)
 * as Big & Middle Irabu
 * as Little Irabu
 * Dr. Irabu is the son of the founder of the Irabu General Hospital. Irabu is a psychiatrist with a care-free, eccentric, and childlike personality. He changes appearance throughout scenes. In his first form, he is slightly overweight and wears bright clothes under his labcoat with a large green bear head that can change expression to suit his. "Middle Irabu" is slimmer, wearing more normal attire. In this form, he has long blond hair, red glasses, and a pair of green bear ears. His personality in this form is notably effeminate. His final form is "little Irabu" (him as a boy), with an oversized lab coat, and shorts instead of trousers. He is quite mellow in this form but can become ecstatic.
 * Irabu has a strange angle to his line of medicine, insisting that all of his patients have a vitamin shot (Irabu has a fetish for injections) and insisting that his patients face their problems head on. He is seen by other psychiatrists as obscene and childish, although his treatments seem to work.


 * Mayumi (マユミ)
 * Performed by: Yumi Sugimoto
 * A sullen nurse who serves as Irabu's assistant. She wears a revealing nurse's uniform and uses her sex appeal to distract patients while giving injections. In the episode "Friends," it is revealed that she enjoys being alone because she finds it easier and that she prefers men who are lone wolves like her. She does not have a cell phone but uses one at the end of episode 6 to contact Yuta, the patient from the "Friends" episode.


 * Fukuitchi (福井っち)
 * A psychiatrist who is not part of the storyline but frequently halts scenes and pops in via a door-like cut from the stopped picture to provide medical commentary.


 * Kohei Yamashita (山下 公平)
 * Performed by: Toshiyuki Morikawa
 * He is an aerialist who fails repeatedly.


 * Tetsuya Taguchi (田口 哲也)
 * Performed by: Takahiro Sakurai
 * He is a public servant at the ward office who has a persistent erection, due to emotional issues at work and with his ex-wife.


 * Junichi Hoshiyama (星山 純一)
 * Performed by: Shin-ichiro Miki
 * He is a romance novelist suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder. He believes that he has already acted on the ideas that come into his head for new books.


 * Shinichi Bando (坂東 真一)
 * Performed by: Daisuke Namikawa
 * He is a pro-baseball player troubled with the yips, brought on by a younger, popular contender for his spot.


 * Tatsuro Ikeyama (池山 達郎)
 * performed by: Hiroaki Hirata
 * He is a college lecturer and a doctor of neurology. He has compulsive urges to do destructive and strange things.


 * Yuta Tsuda (津田 雄太)
 * Performed by: Miyu Irino
 * He is a high school student who has a mobile phone addiction.


 * Seiji Ino (猪野 誠司)
 * Performed by: Hiroki Takahashi
 * He is a yakuza who has a phobia of edges.


 * Yoshio Iwamura (岩村 義雄)
 * Performed by: Mitsuo Iwata
 * He diagnoses himself as obsessive-compulsive.


 * Hiromi Yasukawa (安川 ヒロミ)
 * Performed by: Wataru Hatano
 * He is an actor worried about his self-image.


 * Mitsuo Tanabe (田辺 満男)
 * Performed by: Ryotaro Okiayu
 * He is the representative director chairman of the newspaper publishing company.


 * Hideo Tsuda (津田 秀雄)
 * Performed by: Tōru Furuya
 * He is the Assistant Manager of the Paramedic Department at Irabu General Hospital and the father of Yuta Tsuda.