A Lone Scalpel Blu-ray Box

There are lives that need saving now. Hideaki Takizawa's final acting performance brings A Lone Scalpel to television for the first time, adapting a novel series with more than 1.6 million copies in circulation.

In Japan in 1989, legislation governing organ transplants has yet to advance, and transplant surgery is considered a distant prospect. Surgeon Tetsuhiko Toma, played by Hideaki Takizawa, takes a position at Sosei Memorial Hospital in the regional town of Kosui. Having trained in the United States, a leader in medical care, he believes that patients in regional areas should receive the same standard of treatment as those at university hospitals. He tackles difficult operations and saves the patients before him with remarkable skill.

To save more lives, Toma advocates the liver-transplant surgery he learned in America. He meets Tsuyoshi Jitsukawa, played by Toru Nakamura, another physician working to make liver transplants possible. This marks the meeting of two doctors who will play a major role in liver transplantation in Japan. Yet the hospital puts its own preservation first and refuses to undertake risky transplant operations. Absolute power and an outdated medical system, entrenched inside and outside the hospital, stand in their way.

All eight episodes are included on two main Blu-rays, with four episodes per disc, plus a third Blu-ray of extras. The main program runs approximately 400 minutes, with approximately 120 minutes of bonus footage. Extras include the completed-production preview screening, previously unreleased making-of footage, the WOWOW broadcast guide program and promotional spots. A thirty-two-page booklet, key-visual postcard and Tetsuhiko Toma Sosei Memorial Hospital business card are enclosed. The original first pressing also included alternate cover artwork, a Toma hospital nameplate and six cast scene-photo postcards; these extras are specific to first-press copies.

The cast includes Hideaki Takizawa, Toru Nakamura, Asuka Kudo, Mizuki Yamamoto, Kanji Ishimaru, Kyozo Nagatsuka, Ichirota Miyagawa, Go Riju, Yoshiki Miura, Koen Kondo, Naomasa Musaka, Hirotaro Honda and Midori Kimura. Specifications are subject to change.