Teaser - Gene Waltz

An official website has finally been launched for Kentaro Otani’s Gene Waltz, a film adaptation of a novel by Takeru Kaido, the real-life pathologist who also wrote the novels that inspired “The Glorious Team Batista” and its sequel “The Triumphant General Rouge”. This project was first announced last November with a release planned for Fall 2010, but its promotion was put on the back burner for a while due to its release window being pushed back a few months.

Plot: Doctor Rie Sonezaki (Miho Kanno) is a fertility specialist who has earned the moniker “Obstetrics Joan of Arc” for her willingness to do whatever it takes to help women have babies—even if it means risking her career by violating the policy most Japanese obstetricians have long held against assisting with the use of surrogate mothers. However, she has an ally in her superior Goro Kyokawa (Seiichi Tanabe), who also wants to see the system change.

Surrogacy is highly controversial in Japan, and while it’s actually legal, there are very few obstetricians willing to go through with it. There is also a significant social stigma attached to allowing another woman to bear one’s child, even though this attitude would seem to compound Japan’s ever-worsening low birthrate problem.

Additionally, there’s currently an alarming shortage of obstetricians in most rural areas, and Kaido has voiced his hope that bringing his story to the big screen might inspire more doctors to choose the obstetrics field in the future.

Toei will be releasing “Gene Waltz” in Japan on February 5, 2011.