This half period of Japanese year, the Japan Broadcasting Corporation broadcasts a television drama called "Ranman". It is a half-fictional drama based on the life of a famous Japanese botanist Tomitaro Makino. He was a father of modern plant systematics in Japan. He described more than 1500 new species with five hundred thousand specimens. He was also an author of famous pictorial books of Japanese flora. A strange guy murmuring in the front of Southern maidenhair fern (Adiantum capillus-veneris) is a typical scenery one can observe when one goes out for walk with a guy who is interested in plants. This drama reproduced the situation highly.
In the drama, Tomitaro Makino is named as Mantaro Makino. He serves a professor of botany in the University of Tokyo, Akihisa Tanabe (originally Ryokichi Yatabe). Mantaro does not have good educational background, and Akihisa recommends him to be educated at first hand, or to study abroad. This is an orthodox advice from a supervisor, but Mantaro may refuse it. Mantaro, similar to the real case in Tomitaro, does have a desire to be someone at first hand, and this makes the situation difficult. Later the relation between these two will become bad and Mantaro will be dismissed. The episode symbolizes the difficult character of Tomitaro, who was not so good at matters outside botany. The reflection of this episode on the drama is praised.
