Transcript query

[Ono Seiko and Aaron Gerow]

John Dougill asked,

>I would like to find out if there are any transcripts published of Japanese
>television dramas or popular films.  If anyone has any information about
>this, I would be very grateful for any suggestions or leads.

I'm not sure what you mean by transcripts (is it like the texts PBS makes 
available for its TV programming in the US?), but certainly scripts are 
available for Japanese films, though these may not be exact to the film 
word for word.  The magazine _Shinario_ publishes a couple in each of its 
monthly issues (ranging from the "artistic" to the "popular," all from 
films released around that time), and the yearly _Nenkan daihyo shinario 
shu_ gives you a selection of the best film scripts of the year.  There 
is a similar nenkan for TV scripts, but I don't know the title offhand.  
I don't know, however, if they have PBS-like transcripts for Japanese TV 
dramas (I've never seen them advertised on TV).

Aaron Gerow