On December 15th, NHK announced that there will be a special corner related to their reconstruction support song "Hana wa Saku"�on�the�'63rd NHK Kohaku Uta Gassen'. The�presenter�for the corner will be actress Horikita Maki who will also serve as the red team's host.

Nishida Toshiyuki, Nakamura Masatoshi, Mori Kumiko, Arakawa Shizuka, and Sandwich Man will join together as a chores to sing the song. �World-famous pianist Tsujii Nobuyuki and the composer of the song,�Kanno Yoko, will also be participating in the corner.

This segment is a part of Kohaku's special project "Uta de Aitai." This year, Horikita played a female doctor 'Umeko' who lived through that turbulent period on NHK's morning drama 'Ume-chan Sensei'. For this corner, she visited the "real Ume-chan Sensei", Ishiki Aiko, who has engaged in community medicine in Rikuzentakata, Iwate, with her father after the earthquake.

After seeing Ishiki with her own eyes, Horikita said, "I visited Ishiki AIko-san who tries her best to cheer up the local people, and through the encounter with her, I was able to meet many people in the disaster area. In this situation, I felt that what people in the disaster area want is 'to be able to put a smile on their faces', and 'to be able to liven up.' I hope everybody sends your heart out to people in the disaster area through 'Hana wa Saku' that will be sung by the guests who are all from the Tohoku area."

Horikita's visit to the disaster area will be shown on Kohaku's stage via photos taken by Baba Ryuichiro, with the guests' choral version of "Hana wa Saku".

The documentary will also be aired on a special program "Mousugu Kohaku Koko ga Midokoro Namahousou Special 2012" on December 18th starting on 8:00 pm (JST).

Source & Image: Modelpress via Infoseek