It has been announced that TV Asahi Drama Premium "The Guard's Way," starring actor Ryoma Takeuchi and co-starring Fumino Kimura, will air from 9:00 pm on June 21st. The drama is a film adaptation of the novel of the same name (Takarajimasha, 2019) by Shinichi Shiroyama, winner of the "This Mystery is Amazing!" Grand Prize, set in Kaga Prison in Ishikawa Prefecture. This is the first time the two have acted together, and they play prison guards with completely opposite personalities.
This is a story of hope and rebirth that depicts the various circumstances of prisoners and the prison guards who do their best to rehabilitate them. A "small act of kindness" shown by a passionate prison guard to one prisoner leads to a major incident that could shake the prison system, and a detailed and ingenious mystery is solved and a rich human drama unfolds.
Takeuchi plays Munakata Akihiro, a young prison officer who works closely with the inmates and does his best to help them rehabilitate, while Kimura plays Hiishi Tsukasa, a calm and collected senior prison officer who is assigned to Kaga Prison on a special mission. The two characters, who could be called the sun and the moon, clash as they get closer to the truth behind various incidents that occur in the prison, and save the hearts of inmates, guards, and their families.
As this was his first time playing a prison officer, Takeuchi visited an actual prison before filming began. "I was able to see the actual location before filming, which was a great asset for me as an actor. The warden said that in a prison, a 'day when nothing happens' is a 'good day'. So he said, 'in fact, prisons are boring places.' With that as a basic premise, it made us think hard about how we should make an interesting production. I felt that the challenge was how we could weave together the real parts with the interesting parts of the production."
Regarding the film, Kimura said, "I felt that the job of (prison officers) is to help the inmates, many of whom have been admitted because they have fallen out of society, to construct a new understanding of what it means to be human. I think this film conveys how delicate and difficult this task is.... 'The Prison Guard's Way' is not a story about the inmates themselves, but about the people who give them the push they need and see them off. It depicts many human relationships, so I hope you will watch it with a warm heart."
The script will be written by Yuji Hashimoto, who has worked on a number of popular works such as the dramas "Hanare Naru Hiroshi Hashimoto, who has worked on the drama "On a Starry Night" (TV Asahi, 2023) and the film "God's Medical Record" (2011, 2014).
