The Sunday Theatre drama " Mikami Sensei " (TBS, Sunday 9pm) starring actor Tori Matsuzaka will begin airing on January 19th. The drama will introduce the 29 unique students of class 2, year 3, of Rintoku Gakuen, where Mikami (Matsuzaka) is the homeroom teacher, in order of their attendance numbers. Here we will introduce Wataru Muraoka (Kento Yamada), attendance number 28. A video introducing the students is also available on the drama's official SNS.
Muraoka is a former student council president and has leadership skills. Studying is not everything, and he is proactive in doing things that will benefit him in life. He is the class balancer. He likes to talk. He has been dating Shiori Togakushi (Maru Nouchi) since the summer of his second year of high school.
Yamada, who plays the role, said, "This audition was the moment I put in the most effort and effort of my life. So when I heard I passed, I was relieved, but at the same time, I was in tears with gratitude for everyone who had been involved with me through the acting. I felt the strong determination and attitude of this work in asking sharp questions of society through the script, and I decided to approach the role with the same passion. I am looking head-on at the person Wataru Muraoka, and spending my time looking for overlapping parts of my everyday life with him. The first thing I did to prepare for the role was to 'speed up my brain'. I try to read two or three steps ahead just like him, and I study every day to see what he would do, what actions he would make, and what he would feel."
He further commented, "The set had an atmosphere where everyone could talk to each other and cooperate with each other, and everyone was kind and accepting. It's an environment where I feel that our growth is directly linked to the improvement of the work, and everyday life itself is just like school life. Everyone faces the challenges of the script, and sometimes it feels serious, and at other times it feels like youth! The appeal of this film is that it allows all the actors and viewers to think about the true nature of a society that we have until now turned a blind eye to. I would like people to see the 'true independence' and 'expanding way of life' of these 18-year-olds expressed by all the students. As for Muraoka, she is not bound by her position as a former student council president, but also shows her playful side who brightens up the situation in the class, and the conflict of wanting to do something about the environment but not being able to, and her pure acceptance of the feelings of her classmates. I would like to cherish those aspects."
" Mikami Sensei" is about a Ministry of Education bureaucrat, Takashi Mikami (Matsuzaka), who wants to change the Japanese education system, being ordered to transfer to a private high school, Rintoku Gakuin. In reality, it was a demotion, but Mikami himself takes to the podium and leads 18-year-old high school students living in the Reiwa era while standing up to authority... This is a "great reversal education revival story."
This completely original work will be written by Shimori Roba, who will be teaming up with Matsuzaka for the first time since the film "The Journalist," and will be writing the script for a prime-time drama series for the first time. Kazutaka Iida, who has been in charge of popular Sunday Theater dramas such as "Anti-Hero" (2024) and "VIVANT" (2023), will serve as producer.
