Actor Daiken Okudaira will appear in the TBS Sunday Theatre drama " Mikami Sensei " (Sundays at 9pm), which will begin on January 19th and star Tori Matsuzaka . He will play Kanzaki Takuto, a student in class 3-2 who is the homeroom teacher at Rintoku Gakuin, a private high school where the main character Mikami Takashi (Matsuzaka) is assigned under the government dispatch system. Kanzaki is set to be a charismatic student who aspires to be a journalist. We spoke to Okudaira about the atmosphere during the filming of this drama, which is his first school drama in a year, and his aspirations for 2025.
◇ Experience the Sunday Theatre with a camera that gets super close to your face
" 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 is a completely original school drama, and Shimori Roba, who will be teaming up with Matsuzaka for the first time since the movie "The Journalist," will be in charge of the script for a prime-time drama series. Kazutaka Iida, who has been in charge of popular Sunday Theater dramas such as "Anti-Hero" (2024) and "VIVANT" (2023), will serve as producer.
All 29 students were selected through auditions last year. Okuhira, who says he "really loves auditions," said he took the audition purely out of a desire to have fun. As a result, he was chosen to appear on "Sunday Theatre" for the first time, and Okuhira said, "I feel very honored to be able to appear in a time slot that has had so many great works up until now."
When he was first cast in the Sunday Theater role, he said he "wasn't really thinking about it," but once filming began, he said, "When I was shooting the unique camera scenes (getting super close to my face), it was the first time I felt, 'Ah, this is Sunday Theater.' When I was doing the super close-up shots, those kinds of scenes from previous Sunday Theater roles came to mind, and I began to realize that I was working with an amazing team."
◇ 29 students of the same generation: "They're just plain noisy (laughs)."
Okuhira was born on September 20, 2003 and is 21 years old and from Tokyo. This will be her second time appearing in a school drama following "The Best Teacher: One Year Later, I Was ■ by My Student" (Nippon TV, 2023).
"After all, acting with a large number of people is very difficult and time-consuming. I did feel that way, but I was also looking forward to it. There were some people I'd already worked with, but there were also many people I was meeting for the first time, and the roles were all different. I also felt a little sad, wondering how much longer we'd be able to do this school drama, so I started filming with a lot of mixed emotions in mind."
Once filming began, he laughed and said, "We're all the same generation, so it's simply noisy."
"It really makes you feel like you're at school. Even though there is a certain age difference, everyone is speaking casually and it really feels like I'm back in high school. We talk about silly things, and that's what makes it feel like a school drama, which I think is great, but on the other hand, during class scenes, the other students have to be in the classroom when one person is talking, so I find it difficult to concentrate when I don't have any lines," he said.
When the cameras aren't rolling, "It's incredible how much sweets we have gone down (laughs). We all eat so much sweets that they disappear at an incredible speed. It's fun, and everyone looks like they're having fun. Also, everyone takes a ton of photos. Some kids bring their own cameras, and others take them on their smartphones. They share these photos with us, and there are an incredible amount of them. In one day, I receive a month's worth of photos from the film set. It's hard to find photos of me in them, but I'm grateful, and I'm sure they'll eventually be uploaded to my personal social media accounts, so I hope to be able to show you more of them."
◇ Tori Matsuzaka's atmosphere on set is "extremely relaxed"
Takuto Kanzaki, played by Okudaira, is the head of the press club and aspires to be a journalist. He has mixed feelings of respect and resentment towards his father, a newspaper reporter. He has a sense of justice and excellent grades, but he is not the type to show his emotions. He is a charismatic student who dominates the atmosphere in the class.
"He's introduced as the charismatic leader of the class, but he's not really aware of that. He's a kid who tries to act grown up, grew up in a good home, and does what he wants to do. Then he meets Mikami Sensei, and this kid, who probably had never been defeated before, is defeated for the first time by someone other than his family. We're filming around the third episode now, and when someone you thought was a perfect person is defeated, you don't know what to do with yourself, and you feel helpless. Kanzaki has too many worries, and it's not an easy role, so it's difficult for me to know what to do in each scene, and I've had a lot of discussions with the director," he reveals.
Matsuzaka, who plays Mikami Sensei, describes him as "a very laid back person" when the cameras aren't rolling.
"Since Kanzaki and I were on opposite sides from the first episode, I thought he would keep some distance, but that wasn't the case at all, and he talked to me in a very friendly manner. I think it's Matsuzaka's personality that allows me to act without getting too nervous. What I find amazing is that he doesn't trip up his lines. He says difficult things and even long lines, he speaks them calmly and doesn't trip up at all. I trip up a lot, so I think it's amazing, and it's really fun when we're acting one-on-one. When he's in class, he looks at the students with a smile on his face, just like a real teacher. Sometimes he joins in the students' conversations, and often he looks at them with a pretty detached attitude."
As for classmates, she said she "really likes the acting" of Airu Kubozuka, with whom she co-starred in "The Best Teacher." "He acts in a way that only he can do, and it feels different from when I first saw him," she said.
He said he was looking forward to working with Aju Aju Makita, who plays his childhood classmate Tominaga Ao.
"It's the first time we acted together with Makita, but we've been friends for a while now. I probably debuted and visited quite a lot of different movie awards in my first year, but Makita also won the Newcomer Award or the Best Supporting Actress Award for a movie called "Morning Comes" (2020) and met her at the awards ceremony. We hadn't even talked about it yet, but there was a child who was the same generation and acted really well in my head. If we thought we'd like to act together someday, we'll be doing drama together this time. But it feels a bit strange to act together as we acted together after we've become friends, or we're not used to it. Fun is fun, but there was a strange feeling."
As for the drama's highlights, he said, "It deals with topics that you probably wouldn't come across in your everyday life, and it even touches on some political topics, so I think it's a work that will give you an opportunity to learn about such things for the first time. I think there are a lot of things that are difficult to know about, such as various systems and issues that are somewhat problematic in the real world, so I think it's great if it can just serve as an opportunity for people to learn about these things, and if it really brings about change for the better, I think that's even better."
◇ With the words of his co- Kazuki Kitamura, in mind, "Perform freely"
Kanzaki aspires to be a journalist, but what news story is Okuhira personally interested in?
"I guess happy news (laughs). I think it's important to know what's happening in the world, for example, what's happening in Japan, but I personally prefer to watch news about animals and the like... Or rather, that's the kind of thing I want to watch all the time," he says with a laugh.
Finally, we asked him about his aspirations for 2025.
"This is my second time acting alongside Kazuki Kitamura, and he previously told me, 'I don't want you to lose that feeling of acting freely.' I think that technique and thinking while acting are very important, but I also thought that it's not good to be too caught up in it, so I think I'd like to forget about all that for once in 2025. I think it might be okay to try doing something really pure and free for once, so I'd like to try that at least once."
