Actor Daiken Okudaira attended the opening day stage greeting for the film "Yukikaze" (directed by Toshihisa Yamada) held in Tokyo on August 15th. Okudaira, who is not good at swimming, looked back on the filming, which took place in the ocean.
In this film, which depicts the real-life destroyer "Yukikaze" that existed during the Pacific War, Okudaira plays a crew member alongside the main cast, Yutaka Takenouchi and Hiroshi Tamaki. Tamaki revealed, "Although the film is about water, Okudaira is not good at swimming. But he tried really hard. There is a scene at the beginning where he is thrown into the sea and I have to rescue him." Okudaira expressed his gratitude for the support of those around him, saying, "I was quite scared to go into the sea, but there were a lot of lifeguards there, and they told me, 'We will definitely help you if anything happens,' so I think that really helped me do my best."
Looking back on the scene where Okuhira went into the sea, Takenouchi praised his acting spirit, saying, "Sometimes the timing isn't quite right and it doesn't work out in one take. But he never complained and kept saying, 'Thank you for your help!' I thought he had a lot of guts." Okuhira smiled shyly and said, "I'm afraid of water, so I was pretty scared while doing it, but I'm glad I managed to put in the effort. Thank you."
Ami Touma, Rena Tanaka, Kiichi Nakai, screenwriter Yasuo Hasegawa, and director Yamada also appeared on stage to greet the audience.
The film depicts on a grand scale the lives and fates of people who struggled to survive in the turbulent times that stretched from the Pacific War to the postwar period and on into the present day. Based on historical fact, it brings to life as fiction the many roles played by the Yukikaze, the only one of the 38 main destroyers to survive until the end of the war without sinking and known as the "unsinkable ship."
