Okayama Amane plays Koikawa Harumachi (Kurahashi Itaru) in the NHK Taiga drama " UNBOUND (Berabou) " (General TV, Sunday 8pm and other times), starring actor Ryusei Yokohama Ryusei. Episode 36, "The Parrot's Kick-Off is a Duck," aired on September 21st, and depicted Harumachi's final moments. "On the day we were to record the seppuku scene, I left home thinking, 'Today is my last day.' I was thinking again about how many times an actor will die (as a character), but it was the first time I'd gone to a recording session from home with that kind of feeling," Okayama revealed, talking about Harumachi's way of life and death.
◇After fully portraying the life of Koikawa Harumachi, "I feel quite lonely"
Koikawa Harumachi (Kurahashi Itaru) is a samurai serving the Kojima Matsudaira clan, and a comic writer who is skilled at both illustrations and writing. His novel "Kaneka Sensei Eiga Yume" published by Urokogataya was a huge hit, becoming the forerunner of the yellow-covered novels that followed. He met Tsutaju through his friend Houseidou Kizoji (Omi Toshinori), and they published one work after another, but when they published "Omu Kaeri Bunbu Ni Do" at a turning point in history, it caught the eye of the shogunate, leading to an unexpected situation...
Harumachi then chose to commit suicide. Okayama, who played the role of Harumachi, revealed his feelings, saying, "I feel quite lonely."
"There were many scenes with the same playwright, and of course Tsutaju, but there were also many scenes depicting friendly competition with the regular members, so it's a bit lonely to be leaving those people and being on a different set."
Regarding the script for the 36th episode, which depicts Harumachi's final moments, he recalls, "It seems that Omi-san (who plays Kisanji) had already read the draft before I read it, and told me that it really touched him."
"I also had many thoughts about the episode leading up to Harumachi's final moments, but I was most moved by the way his coworkers paid their respects to him after he passed away. I thought it was a wonderful script, especially the way Kisanji behaved afterwards."
As mentioned above, on the day of filming the seppuku scene, Okayama left home thinking, "Today is my last day," and explained, "It was also a case of me choosing to die, so that's how I felt."
"So I had a very unique feeling. It's not something I can easily sort out, and I felt like it would be wrong to do so. It was a truly unique state of mind, and I felt like that's what suicide is like."
In terms of expression, it was like "hitting your head on the corner of a piece of tofu," and according to Okayama, it was "an unprecedented death for a person." "There was a lot of trial and error in the direction," Okayama revealed.
"The script only described the situation in words. The director had to create the movements in between, so it was a trial and error process to figure out how to plunge into the tofu after the actor cuts his stomach open. But it's strange, isn't it? The sadness and humor, and the way he ends his life all seem almost fictional. It's rare to see a death that incorporates such elements, so it was a fascinating experience to act out, stimulating various parts of the brain."
◇I thought it was a death that fully fulfilled his beliefs.
How does Okayama himself view Harumachi's life, including the "creative" ending to his life, as befits a playwright who can both illustrate and write?
"It's a play, so I'm not actually living that character, but I acted as if I was living that character for a time, and I thought it must be really tough to live in human society. But watching from the outside, I felt that there was a certain kind of beauty, or charm, about him. I think it was good that I came across this form of writing. I'm a pretty strange person myself (laughs), so I think things would have been tough if I hadn't done this job, but even so, Harumachi is a person who has a hard time living; he has too much of his own aesthetic sense. That's why I think of him as an artist."
On the other hand, Okayama honestly said about Harumachi, "I feel an equal amount of sympathy for every character, so there was nothing special about this role."
"He's an interesting character, and I really wanted to make him a lovable character, but I feel like there's something close to me in every role, and no role is more than that. But to me, he's become an important and beloved character."
Finally, we asked him to talk about how he died.
"I thought it was a death that fully fulfilled his belief that he couldn't just die seriously, and I was grateful that in a historical drama that depicts the lives and deaths of so many people, the figure of one character heading towards that goal was properly portrayed. I felt that there is no other death that reflects so much of a person's personality. I was reminded once again of how consistent he was, someone who tried to fulfill his life to this extent. I had always thought of him as a serious character, but in a way it was similar to madness, and I was reminded once again of the magnitude of Harumachi's character."
