[Translation] Satou Takeru in Junon August 2010
Takeru-kun played the role of Okada Izou in the NHK Taiga drama, “Ryouma Den.” Okada grew up in the same village as Ryouma, a place called Tosa. He would eventually become known as “Izou the assassin”, and led an emotional roller coaster of a life. Playing such an emotional role must have resonated in Takeru-kun’s heart many times. Now Takeru-kun can look back at this emotional role from the distance of six months, almost certainly with a look that has grown from the experience. This is one last look back at being a samurai in “Ryouma Den.” In the early summer light, Takeru-kun smiles faintly with a hint of maturity to his face while wearing a yukata*.
*A yukata is like a kimono, but for the summer. While traditional kimonos tend to have three layers or more to them, yukatas have just one cotton layer to put on. Girls wear really pretty, colorful ones while men wear what I think are duller colors like black, white, brown and gray. The patterns for yukatas for guys are also simpler, it seems. I still think all Japanese guys look hot in yukatas, though.
I think I’d like to follow their example of living such a passionate, purpose-driven life.
Before I went on the set to play the role of Okada Izou, I read the script and noticed that there were many scenes where the character is at his wit’s end, and I had a feeling that that would be so difficult to portray that I might pass out from acting those scenes. I was worried at the beginning of filming, and I used as much of my energy as I dared to to make the role work well. So when the filming for me wrapped up, I was glad that it’d ended safely, and I felt like that was a huge accomplishment. Izou carried around a complex about being a non-commissioned officer (a low-ranking samurai), but he enjoyed growing up with childhood friends like Ryouma (Fukuyama Masaharu). I wanted to find a way to express how someone so ordinary could become known as an “assassin.”
According to the work, Izou was depicted as a man who enjoyed killing others. However, I wanted to play the role to suggest that he didn’t like killing, but had no choice. So I had to play the role while having Izou seeming to wonder how he could have ended up in such a state. I think that the reason why Izou continued killing despite loathing it so much was for the sake of Takechi-sensei (Oomori Nao). To that extent he loved his teacher, I think. He was just expressing his emotions, but I think that in this day and age, it’d be difficult to sympathize with him. If you were to compare the other characters to modern-day people, they also are definitely not normal. Things like tears pouring down your face when you’re sad or when you’re overjoyed, considering ritual suicide as a matter of course. These kinds of things nowadays would be seen as unbelievable. To me, it’s like “I guess that was just that time in history.” I can’t imagine what it’d be like to live near the end of the Edo era. It’s unbelievable that they had a social class system, but I think if I were raised in such a situation I couldn’t help but just accept it. But Ryouma, he leaps over that wall for the sake of saving Japan. He’s truly an incredible person. The impression I get is that he doesn’t do anything for himself, but for others. I think if the kind of Ryouma whom Fukuyama-san portrays existed, I think everyone would be fascinated by him.
The energy that people had from that era is really incredible. Completely different from now. Since they’re always risking their lives, they’re always so passionate about things. You’d think that when they got time off they’d just sleep the whole time, but I don’t think they did (laughs). Because it was that era, I think they’d feel happier doing fun things than we do nowadays. Everyone of that time had some sort of purpose, their eyes set on something, which probably was what gave them so much energy. It’s an example I think I’d like to follow.
Love back then is also different from how it is now. Because of the social class system, they couldn’t just love freely, which I think must’ve been really painful. Especially for women. They had to get married to whomever their parents chose, so I think if they actually got to marry someone they loved, I think they’d be far happier than people who fall in love and get married nowadays. Women of that time also appeared to have to be completely devoted to their husbands’ every need. I think it’s interesting that some people say, “Women from the Edo Era are the best”, but for someone like me who likes independent women, I probably wouldn’t be satisfied with a wife who always walked three steps behind me (laughs). But I have to say I really like Japanese women from the olden days. I think wives like Takechi-sensei’s wife, Tomi (Okunuki Kaoru) are wonderful. The scene where Takechi-sensei’s wife has a quiet conversation with him right before he’s arrested left a great impression on me.
It felt great being able to freely act in the drama.
This time I had full-out sword fights to do. There were a lot of times where I hadn’t ever felt what the character had, and that was difficult, but the rehearsals and the filming were all really fun. The way a samurai speaks is also difficult, so that was a problem I had to overcome. At first I had to listen to a model recording of how a samurai speaks, and I tried to copy that as best I could. But then I got used to how they speak, to the point where by the latter half of filming I could just look at the script and know where the intonations were supposed to go. I also practiced gestures that are typical of a samurai, but it turned out that my role didn’t need to use so many of those gestures, and the director said to me, “Instead of gesturing focus more on the emotions of the character” so I didn’t end up using the gestures I practiced so many times doing.
The filming of this drama was different from your typical drama, in that the takes were really long, without cuts.*
*Hooray I took a film studies course in college so I think I can explain this. Any time you look at a film and the scene jumps from one angle to the next or the scene changes entirely, this is called a cut. For example: You’ve got a scene of Satou Takeru talking to a girl in the living room. The first shot is a wide shot where you see both of them standing in the living room. Then the camera changes to just a view of Takeru’s face. That was one cut. A split-second later the camera shows us the girl’s face. That’s another cut. Having a cut is great for actors because it means less time in which they can screw up their lines. You will notice in movies with children that there are a lot of cuts. This is because kids forget lines a lot, and the cuts cover this up. I have seen one movie from Russia that is renowned for not using a single cut in the entire movie. It’s usually the mark of a good actor if s/he can go for long periods of time without there being a cut in the film.
This kind of Hollywood style is incredibly rare in Japan, to the point where veteran actor Kagawa Teruyuki-san (who plays Iwasaki Yataro) said, “You don’t get to see dramas filmed like this usually.” He even said to the director, “In this day and age it’s great for Takeru-kun to witness this kind of filming. I think it’ll be a great experience for him.” And it was a great experience, too. The scenes that were done in one take made me really nervous. It was really taxing on me mentally and physically doing those scenes. However, instead of usually just saying one thing and then hearing the words “Cut!” the scenes would go on for a while, which made it easier for me to get into character. Furthermore, this was a drama where I was really given a lot of freedom. It was really great.
In the 27th episode (airing on July 11th) Okada Izou has a grand death. In the 26th episode I’ve got a great scene with Yataro, and then in the 27th episode there’s a torture and death scene, so I really want everyone to watch it. For the torture scene, there’s a scene where I’m hung, and that didn’t actually hurt me, in reality. But the scene where they’re hitting me is me actually being hit, so that hurt a lot. Since I was hit so much, I think that anyone who watches it will definitely cry (laughs). Izou died when he was 28 or 29 years old, and to die so young I have to think he was filled with pain about this, which I wanted to express in the drama.
Actually, hints of the story that would take place in episodes 27 and 28 were supposed to be put into episode one, but that made episode one 90 minutes long so that didn’t work out. If an episode ran over 30 minutes then things would be cut, to the point where Kagawa-san and the others would jokingly say to the director things like, “If you keep cutting it back it’ll never grow properly” (laughs). Then, the things that were cut out of episode two was really surprising. It’s unbelievable that such a fantastic scene was cut; it’s to the point where I just can’t overlook it!!
Fukuyama-san is a really stoic person.
Filming with Fukuyama-san, I have to say that I think he’s a great person. I realized a lot of things about him. Like he has a really gentle way of being. When you face him, he always has such a tender look to him, and the way he speaks is so refined. At one point I was kind of coughing, and he said, “Do you have a cold? You should take some medicine” and he pulled out some medicine he had and gave me it. The idea that Fukuyama-san always carries medicine around with him kind of shocked me (laughs). He has a roundabout way of caring for people, and he’s a really stoic person. When he eats with other people he always pays attention to anything they might need, and not even alcohol undoes him. He doesn’t say it like, “If it’s alcohol then anything’s good” he says it like, “I find that I am fond of savory drinks.” Seeing that kind of attitude makes me think “How cool.”
Our personalities are different, but I think that our values are pretty close. We were just talking about random stuff and we came to the topic of women, and he said, “I’m not popular with women at all.” By the end of that conversation he ended up saying, “We’re both in the same Not Popular with Women Club” (laughs). We came to the conclusion that we’re not popular because we’re too serious. Guys who take things more lightly are probably more popular. For example, there are guys who can say to a girl, “I can definitely do this!” And then guys like me falter and say, “I can definitely maybe not do this.” Women tend to say things that are theoretical as if they’re facts, so they like it when men do, too. When I said this to Fukyama-san, he said, “I guess that would make Oomori-san really popular, then.” He may have a very quiet appearance to him, but Fukuyama-san likes to make jokes. I think he’s a kind of playful person (laughs). Kagawa-san is also interesting. Everyone likes to drink, and he always had really funny stories to tell whenever we all went out drinking together.
My senpais for this drama were all really affectionate with me and treated me really well. They would say things like, “You’re a professional actor so you should be able to figure out how to think on your own through things.” Everyone was united in helping me grow as an actor. They didn’t treat me as a newbie, but rather as like a comrade, which made me really happy. They didn’t hold my hand too much, but they didn’t forsake me too much either. I loved the manly relationships I developed with my fellow samurai actors.
I want us both to put on yukatas and go to a summer festival together.
Because of being a part of this drama, I learned a lot and was drawn to so much in the process. There’s no doubt that I’ve grown from this experience. I’ve completely changed from the actor I was before, in that I completely dove into the character of Izou until the very end. It was my first time having such long takes and doing a period drama; the experiences I had making this drama will influence the rest of the roles I do in the future. I’m really glad I did this Taiga drama.
For a number of months I was wearing a kimono for “Ryouma Den”, and now I feel different when I’m wearing normal, modern clothes compared to the kimono. I’ve come to love yukatas a lot more. Today’s yukata is really nice, isn’t it. I feel like you can enjoy the spirit of summer to the fullest in a yukata. I love girls’ yukatas no matter what color or pattern they come in. Whether the yukata is flashy, elegant or sexy, it’s all good to me. I like it when girls have their hair up when wearing a yukata, too. Otherwise, if she’s in a yukata then I’m good (laughs). If I saw the girl I liked appear before me in a yukata, my heart would definitely start racing (laughs). I really would love for us both to wear yukatas and go to a summer festival together. We’d eat cotton candy together and catch goldfish.*
*For a taste of what summer festivals are like in Japan, watch Tatta Hitotsu no Koi I think episode 2 and Honey and Clover episode…something.
We’d walk down the busy street holding hands! I’ve never experienced a date like this before so I really want to try it. I don’t think it’ll happen this summer, though (laughs). But, just once in my life, I want to have a date like that (laughs).