Behind-the-scenes of TBS Winter 2025 drama "Mikami-sensei" and about its scriptwriter Shimori Roba

As "Mikami-sensei" continues to gather attention for its unconventional take on Japan's education system and various social issues, there have been a number of articles discussing its unique approach unlike other school dramas to date and its scriptwriter Shimori Roba. Read on for the behind-the-scenes trivia about this drama which will wrap up by the end of this month!

• "Mikami-sensei" is Shimori's first solo script for a private network drama. To date, most of her writing work was for stage productions. Due to the reputation of TBS' Sundays 9pm timeslot and the scale of the production, she was worried if she could do a good job as she was pretty much a newbie at everything.

• The first time she wrote a script was when she was in primary school.

• Shimori revealed that it was only until the last ten years or so that she finally earned enough to survive solely on writing. For a very long time, her main income was from non-theatre work so she had extensive working experience in various industries. As such, many of her works are related to or set in the workplace and she credits those days as pivotal to her writing.

• She founded the theatre group "Fuukin Koubou" in 1993 and began her activities with "serial number" since 2018. She admitted that as it can be difficult to survive solely on productions for her own company, she managed to grow her career by doing writing and directing for external productions.

• Shimori is known for being good at writing scripts based on actual events and historical facts through interviews and extensive research. As such, her stories tend to be a mix of real social issues and fiction. To date, she has created more than 100 works.

• The producer of "Mikami-sensei" i.e. Iida Kazutaka knew Shimori through a mutual acquaintance and had been to her stage plays from time to time. He then approached her to work on "Mikami-sensei" in spring 2020 after Shimori gained recognition and attention with her award-winning movie "Shinbun Kisha". As she believes that education is an important topic especially for the younger generation since they would be more receptive to new ideas and their thinking can be molded more easily to learn the right values and that she had never written about this genre in her plays, she told him that she was keen on this offer. 

• Through repeated discussions with Iida and Shimori's research, she found out that the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) does have a system of dispatching its bureaucrats to schools to be teachers for short stints. Since many people would have the impression that most civil servants are diligent but find it difficult to do as they wish in the public service, this conflict was seen as something which could provide interesting viewpoints in the story. Besides, bureaucrats in areas such as education and culture have been seen as somewhat "weaker" in terms of influence and power compared to those in other ministries. As such, she raised the idea of doing a story about a bureaucrat-cum-teacher sent from MEXT to a public school and Iida liked the suggestion. However, the proposal did not get approved eventually and was put on hold. 

• On hindsight, Shimori said that it was actually better that the proposal didn't go through back then because she felt that it would have flopped due to her inadequacy as a writer. She did not have a TV at home for about 15 years then and didn't even have the habit of watching dramas. After the proposal was turned down, she started to watch lots of dramas and movies in order to understand how dramas were made and what made a drama a success or a flop. That was how she finally built up her theory of what works or not through research and analysis of other people's works. She also credits her first foray into TV work such as being a co-scriptwriter for NHK's dramas "Gunjou Ryouiki" and "Kono hanasakuya" as being important in gaining actual experience.

• In 2022, Iida suddenly sent Shimori an email and said that he still hadn't given up on their project. She was happy to hear about the revival of the plan and looked forward to working with Iida. As such, they renewed discussions and decided on the story's direction to be that of solving the students' problems one by one which would eventually lead to the resolution of a big issue in the country at the end. In addition, unlike most school dramas where teachers and students were pitted against each other, they would unite to fight against the greater evil in this drama. While Iida liked the idea, Shimori started to self-doubt when she returned home after the meeting and wondered if this plan would actually work. Nonetheless, she had faith that Iida would make this drama a reality because he was extremely motivated to make a education-themed drama due to his original dream of becoming a school teacher. She also felt that she couldn't turn in a half-baked piece of work and needed to match up to his passion in the project.

• With regard to her original draft for Ep 1, Iida commented that they needed to start things off with a stronger impact. Just then, she was reminded of the stabbing incident involving entrance exam candidates outside the University of Tokyo in 2022 which was seen as a sign of societal stress surfacing in Japan. After making some adjustments to the settings, she incorporated a similar development in the first episode.

• While Shimori prides herself as someone who has read lots of good mystery stories to date, things felt different when she was the one writing it. As such, rather than focus on surprising people with revelations, she decided to focus on making her story as logical and believable as possible.

• When designing the character Mikami Takashi, Iida told Shimori that it would be good to make Mikami a dark hero. At that time, TBS was showing "Anti Hero" so she agreed that this might be a great idea. However, she didn't think that she could come up with a character like that. And besides, Mikami was not meant to be a hero but rather a new type of teacher. 

• Shimori praised Matsuzaka Toori for being a perfect hit for Mikami since the first script reading session and was very happy that he brought this character to life. Although Matsuzaka had starred in the movie "Shinbun Kisha" which was also written by Shimori, they didn't really have much direct interaction back then since the script was adjusted along the way with the producer and director. And since Matsuzaka's character in the movie did not actually achieve what he intended despite summoning his courage to do so, Shimori really wanted Mikami to be able to realise his goal this time. In addition, she has been a follower of Matsuzaka's works and watched most of them so she felt confident that no matter what she writes, he would be able to deliver. The fact that this is their second collaboration gave her the confidence that he could do it.

• In theatre, the playwright's writing style can be quite distinct but Shimori had to tone down a bit in this respect for the drama. As such, she didn't want to focus too much on the lines but instead tried to use other ways to convey the intended messages. For example, she quoted the scene in Ep 2 when Mikami gave Kanzaki a light push in the back and walked with him into the school which was filled with reporters at the gate rather than use words to illustrate the significance of this action.

• Since Shimori had been cooped up writing the script, she decided to attend the auditions for the student characters so that she could "get out of the house to meet people". However, she did not participate in the selection process. The experience was useful for her to see for herself who was chosen to play what character and how these actors are like because it would be impossible to watch all of their prior works. She was very impressed with the casting choices as some of the actors did not actually look or feel like the characters they were playing but after the necessary styling and make-up, they were transformed accordingly to look the part. She also expressed amazement at the pool of talent they managed to secure and looks forward to seeing how these young actors will grow in time to come. Among them, she cited Okudaira Daiken as being really impressive to manage a difficult role like Kanzaki.

• Amid her wide range of stories written to date, Shimori revealed that the common theme in them was to convey the message that people still have to live on despite what happens. As such, the importance of life and using culture and arts to protect lives are what she considers as extremely crucial themes.

• Shimori revealed that coming up with names in the story was very challenging because she had to avoid having similar-sounding names for the characters. Even the school's name Rintoku Gakuin was finally decided after a while because it would be best not to overlap with an actual school's name. While writing the script, she also had a table with the characters' names and the cast members' photos which helped her imagine who would say what line. As for other details in the character settings, those were decided together with the production team.

• As for the theme of "The personal is political" which gets repeated in the drama, Shimori revealed that this came from the feminism and student activism movements and she heard about it while doing research for another LGBTQ-themed story in the past. Although she had always thought that personal and political problems were unrelated, the idea that making it easier to live on a personal basis could change the political and social systems as well became apparent to her. As such, she really wanted to incorporate this belief in the story and was glad that through this drama, many people had become more aware about this.

• Through this drama, Shimori hopes that viewers will be able to see that there is hope in things changing in the future as long as one continues to live, no matter how unlikely it may seem right now.