Silent

About this title

A romance that begins when a high school sweetheart reappears eight years later, having lost his hearing. It is an original screenplay with no source material and marked the series debut of newcomer screenwriter Miku Ubukata.

It aired in 11 episodes in Fuji TV's Thursday Theater slot from October to December 2022. Ubukata had worked as a nurse and midwife before winning the Grand Prize at the 2021 Fuji TV Young Scenario Award; producer Ken Murase, one of the judges, read her entry and proposed that they work together. The series was directed by Hiroki Kazama, Mai Takano and Shunsuke Shinada.

Haruna Kawaguchi plays the protagonist, Tsumugi Aoba, and Ren Meguro plays Sō Sakura, her boyfriend from high school. As young-onset hearing loss was taking away his hearing, Sō ended their relationship with a one-line message and cut off contact. Oji Suzuka plays Minato Togawa, Tsumugi's current boyfriend and Sō's friend; Kaho plays Nana Momono, who has been deaf since birth; Shunsuke Kazama plays Haruo, a sign-language class instructor; and Ryoko Shinohara plays Sō's mother.

By setting Sō, who lost his hearing as an adult, alongside Nana, who was born deaf, the drama puts sign language at the center of the story. Sign-language supervision was handled by Motomi Nakajima and Satori, and on set a team of six, including the supervisors, deaf instructors and a CODA (child of deaf adults) coordinator, assisted the actors. Deaf actors Satoshi Ezoe and Eri Nasu also appeared.

Its household ratings in the Kanto region ranged from 5.2% to 9.3% (the finale was the highest), but on streaming it set records. Episode 4 drew 5.82 million plays in its first week on TVer, breaking the record at the time for the most-played single episode of any program distributed on TVer, and with more than 73 million total plays on TVer the series won the drama grand prize at the TVer Award 2022. Its theme song, "Subtitle" by Official Hige Dandism, spent a total of 13 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Japan Hot 100.

At the Tokyo Drama Awards 2023 it won in six categories: an Excellence Award for Drama of the Year in the serial drama category, Best Actress (Haruna Kawaguchi), Best Supporting Actor (Ren Meguro), Best Supporting Actress (Kaho), Best Director and Best Theme Song. At the 31st Hashida Awards it received the main Hashida Award and newcomer awards (Miku Ubukata and Ren Meguro). Ubukata went on to write My Beloved Flower (2023) and the Ren Meguro-led Where Does the Sea Begin (2024), both also for Fuji TV.

See alsoMy Beloved Flower 2023Where Does the Sea Begin 2024

Drama Lineup editors · Fact-checked against: tver.co.jp, forbesjapan.com, Japanese Wikipedia, oricon.co.jp, nikkansports.com, Official site, Wikidata, prtimes.jp · 2026-10-09