Straight to Hell

About this title

Based on the life of Kazuko Hosoki (1938–2021), the fortune-teller who became famous on Japanese TV in the 2000s for barbs such as "Jigoku ni ochiru wa yo" ("You're going to hell"), this 9-episode Japanese drama is Netflix's adaptation of her story as "fiction based on fact."

Netflix released all 9 episodes at once as a worldwide exclusive on April 27, 2026, and in Korea Netflix lists it with a 15+ rating. No novel or manga explicitly credited as source material has been identified. The end credits list as references Hosoki's 女の履歴書 愛・富・美への飛翔 (A Woman's Résumé: Soaring Toward Love, Wealth and Beauty, 1988) and 細木数子 魔女の履歴書 (Kazuko Hosoki: A Witch's Résumé, 2006), a work of reportage in which nonfiction writer Atsushi Mizoguchi critically examined the contents of that autobiography, and episode 1 opens with a caption stating that "this story is fiction based on fact." Hosoki was known for her books on Six-Star Divination (Rokusei Senjutsu), a system that her side presents as her own original creation, and Guinness World Records cites her record of 34 million copies sold across a series of 81 fortune-telling books. From 2004 she appeared on several regular programs, including TBS's Zubari Iu wa yo! ("I'll Say It Straight!"), and she died in November 2021 at the age of 83. The music is by Hibiki Inamoto. In its first week (April 27–May 3), the series ranked No. 1 in Netflix's weekly Top 10 for TV in Japan, and in the same week it placed 4th in Netflix's global non-English TV list with 3.3 million views as calculated by Netflix's formula.

The series is co-directed by Tomoyuki Takimoto and Norichika Oba. Takimoto directed the films Ikigami: The Ultimate Limit (2008), The Brain Man (2013) and Last Winter, We Parted (2018), as well as the TV Asahi drama dele (2018), for which he and Jota Tsunehiro shared the Best Director award at the 98th Television Drama Academy Awards. Oba worked as an assistant director on films including Shin Godzilla before directing the film Runway (滑走路, 2020), and he directed episode 4 of season 2 of the Disney+ series Gannibal. According to Netflix, Oba was involved from the early planning stages and, drawing on research, helped build the character of Hosoki. The screenplay is credited to the name Manaka Monaka (真中もなか). Because no track record under this name could be found at the time of release, there was speculation that it is a pen name. Cinematography is by Taro Kawazu of Alice in Borderland, production design by Mitsuo Harada, and production by Django Film. The postwar streets were built as open sets in Shizuoka and the Ginza and Akasaka streets in Futtsu, Chiba Prefecture, while the first cabaret set was built at Toho Studios. Takimoto has explained that the series is not a "re-creation" of the era but an "expression" of it.

Erika Toda plays Kazuko Hosoki from age 17 to 66. Sairi Ito plays Minori Uozumi, a writer whom Kazuko asks to write an autobiographical novel; she is not a real person but a fictional narrator who carries the story. Toma Ikuta plays Masaya Hotta, Toko Miura plays the real-life singer Chiyoko Shimakura, Renji Ishibashi plays Masataka Yasunaga, and Yasuko Tomita plays Kazuko's mother, Mine. Episode 1 opens in 2005, when Kazuko is at the height of her TV popularity, with Minori visiting her to begin interviewing her. In the drama, Kazuko's recollections lead back to her childhood in postwar Tokyo and to the period when she began working at a cabaret, whose owner, Ochiai, is played by Eita Okuno. In episode 2, the drama's Kazuko starts running her own business and opens a club in Ginza with money borrowed from the investor Nakazono (Kazuya Takahashi). Marohiko Mita (Kentaro Tamura), the son of a major landowner, also comes to the Ginza club.

At the production announcement, Erika Toda described Hosoki as "someone far away, nothing like me at all." In an interview with the Asahi Shimbun, she said she had never really watched Hosoki during her TV heyday, and was shocked when she read Hosoki's life as depicted in the episode 1 script. She also said that in preparing for the role she read Hosoki's books and all the weekly-magazine articles and interviews the producer had collected for her. In his comment for the announcement, director Takimoto admitted that he had disliked Hosoki "so much that I changed the channel every time she was on TV." While regarding her autobiography as full of lies and exaggerations, he cited the fact that her life story of rising from extreme postwar poverty was enormously entertaining as one of his reasons for taking on the project. Kaori Hosoki, Hosoki's adopted daughter and successor in Six-Star Divination, explained that the production team's visit to her was not a request for permission. She said she had merely lent Hosoki's clothes and bags free of charge for the shoot, was not involved in the content and received no money. She felt that some depictions in the finished series differed from reality, but spoke highly of Toda's performance.

Drama Lineup editors · Fact-checked against: asahi.com, ciatr.jp, realsound.jp, top10.netflix.com, ja.wikipedia.org, netflix.com, about.netflix.com, guinnessworldrecords.com · 2026-10-14