Our Hakone Ekiden

About this title

Set against the Hakone Ekiden, the university road relay held every New Year, this drama based on Jun Ikeido's novel of the same name follows, side by side, a combined team of runners from universities that failed to qualify for the main race and the people at the TV station broadcasting the event live.

Hakone Ekiden: Our Story (Japanese title: Oretachi no Hakone Ekiden) began on October 10, 2026, in Nippon TV's Saturday 9 p.m. slot, with episode 1 extended by 40 minutes. Netflix also carries it in Korea, under a Korean title that likewise means “Our Hakone Ekiden,” rated 15+. It is based on a novel by Jun Ikeido, who won the Naoki Prize for Downtown Rocket and wrote the Hanzawa Naoki series; after more than ten years of research, it was serialized in the weekly magazine Shukan Bunshun for a year and a half starting in 2021, and it became his first work to be published in book form in two volumes. Nippon TV has broadcast the Hakone Ekiden live since 1987, and the drama was made with the full cooperation of the race's organizer, the Kanto Student Athletics Federation. The adaptation was announced in October 2025, the day after the Hakone Ekiden qualifying race was held. The theme song, “Kamigami no Tasuki,” sung by Keisuke Kuwata, was first unveiled at the end of episode 1.

The screenplay is by Sumire Suzuki, who wrote Cocoa (Fuji TV), and Yuko Matsuda, writer of the Gokusen series (Nippon TV), and the directors include Ryuichi Inomata of Reversal Orchestra and Nobuyoshi Yamada of Hot Spot. While the original novel centers on the student team, the drama was restructured, partly at Ikeido's own request, to put more weight on the broadcaster's side of the story. It follows what happens at a live broadcast that runs for more than 14 hours in total over two days, and who makes the decisions there, in parallel with the students' race. According to a producer's comment Nippon TV released after episode 1 aired, the series took more than four years to make. Susumu Hara, head coach of Aoyama Gakuin University's track team, appears as himself, as a commentator at the qualifying race.

Yo Oizumi plays Ryo Tokushige, the chief producer in charge of Hakone Ekiden coverage in the sports division of the fictional broadcaster Dainichi TV, and Sairi Ito plays Natsuki Miyamoto, who has been entrusted for the first time with the role of center director, the hub of the broadcast. Tomohisa Yamashita plays Masato Kai, who as Meisei Gakuin University's ace ran the celebrated second leg, known as Hana no Niku, and won that leg three times, but left the world of athletics after graduating and has been working at a general trading company. In episode 1, Tokushige clashes with programming chief Takeru Kuroishi (Katsunori Takahashi), who puts ratings first and wants to bring a popular comedian onto the broadcast, while Kai returns to Hakone for the first time in 18 years. In episode 2, the Kanto Student Combined Team, made up of runners from universities eliminated at the qualifying race, begins a training camp under Kai, who has no coaching experience. Kai sets a goal of “third place or better at the Hakone Ekiden,” but because the combined team competes as an open entry, even finishing first would not count as a win, and doubts arise among the coaches and runners. Toranosuke Kobayashi plays Hayato Aoba, a Meisei Gakuin senior who volunteers to be captain, and Akira Terao plays Hisashige Moroya, the longtime head coach of Meisei Gakuin's track team.

Oizumi said he found it very fresh that the Hakone Ekiden, a story whose protagonists are the runners and coaches, is also told from the side of the TV station broadcasting the race. Sairi Ito said that to prepare for her role she watched the January 2026 Hakone Ekiden broadcast from the sub-control room, and the series is her first prime-time drama on terrestrial television since the asadora (morning serial) The Tiger and Her Wings. Nippon TV announced that episode 1's catch-up plays on TVer passed 3.19 million in the week of October 10–17, setting a new record for the first episode of one of its dramas (according to TVer DATA MARKETING, excluding real-time plays). Average ratings (Video Research, Kanto region) were 8.6% household and 5.0% individual for episode 1, and 8.9% household and 5.5% individual for episode 2.

See alsoHanzawa Naoki 2013Shitamachi Rocket 2015

Drama Lineup editors · Fact-checked against: ntv.co.jp, mantan-web.jp, netflix.com, realsound.jp · 2026-10-20