“Who am I? I am…” she smirks. Takes off her glasses. Whips her hair around. Gives unruly high school delinquents the all-knowing death glare. “I’m their homeroom teacher.” Anyone who has been keeping up with the Japanese drama scene for the last decade will recognize this rather iconic, episodic revelation on the part of Yankumi, Yakuza family heir and high school teacher. The subgenre of high school teacher-centered dramas are a perennial mainstay on the drama scene, with at least one of its kind cropping up every couple of seasons.
This subgenre of dramas often follow a tried and true formula: enthusiastic, doe-eyed new teacher (of possibly questionable background) turns up at a school full of weathered educational bureaucrats who would rather cover their own asses than teach. Said teacher goes on to hash and rehash moral spiel to their students for the next ten episodes, often in a self-righteous tone with a slap to the cheek (or a punch or two) thrown in for good measure.
This is the kind of teacher I am accustomed to seeing in J-dramas, and to be honest, a little craziness and zaniness is well appreciated now and then, and the first dozen times around, those cheesy inspirational speeches from GTO and Yankumi are more inspirational than cheesy. So imagine my surprise when I sat down to watch Spring season’s Taisetsu na koto Subete Kimi ga Oshiete Kureta (You taught me all the Important Things) and met Shuji Kashiwagi, the disciplined, honest-to-a-fault, and understated teacher. And quite honestly? One of the best of them all.
