General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

First Love (First Love 初恋)

First Love (First Love 初恋) is a 2022 Japanese romance drama limited series produced by Netflix, directed and written by Yuri Kanchiku and starring Hikari Mitsushima and Takeru Satoh. It was inspired by two songs written and composed by Hikaru Utada, "First Love" (1999) and "Hatsukoi" (初恋, 2018), and follows a man and woman across more than 20 years as they remember the first love that shaped their lives.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Format	Netflix limited series, 9 episodes, romance drama, rated 16+ in Japan and TV-MA in the United States³^•⁴
Premiere	November 24, 2022, exclusive worldwide release on Netflix¹
Creators	Directed and written by Yuri Kanchiku; project initiated by Netflix executive producer Kazutaka Sakamoto in late 2018¹^•⁵
Leads	Hikari Mitsushima as Noguchi Yae; Takeru Satoh as Namiki Harumichi²
Musical basis	Hikaru Utada's "First Love" (1999) and "Hatsukoi" (2018)²
Setting	Hokkaido, Japan, with a location shoot in Iceland⁵^•⁶
Reception milestone	#1 on Netflix Japan's daily Top 10 for 24 consecutive days; three consecutive weeks in the global non-English weekly Top 10⁷

Spoilers

Premise and structure

The story moves among three time periods, the late 1990s, the 2000s, and the present, tracing a couple's unforgettable first love across more than two decades.² As teenagers in Hokkaido, Yae and Harumichi are deeply in love; as adults, their lives have lost color, as if something essential is missing.⁴

Mitsushima plays Noguchi Yae, who trains to become a flight attendant but is thrown off course by an unexpected accident; Satoh plays Namiki Harumichi, who becomes a pilot in the Air Self-Defense Force but has since taken a different path.² In the present-day storyline, Yae works as a taxi driver in Hokkaido, raising her son Tsuzuru, while Harumichi, about twenty years after the two separated, is engaged to another woman but cannot let go of his memory of Yae.⁶ The young Yae and Harumichi are played by Rikako Yagi and Taisei Kido.⁸

Cast

Netflix announced the full supporting cast of nine in June 2022, alongside the premiere date.¹ The roles and actors are:²

Kyoji, a neurosurgeon who gives the leads important clues about their later fates, played by Osamu Mukai
Tsunemi, a counselor, played by Kaho
Kotaro, a colleague who loves Yae devotedly, played by Gaku Hamada
Yuu, Harumichi's younger sister, played by Minami
Bonji, Harumichi's close friend since student days, played by Akiyoshi Nakao
Tsuzuru, a middle schooler unaware of his own first love, played by Araki Towa
Kofune Uta, a dancer who meets Tsuzuru, played by Aoi Yamada
Akihiko, who holds a key to the story, played by Arata Iura
Ikuko, Yae's mother, whose decisions upend the two leads' fates, played by Kyoko Koizumi

Production

The project began around the end of 2018, when Netflix executive producer Kazutaka Sakamoto asked Kanchiku Yuri to create a large-scale love story spanning the years from Utada's 1999 song "First Love" to 2018's "Hatsukoi".⁵ Kanchiku found the story's core motif in what the producers describe as the "physical reactions" Utada has sung about consistently since her debut, drawing on the lyrics of "Automatic", "First Love", and "Hatsukoi" rather than translating the lyrics directly into plot.⁵^•⁹ Producer Kasumi Yao of C&I Entertainment joined in the spring of 2019 to support script development, casting, and staffing.⁹

The production was, by its producer's account, on a scale far larger than the films and dramas she had previously worked on.⁵ During the COVID-19 pandemic, when overseas travel was restricted, the team nonetheless carried out a location shoot in Iceland.⁵

The songs behind the series

"First Love" was released in 1999, when Utada was sixteen years old, and became a major hit in Japan; "Hatsukoi" followed nineteen years later in 2018.²^•¹⁰ The 1999 song and album have sold a total of ten million units worldwide, making First Love Japan's best-selling album of all time.¹¹ The series shares its name with the 1999 song and album, and the drama's movement between past and present resonates with the song's own afterlife across decades.¹¹^•¹⁰

Ahead of the premiere, Netflix also streamed Utada's studio live performance "Hikaru Utada Live Sessions from Air Studios" beginning June 9, 2022.¹

Reception

About a month after release, Netflix reported that the series had held the number-one position on Japan's daily Top 10 for 24 consecutive days and had spent three consecutive weeks in Netflix's weekly global Top 10 for non-English series.⁷ The songs themselves re-entered charts across Asian countries and regions alongside the show.⁷ A Billboard Japan column credited the drama with renewing attention to "First Love" and noted that the series itself became a hit across Asian countries.¹⁰ On the viewer-rating aggregator Filmarks-linked rankings site ranking.net, the series holds a top score of 84.2 points from 186 ratings and ranks 5th in that site's Netflix original works ranking.¹²

The series remains a Netflix exclusive; as of late 2026 listings it streams on Netflix in Japan and the United States and is not offered on other major services such as Prime Video, Hulu, or U-NEXT.³^•⁴ It is distinct from the unrelated 2002 TBS drama also titled First Love.³

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › International serial drama and telenovelas › East Asian drama series › Japanese contemporary drama

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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