General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

The Days

The Days is a 2023 Japanese docudrama miniseries on Netflix that dramatizes the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster of March 2011, following the earthquake, tsunami, reactor explosions, and meltdowns from the viewpoints of government officials, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) representatives, and the workers at the plant.¹^•² It was produced by Warner Bros. Japan and released worldwide on Netflix in June 2023.¹^•³

Key fact	Detail
Format	Eight-episode Japanese miniseries, about 7.5 hours of screen time, streaming exclusively on Netflix¹
Release	June 2023, worldwide simultaneous streaming³
Production	Warner Bros. Japan; creator, planner, and writer Jun Masumoto, a former Fuji Television producer¹^•⁴
Directors	Masaki Nishiura and Hideo Nakata, known for the Ringu horror films⁵^•²
Lead cast	Koji Yakusho as plant superintendent Masao Yoshida, with Yutaka Takenouchi and Fumiyo Kohinata⁶^•⁵
Source material	The Yoshida account (吉田調書), the Fukushima Daiichi accident investigation report, and Ryusho Kadota's book on Yoshida⁴
Reception	Reached the top 5 of Netflix's official non-English TV ranking; critics compared it with HBO's Chernobyl⁴^•⁶

Spoilers

Subject and structure

The series covers the crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant after one of the most powerful earthquakes in recorded history struck under the sea off Japan's east coast on 11 March 2011, rupturing the mains electricity supply to the plant. A subsequent tsunami flooded the station, which sits only 10 meters above sea level, and nullified its emergency diesel generators. With the plant completely without power, the reactors could no longer be cooled, and an improvised damage-limitation effort was all that stood between the site and total meltdown.⁶

Rather than following a single protagonist, the series interweaves three perspectives: Japanese government officials, TEPCO representatives, and the workers at Fukushima Daiichi.² Its promotional framing presented those involved at the plant as facing "a deadly, invisible threat" while being blamed by some and hailed as heroes by others.⁷

Source material and production

Origins. Jun Masumoto, a former Fuji Television producer whose credits include Code Blue, developed the series from Ryusho Kadota's book on plant superintendent Masao Yoshida, using the Yoshida account and the official accident investigation report as the pillars of its episodes.⁴ The Yoshida account is the record of testimony given by Masao Yoshida, the plant manager who led the on-site response. Warner Bros. Japan produced the series within Netflix's exclusive worldwide streaming framework.³^•⁴

Direction and cast. Masaki Nishiura and Hideo Nakata co-directed. Nakata, known for the Ringu horror films, brought psychological tension to the narrative.⁵^•² Koji Yakusho, a star of Japanese cinema, leads the cast as Yoshida.⁶

Critical reception

Comparisons with Chernobyl. Reviewers consistently positioned The Days against HBO's 2019 miniseries Chernobyl, the first true-life dramatization of a nuclear accident in that wave and a work the Guardian called a stunning re-creation of specific events. The Guardian judged The Days too respectful of its subject, obsessed with facts to the point of neglecting character and story, though it credited the show as an admirable tribute to Yoshida, who died of cancer two years after the disaster.⁶ The Indian Express similarly found it detailed to the point of drudgery, lacking the subtle artistry of Chernobyl, and rated it 2.5 out of 5.⁵ The South China Morning Post, by contrast, described the series as painting a vivid picture of the disaster, its heroes and incompetent officials.⁸

Audience performance. The series held a position in the top 5 of Netflix's official non-English TV ranking.⁴ Japanese commentary compared it with the 2020 theatrical film Fukushima 50, which drew on the same Kadota book; one widely read column judged both works very precise in depicting real events, while noting that The Days credits a broader research base, including the Yoshida account and the accident report, and shows plant workers, Self-Defense Force members, and firefighters alike in life-threatening situations rather than building a simple heroic narrative.³^•⁹

Scholarly assessment

Mick Broderick and Robert Jacobs, scholars of nuclear history and media, analyzed the series in the Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus. They argued that across its eight episodes the "truth" the series presents is highly selective, relying on heroic disaster tropes and glossing over the radiological legacy of the accident. They placed it within a recent wave of nuclear-cataclysm dramas including HBO's Chernobyl (2019), the Russian fictive drama Chernobyl (2022), and Netflix's Meltdown: Three Mile Island (2022).¹

Japanese reporting also identified departures from the historical record. Toshihiro Okuyama, a professor at Sophia University and former Asahi Shimbun reporter who has covered the disaster since 2011, noted that the series has Yoshida describe his cancer as having been reported by the media as caused by radiation exposure in the accident, which was not the case in reality, and that two other events that were major factors in the escalation of the accident are depicted in ways that differ from historical fact.¹⁰

Context in Japanese screen culture

The Days stands out against a broader pattern in Japanese television drama. Ritsu Yonekura, a professor of media at Nihon University who analyzed more than a hundred television dramas set around the Great East Japan Earthquake, found that radioactive leaks and the Fukushima crisis are usually absent from Japanese fiction about 2011, with most dramas focusing on the tsunami flood disaster.¹¹ Broderick and Jacobs likewise noted that the series could have drawn on the revisionist kaiju-eiga and anime style of the Neon Genesis Evangelion and Shin Godzilla creators, which depicts technocrats and bureaucrats struggling with disasters of unmanageable proportions.¹

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 › East Asian web and streaming serials › Titles Cr to In

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

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