That Sound Is Back in the Saturday 10 P.M. Slot

On July 11, 2026, Confession: The 25-Year-Old Secret premiered in Nippon TV's Saturday drama slot. It marks the first solo television lead role for Hokuto Matsumura of SixTONES, and it is a suspense story about a kidnapping from 25 years ago and the family secrets woven around it. The theme song is SixTONES' "My Only," the screenplay is by Masako Watanabe, and the music is by Masahiro Tokuda.

Anyone deep into Japanese score music probably sat up straight at that last name. Over the past decade, Tokuda has become one of the composers most skilled at slipping music into the breathing rhythm of a drama. What is striking is the range of his credits: the same person wrote the tense forensic lab of Unnatural and the hushed streets of Silent.

From Kagoshima to Yugo Kanno's Studio

Tokuda was born in 1984 in Kagoshima Prefecture. He started piano at five, joined the guitar club in junior high and the wind band in high school — a career spent moving through actual playing environments. He studied at Nagasaki University's Faculty of Education, majoring in composition from his third year, and was already writing commercial music and playing in bands as a student.

What is interesting is that he did not go straight into music after graduating. He worked at a game company in Kobe for about a year and a half, then moved to Tokyo and studied under composer Yugo Kanno. His entry into score music came in 2013, when he wrote the music for the NHK Special documentary on the Las Vegas "greatest fight of the century." From there he supported multiple NHK Special series while expanding into commercial network dramas.

Drawing that line — a composer trained by documentary — explains a lot about his sound. Music for NHK Specials must never get in the way of the facts on screen, yet a flavorless cue kills the image. Tokuda has spent more than a decade walking that tightrope: never overstating, always delivering body heat.

Two Tokudas: Tension and the Everyday

That accumulation crystallized in 2018 with Unnatural. The intellectual, slightly cold texture of an institute investigating unnatural deaths, cut through by rhythmic ensemble writing that did not goad the mystery along so much as mark the tempo of people at work. The same creative team's MIU404 in 2020 had his music voicing both the speed of a moving car and the temperature gap between two detectives. In 2024 this lineage peaked with the film Last Mile, for which Tokuda received the Award of Excellence for Music at the 48th Japan Academy Film Prize.

But there is a second Tokuda. Silent (2022), My Favorite Flower (2023), The Beginning of the Sea (2024) — dramas where unspoken feeling is the protagonist. Here his music is subtracted to a startling degree: thin layers of piano and strings, writing unafraid of silence. A few seconds without dialogue become not awkwardness but breathing room. Few composers move between these two modes with equal precision.

  • Tension mode: Unnatural, MIU404, Invisible, Last Mile
  • Everyday / emotional mode: Silent, My Favorite Flower, The Beginning of the Sea, After-School Chart
  • Tokusatsu and anime: Ultraman Decker (co-composed with Kenichiro Suehiro), Platinum End, and more

What Kind of Music Does 'Confession' Need?

Seen that way, the choice of Tokuda for Confession: The 25-Year-Old Secret makes obvious sense. The show is a kidnapping suspense, but its core is intensely private: what a family spent 25 years hiding. In other words, it demands exactly the midpoint between his two modes — the forward drive of an investigation and the false warmth of a dinner table. Unless one composer can voice both within a single tonal world, the show splits in two.

The broadcast is still early and the full shape of the score is not yet visible; no soundtrack release has been announced as of this writing. Even so, listening to how the "moment suspicion takes root" is scored across the first two episodes, that subtractive craft is plainly alive. Rather than startling you with a loud suspense stinger, he shifts a single chord and changes what the image means.

The summer season is the battlefield where a drama composer's personality is tested hardest. This year, watch Saturday at ten with your ears open. The 25 years of secrets are probably leaking out through the music before anyone says a word.