On October 2, the film Firstvoice (ファーストボイス), starring Haruka Ayase, opened nationwide in Japan. On the same day, Harumi Fuuki's original soundtrack was released by Rambling Records as a worldwide digital exclusive. It has 22 tracks and comes out on streaming only, with no CD, which feels very 2026. Line up the track titles, though, and the album turns out to be surprisingly easy to "read." This piece looks at the album through the flow of its titles and the composer's career.

1989, When "Harassment" Had Never Been Heard in a Japanese Courtroom

First, the film. Firstvoice is a 105-minute drama directed by Tetsu Maeda and distributed jointly by Shochiku and Warner Bros. Japan. It is set in 1989. Japan was riding the bubble economy, and working women were often seen as just passing time until marriage. The film follows the trial in which "harassment" was treated as a legal case in Japan for the first time.

Haruka Ayase plays Michiko Asahi, a good-natured lawyer. She takes on the case of Megumi Uehara (Fast Summer Uika), who was harassed at work. Her new associate Shiori Fujino (Honoka Matsumoto) tells her there is no chance of winning, but Asahi goes ahead with a case that has no precedent. The film was inspired by real events, and its theme song is Chanmina's "History." Viewers seem to praise how it handles a heavy subject while keeping the feel of the late '80s and early '90s and staying entertaining.

Line Up the Track Titles and the Plot Takes Shape

The fun of this soundtrack is that its 22 titles work almost like a map of the story. It opens with "Asahi Law Office," a theme for the workplace that bears the heroine's surname. The mood shifts at once with "The Closed Door," and track 3 is "The First Echo."

That word "echo" answers the "voice" in the film's title. Someone raises their voice, and it bounces back from somewhere. Voice motifs are scattered through the tracklist, from track 7, "Voices on the Street Corner," to the closing title track, "Firstvoice." The sequence makes you wonder how a score will give sound to the voiceless before you even press play.

From the middle onward come the words you expect from a courtroom drama:

  • "Strategy Meeting," "Court Is in Session," "Conflicting Testimony": the classic beats of a trial film
  • "A Returning Shadow," "Memories That Won't Fade": probably introspective cues that stay close to the victim's pain
  • "The Big Act," "The Legal Team's Struggle," "Battle Outfit": titles that hint at the rising energy of the counterattack near the end

Track 21 is "1992, Daybreak." A story that begins in 1989 reaches its "dawn" three years later. Japan's first sexual harassment lawsuit, filed in 1989, also reached its district court verdict in 1992. A single track title marks both the time that has passed and the outcome, which is a very film-score kind of move.

The one I keep wondering about is track 12, "8-Bit Morning." In 1989 the Famicom era was still going strong, and word processors and PCs were just starting to appear in offices. Is it a period detail rendered in sound, or does it mean something else? A title like that, slipped into a courtroom drama score, makes you want to hit play.

Also worth noting is how track 8, "Making History," echoes the theme song "History." The score and the theme song circle the same word. Taken together, the film seems to declare that this is the story of history's first step.

Harumi Fuuki: From "Youngest Ever" to a Gift for Period Drama

Harumi Fuuki is a composer and pianist born in Osaka Prefecture in 1985. She graduated at the top of her class from Kunitachi College of Music and completed its graduate program. She is now an associate professor of composition in the university's Graduate School of Music.

The Japan Academy Film Prize is central to her career. In 2013 she became the youngest ever winner of the Outstanding Achievement in Music award at the 36th ceremony, for Chronicle of My Mother. She won the same award again at the 39th ceremony for The Emperor in August and at the 41st for Sekigahara, three wins in total.

Put those three films side by side and a common thread appears: a family's memories, the last day of the war, a battle that decided the country. Each is a human drama that carries the weight of an era. Fuuki seems to be a composer who can take on the weight of history with an orchestra without losing track of the individual feelings inside it. Firstvoice is set not in the Sengoku period or in 1945 but at the start of the Heisei era. The big question is what texture she gave to this closer moment, the end of Showa and the dawn of Heisei.

Wrap-Up: Whether or Not You've Seen the Film

The Firstvoice Original Soundtrack (catalog no. RBCP-4579) has been streaming worldwide since October 2. If you have seen the film, follow the 22 titles and walk through the story again. If you haven't, the titles alone should give you a sense of how heavy it is to speak up, and of the dawn that comes after.

How did music stand beside the very first person to speak up? Find out in the theater, and in your earphones.