Last Samurai Standing’s Junichi Okada on how he talked a co-star into being set on fire

LOS ANGELES – Actor Junichi Okada has a very particular set of skills.

Although best known in Japan as a movie star, the 45-year-old is also a martial arts whizz with a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and certifications in several other disciplines.

And he put that to good use in the Japanese historical drama Last Samurai Standing, where he was not only the lead actor but also a producer and action choreographer – as well as the person tasked with talking another actor into being set on fire.

Netflix’s most-watched non-English-language series globally in the third week of November, the new series is described by Okada as “Shogun meets Squid Game”. It premiered on Nov 13.

An adaptation of the 2022 historical fiction novel Ikusagami, it opens in 1878 in post-feudal Japan, a time when the once-powerful samurai warrior class – also depicted in shows such as Shogun (2024 to present) – has lost its standing.

Okada plays Shujiro Saga, one of 292 down-on-their-luck former samurai who enter a competition that promises a life-changing cash prize.

But when they first enter the arena, they learn they must fight to the death in a twisted game staged for the amusement of a group of powerful men, much like in the survival drama Squid Game (2021 to 2025).

Speaking virtually through an interpreter at a recent screening of the show in Los Angeles, Okada is asked how he juggled his duties on set, and if they ever conflicted.

“Whatever you do, there’s always a contradiction,” says the star, who is considered one of Japan’s top working actors. He is known for historical films such as The Eternal Zero (2013), action movies including The Fable (2019) and the SP action franchise (2010 and 2011).

“But despite that, you always try to be hopeful and remain positive,” adds Okada. He was also a member of V6, a now-defunct Japanese boy band that was popular from the mid-1990s through the early 2000s.

On set, he often found himself in the position of having to cajole his collaborators and co-stars – an all-star assembly that includes Japanese actors Hiroshi Abe, Hideaki Ito and Kazunari Ninomiya.

“Even though people tell you something’s not possible, you say, ‘If you do this, don’t you think this will be fun or interesting?’ Or you say, ‘Maybe we can work harder on that.’”

Okada reveals he even managed to sweet-talk another actor into agreeing to be set on fire.

“There’s a scene where I’m surrounded by fire and I basically burn, and people said it was dangerous,” he says, possibly referring to the intense showdown between his character and Ito’s, a vicious swordsman named Bukotsu Kanjiya.

But Okada threw himself into that fiery stunt – and volunteered to get his scene partner on board with going up in flames too. “I convinced him by saying, ‘As an actor, wouldn’t you love to do this once in your career?’”

The show has been praised for its kinetic martial arts and other action sequences, which Okada took pains to make as realistic as possible.

“I’ve been training in martial arts for a very long time, and there’s what I can do for real versus the pretence of the action sequences, but I always think about how I can incorporate the two,” says Okada. He is married to Japanese actress Aoi Miyazaki, 40, and they have a seven-year-old son.

The real samurai were on his mind too.

“There’s a tradition and a culture that I need to convey, and I am using my physicality and body to express that.”

Last Samurai Standing also drew from the samurai movies of the late Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, including his iconic Seven Samurai (1954), and sought to update the genre for a modern audience.

“Kurosawa would do these long shots, and you’d have the scenes where the location itself is part of the battle,” Okada says.

“And in this project, we are doing that with the opening sequence. It’s one shot, and you can see how the location is actually part of the fighting.”