Scent of the Wind
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- 2026
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In 1885, the eighteenth year of Meiji, Japan opened its first training school for nurses. Ichinose Rin, a young single mother, and Ohya Naomi, abandoned at birth and raised in a church, meet as students there. Alongside classmates who each carry a private burden, the two work through a curriculum still being invented, feeling their way toward what nursing is and what it means to sit with a patient. After graduating they enter the same university hospital as trained nurses, but Rin is soon pushed out of her post, and Naomi, set on studying in America, is caught up in trouble just before she sails. When cholera and dysentery sweep the country, the two find each other again. The 110-episode NHK morning serial draws on the lives of the real nurses Ozeki Chika and Suzuki Masa.
Week one sends Rin's family out to a festival, and that scene was shot at Daiōji, a temple in Ōtawara, Tochigi. Filming opened there on September 8, 2025, and six days later the production held its crank-in press call on the same grounds. The three locations Tochigi Prefecture names in its official bulletin are that temple, the Senbon Castle ruins in Motegi, and the banks of the Kinugawa River in Moka and Oyama. They ask for different things. Daiōji has a street address a map can find. The castle ruins keep no opening hours and charge nothing, so you walk up from the shrine side. For the Kinugawa the prefecture gave only the two city names, never a point on the river, so there is no frame to match. The three sit in different municipalities, which makes a car the sensible way around. Fan databases list several Meiji buildings in Ibaraki and Chiba as locations for this series, but only these three carry confirmation from the prefecture or the broadcaster.
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Filming Locations
黒羽山 大雄寺 栃木県大田原市黒羽田町450
The week-one scene in which Rin's family sets out for a festival was filmed here. Shooting began at the temple on September 8, 2025, and Steranet, published by the NHK Foundation, reported that the crank-in press call was held on the same grounds on September 14. Daiōji is a Sōtō Zen temple, the funerary temple of the Ōzeki family who ruled the Kurobane domain, and its thatched buildings, the main hall and the corridor that wraps around it among them, are designated national Important Cultural Properties. Tochigi Prefecture also lists the temple as a location in its official bulletin. This is a working temple that still holds services rather than a set built for visitors, and Kurobane sits away from the rail network, so a car is the easier approach.
千本城跡 栃木県芳賀郡茂木町町田1712
One of the three locations Tochigi Prefecture names in its official bulletin. Which scene was shot here has not been announced. The Senbon Castle ruins mark the site of a medieval hilltop fortress, and Motegi's official listing gives the address only as the area around 1712 Machida and the grounds of Haguro Shrine. No opening hours and no admission fee are set, which is another way of saying the site is not run as a tourist facility. Nothing to book and nothing to pay, but this is a wooded slope with a shrine on it, so come dressed to walk.
鬼怒川河川敷 栃木県真岡市
The stretch of the Kinugawa that Tochigi Prefecture lists as a location in its official bulletin. The prefecture named only the cities of Moka and Oyama and did not say which scene was filmed at which point. The Kinugawa rises in northern Tochigi and runs south, and along this reach the levee and floodplain form public ground you can walk onto without formality. There is no basis for pinning the exact frame, though, so this is less a spot to find than a stretch of river to see, the same water that stands in for the Meiji countryside on screen. It is a riverbank, so after rain check the level and your footing before going down.