Netflix’s latest Japanese series goes straight to hell. Directed by Tomoyuki Takimoto and Norichika Oba, Straight to Hell is a biographical period series that follows the life of Japan’s most famous fortune-teller, Kazuko Hosoki (Erika Toda). Set to release on April 27, 2026, the series pulls this dark past into an eerie spotlight.
The series features music from Hibiki Inamoto, with Tatsuya Banno and Tomoo Fukatsu as the series’ producers. The biographical drama spans 60 years and tells the untold story of fortune teller Kazuko Hosoki, a real-life cultural phenomenon in Japan known for her “Six-Star Divination” practice. But the synopsis points to something darker, embracing the rumors of Hosoki’s connections to the underworld, which shape this narrative.
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What is Straight to Hell about?
Netflix shared an in-depth plot synopsis via the streamer’s newsroom:
The chilling line comes from fortuneteller Kazuko Hosoki, played by Erika Toda, in the newly unveiled main trailer of the upcoming Netflix series Straight to Hell. As Hosoki dominates Japan’s TV screens and grips the nation with her brutal predictions, writer Minori Uozumi (Sairi Ito) watches in fascination — and makes a bold declaration: she’ll take the life Hosoki has led so far and turn it into a book.
With that, the story begins to unravel how this extraordinary figure known as “Kazuko Hosoki” was created, and the brutal reality of the life she led. The main trailer also offers a closer look at Toma Ikuta as Masaya Hotta, one of the men who toy with Hosoki’s destiny, and Toko Miura as legendary Showa-era singer Chiyoko Shimakura.
Having lost everything in the war, a young Hosoki survives a harrowing childhood marked by extreme hunger, forced to eat even earthworms just to stay alive. From there, she claws her way up as a Ginza hostess and, while still young, rises to rule the nightlife as a “queen.”
Then comes another low point in her life, where she loses everything and falls to her rock bottom — before launching a ferocious ascent to the very top, using men and women alike, lies and desire, anything and everything as her tools.
Hosoki’s life can feel dangerously seductive: at times overwhelmingly alluring, at others, like a slow, irresistible pull that corrodes everyone around her. Minori is one of those drawn in. Commissioned to ghostwrite Hosoki’s autobiographical novel, she begins spending her days interviewing Hosoki face-to-face. Under the spell of Hosoki’s hypnotic storytelling and razor-sharp insight that seems to see right through people’s hearts, Minori finds herself pulled deeper into her world.
But one day, something shifts. Minori begins to question everything she had believed up to that point. When she finally confronts “Kazuko Hosoki”, the polished persona and the buried truths that build this woman’s life are at last laid bare.
Watch the Trailer
Straight to Hll Cast
Leads:
- Erika Toda (Death Note, Code Blue, SPEC) stars as the lead, Kazuko Hosoki.
- Sairi Ito (Netflix’s The Naked Director, Hotel Royal) plays Minori Uozumi, the writer tasked with ghostwriting Hosoki’s autobiography.
Ensemble:
- Toko Miura (Drive My Car, Weathering with You)
- Eita Okuno (Crows Explode, Gintama)
- Yoshihiko Hosoda (Alice in Borderland, The Naked Director)
- Show Kasamatsu (The Naked Director, Love You as the World Ends)
- Miwako Ichikawa (Shin Godzilla, Rent-a-Cat)
- Kazuya Takahashi ( The Journalist)
- Tetta Sugimoto (Scams, Outrage, Departures)
- Kimiko Yo (Call Me Chihiro, The Journalist, Sanctuary)
- Renji Ishibashi (The Naked Director, Outrage, Homunculus)
- Yasuko Tomita (Switched, The Limit of Sleeping Beauty)
- Toma Ikuta (We Couldn’t Become Adults, The Fallen Angel)
- Kentaro Tamura
- Ayumu Nakajima
- Gaku Hosokawa
- Tasuku Nagaoka
- Yuko Nakamura
- Erika Shumoto
- Miho Kanazawa
What is the release date?
Straight to Hell premieres exclusively on Netflix April 27, 2026.
