English (en)
Eating Dandelions Still Doesn’t Guarantee Stardom — What Masato Sakai’s Lean Years Reveal About an Acting Business With Far Too Few Seats
People get fired for skipping work. Masato Sakai managed the opposite.
He has said he liked a doughnut-shop job so much that he came in on days when he was not scheduled and was eventually fired. He also said arithmetic was difficult for him and that he sometimes gave customers too much change by amounts around 1,000 yen.[1]
That sounds like a strange young-actor anecdote until the rest of the timeline is attached. Sakai became absorbed in theater at Waseda University, dropped out, spent years estranged from his family, and relied on part-time jobs because acting did not yet pay the bills. Leftover doughnuts were shared with troupe members. During one especially poor period, he decided he still needed vegetables and prepared dandelions as cooked greens.[2][3][4]
In 2000, in his late twenties, he appeared in NHK’s morning drama Audrey. Around age 30, he says, he finally reached the point where he no longer needed a part-time job to live.[2]
The frightening lesson is not that this much sacrifice guarantees success.
It is that countless people can sacrifice just as much and still never get the seat.
Acting is not an exam where everyone above a fixed score passes. A production has one lead and a limited number of major roles. At the final stage, it is less like a test and more like a giant game of musical chairs.
1. Staple Food: Doughnuts. Vegetable Category: Dandelions
Sakai immersed himself in theater at Waseda and left university in his third year. In a later interview he recalled entering university with ideas of a stable career, perhaps in public service, then realizing after joining theater that he would probably drop out.[2]
Afterward came troupe life plus part-time work. Unsold doughnuts were divided among troupe members and at one point were close to a staple food.[4] When money was especially tight, Sakai said he chose tender-looking dandelions and cooked them because he thought he still needed vegetables.[3]
Staple: doughnuts. Vegetables: dandelions.
The life plan was unstable; the nutritional conscience somehow survived.
This is not a foraging recommendation. Japan’s Ministry of Agriculture warns people not to collect or eat wild plants unless they can identify them safely as edible.[14]
2. Not Fired for Skipping Work — Fired for Showing Up Anyway
Sakai said he liked the doughnut shop so much that he went to work even when he was not scheduled, and that he was fired.[1]
Not “I hate this job, so I’m staying home.” More like “I love this job, so I came again.” Fired.
An unusually strong accelerator.
He also said that he sometimes returned too much change, with mistakes around 1,000 yen.[1]
Years later, in VIVANT, the character he plays, Yusuke Nogi, becomes entangled in a mistaken transfer involving more than 10 billion yen.[15]
Obviously Sakai did not make that transfer in real life. But the scale progression is irresistible:
Young Sakai: change errors around 1,000 yen.
Star Sakai: fictional transfer crisis above 10 billion yen.
Acting success upgraded only the production budget of the accounting disaster.
Add the old “I came to the workplace even though nobody scheduled me” story, and the later joke that he had always been suited to a secret VIVANT-style unit practically writes itself.
3. Mental Arithmetic and Long Speeches Are Different Sports
How can someone make mistakes with change and still deliver enormous, intricate speeches? Because human cognition is not one single “smartness bar.”
The mental workspace used to hold numbers briefly, manipulate them, keep a result available and continue a task is called working memory. A meta-analysis found that placing an additional load on this system slows arithmetic performance.[11]
Rehearsed acting is different. Repetition can store text in long-term memory, while a partner’s line, the scene, movement and emotion serve as retrieval cues. Research on expertise describes how trained people use long-term memory in this cue-driven way.[13] One study also found stronger long-term verbal memory and verbal fluency among people with regular theater experience than among controls.[12]
There is one important boundary: Sakai has not published a cognitive-test profile. A change-making anecdote does not justify diagnosing him with weak working memory.
The useful conclusion is simpler: making change and delivering a Hanzawa Naoki speech are different sports.
If the anecdotes became a video-game status screen, it might say “dialogue: SSS; performance: SSS; cash register: documented incidents.” Humans do not reduce neatly to one overall combat score.
4. Leaving Waseda Was a Completion Report, Not a Family Consultation
According to an older interview later quoted by the press, Sakai did not consult his family before leaving university. He submitted the paperwork first and then went home to report a decision that was already complete. The same account says he was estranged from his family for roughly seven or eight years.[5]
From a parent’s perspective, a son who had made it into Waseda came home with:
“I already quit university. I’m going to act.”
Not a proposal. A completion report.
Sakai has since looked back on not discussing the decision with his family as something he did when he was young.[2]
And reality did not cut straight to a success montage. He was simply poor for years.
5. NHK’s 2000 Audrey Was a Turning Point, Not the Finish Line
Audrey was an NHK morning serial broadcast in 2000. Sakai has described it as a major turning point and as an early television job with far more dialogue than he had previously received.[2]
He was in his late twenties. Count from his university-era theater activity and the road to Audrey was roughly eight years; count from the dropout and it was roughly five to six. It was not a blink-and-you-miss-it appearance in his own telling: he remembered it as the first television work where he had this much to say.[2]
The role also had a family effect. His estranged parents could watch him on national television and see that he really was working as an actor. Contact began to return from that period.[2][3]
The family dispute was not won by a career-plan document.
It was won by an NHK morning drama.
But Audrey did not mean instant financial security. Sakai says he was around 30 before he could live without a part-time job.[2]
The morning drama was not the finish line. It was the point where a very long runway finally began to lift.
6. He Could Live on Acting Around 30 — The “¥2.5 Million Salary” Is Speculation
Sakai has publicly said only that around age 30 he reached a point where he no longer needed a part-time job.[2]
Public sources do not establish whether his annual income at that point was ¥2.5 million, ¥3 million or something else.
So “living on acting probably meant about ¥2.5 million a year” is an estimate, not a fact.
What we do know is striking enough: national television appearance, meaningful dialogue, parents finally recognizing the career — and “this profession alone pays enough to live” was still a separate checkbox.
7. One Correction: “10.1 Years Until First Pay” Is Not an Actor-Only Figure
A 2025 survey by the Japan Council of Performers Rights and Performing Arts Organizations measured the gap between entering a field — including learning and training — and beginning to receive fees.[6]
Across all performer categories, the average gap was 10.1 years.
But that is not an actor-only figure. It includes fields such as traditional music and dance where training may begin very young.
By category:
- modern theater: 5.0 years
- media: 3.5 years[6]
So “actors wait an average of ten years for their first fee” is wrong.
The dream business is harsh enough. It does not need inflated numbers.
Unfortunately, the income distribution after people start earning is more disturbing anyway.
8. 54.5% Reported Total Income Below ¥3 Million; Modern Theater Was 72.5%
In the same survey, respondents’ 2024 total personal gross income — including work outside the performing arts — was:
- below ¥1 million: 14.4%
- ¥1–2 million: 21.1%
- ¥2–3 million: 19.0%
Together, 54.5% were below ¥3 million.[6]
This is not just acting income. Side jobs and other non-arts work are included.
Among modern-theater respondents, the corresponding brackets add up to 72.5% below ¥3 million.[6]
The survey covers performers connected to member organizations and is not a census of the entire Japanese entertainment industry.[7] Even with that boundary, the numbers are sobering for people who remain active in professional performance networks.
The subtitle beneath “make your passion your job” suddenly reads:
“Total annual income, including the other job: under ¥3 million.”
A brutally realistic subtitle for a dream.
9. Why Is It So Hard? Often It Is Not “No Talent” but “Not Enough Seats”
Acting makes more sense when you stop treating it like a certification exam.
If 100 people all score above the passing mark on a license test, all 100 can pass. If a drama needs one lead, increasing the qualified pool from 100 to 1,000 still leaves one lead role.
Imagine 1,000 genuinely capable actors competing for ten suitable roles.
The 990 who lose are not necessarily bad actors. There were only ten chairs.
Research on artistic labor markets has long emphasized excess supply of would-be workers, project-based employment, multiple-job holding, scarce opportunities and earnings concentrated heavily at the top.[9]
Film, television and streaming add another force: one popular actor’s performance can reach millions of viewers. Work and income can therefore concentrate among a small number of stars. Economists describe this pattern as a superstar market.[10]
The contest is not simply “become good enough and win.” It is “become good, then be the right person for this role, at this age, with this look, this voice and this timing.”
Effort can increase skill.
Effort cannot directly increase the number of lead roles being cast.
10. In a Dream Business, Cash Flow Can Run Backward at the Entrance
In an ordinary job, a company says “please work” and pays the worker.
At the entrance to acting, there is often an earlier stage: the aspiring actor pays to become trainable and competitive before earning from the profession.
As one current example, Bungakuza’s affiliated acting institute lists a ¥90,000 entrance fee, ¥240,000 annual tuition and ¥200,000 acting-practice fee — ¥530,000 in the first year.[8]
That is one institution, not an industry average. Charging tuition is not inherently a scam. The student is buying instruction and training opportunities, not a guaranteed starring role.
But structurally:
ordinary job: company says “work” → company pays
dream-career entrance: aspirant says “train me so I can compete for work” → aspirant pays first
Training ends. The number of roles still does not expand to match the number of graduates.
Why keep going? Not only because of fame. The work itself can be rewarding. Sakai has said that small moments of satisfaction on stage helped him continue through the lean years.[2]
The raw material of a dream business may not be “dreams” alone.
It may be loving the activity enough to continue even when the immediate financial return is poor.
11. Conclusion: Eating Dandelions Does Not Turn You Into Hanzawa Naoki
Read Sakai’s early career only as “work hard and dreams come true” and half the story disappears.
He left university, became estranged from his family, worked part-time for years, ate leftover doughnuts, put dandelions in the vegetable category and still did not quit acting. Eventually came Audrey, Shinsengumi!, Atsuhime, Hanzawa Naoki, Sanada Maru and VIVANT.
But other people can love acting just as much, train just as hard and endure just as long without getting those particular seats.
Acting careers depend on skill, persistence, fit, relationships, timing, projects and luck. Even then, the total number of seats is finite.
A successful actor’s biography therefore cannot be reverse-engineered into a recipe saying:
“Reproduce this amount of suffering and success will follow.”
Eating dandelions does not turn someone into Hanzawa Naoki.
Even if you love acting enough to eat dandelions, that does not create another lead-role chair.
That is what makes acting both magnificent and brutal.
FAQ
Does Masato Sakai have weak working memory? We do not know. No public cognitive-test profile was found, and a change-making anecdote cannot diagnose an individual. Mental arithmetic and rehearsed performance use different combinations of skills.[11][12][13]
What was Sakai earning when he could finally live on acting? He has said he stopped needing part-time work around age 30, but an exact annual income for that point is not publicly established.[2]
Do actors take 10.1 years on average to receive their first fee? No. The 10.1-year figure is for all surveyed performer categories and includes learning and training time. The reported gap was 5.0 years for modern theater and 3.5 years for media.[6]
