Rikka Ihara Japanese Dancer Born 1999 in Osakasayama

Early life

Rikka Ihara was born Saya Hayashi on 2 June 1999 in Osakasayama, Osaka Prefecture. She began ballet lessons at the age of four, and after seeing a stage performance as a second-grader she became interested in musicals. From 2008 to 2012 she took singing and dance classes at a children's musical school, and in 2013 she joined the theatre company Gekidan ARCS, appearing in its production Zubon Senchō: Fifi and the Seven Seas.

In April 2015 she entered Osaka Prefectural Tomioka High School, where she joined the dance club. She became its captain, and the team won a number of competitions. In August 2017 she danced in the center position when the club performed at the Japan High School Dance Club Championship, an appearance that drew national media attention. She had been thinking of studying at a university in Tokyo when the talent agency Foster scouted her before graduation.

Career

She began her professional career on 1 October 2017 under the stage name Rikka Ihara. After an audition in February 2018 she was chosen as the Century 21 Girl, the image character for the Japanese branch of Century 21 Real Estate, and she appeared in its commercials from July of that year. She finished high school in March 2018 and moved to Tokyo. At the end of that month she made her runway debut at the 26th Tokyo Girls Collection, and in April her first radio programme, Century 21 presents Rikka Ihara and Bukatsu Dance, started on TBS Radio. Her first photo book was published in June.

Music came in early 2019. Her debut single, "Wingbeats", was produced by Shinichi Osawa and used as a Century 21 commercial song, and she prepared for it with voice training. She also sang as a guest vocalist on "Love Dramatic", a single by Masayuki Suzuki that serves as the theme song of the anime Kaguya-sama: Love Is War. In April 2019 she became the sixteenth host of Daiichi Kosho's online music programme Dam Channel.

On screen, she made her drama debut as Fumi Aso in Cheer Dan, which began airing in July 2018. In 2019 she played Mei Ayazuki in the live-action film adaptation of Meiji Tokyo Renka, her first lead role in a series or film, and the same year she made her morning drama debut in Natsuzora as Momoyo Morita. A planned stage debut as Maria in a production of West Side Story was cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan. She later played the title character in the 2020 drama adaptation of Donburi Iinchou, Honoka Ōba in the Disney+ series Sumo Do, Sumo Don't (2022), and Sakura Uchida in the 2023 film Nightmare Resort. In 2024 she appeared in the drama Kanzo o Ubawareta Tsuma as Yūka Kitayama.

Personal life

Among her listed hobbies are keeping leopard geckos and collecting Nambu ironware. Her favourite work of literature is the novella The Little Prince.