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Rikon Densetsu’s new single “Ohkuko” (大空港) is the theme song for the TV Asahi Thursday drama Ohkuko 〜GATE24〜, and it dropped on July 24, 2026 — the day after the drama’s premiere. It’s the duo’s first release in about half a year, and it’s their answer to summer itself. Not summer as a mood board. Summer as the season where memory hits hardest.
“Ohkuko” isn’t a song about the place you say goodbye — it’s the place where the memory of that goodbye finally lands.
Key facts
- Digital-only single by Rikon Densetsu (松田歩 Ayumu Matsuda and 別府純 Jun Beppu), released July 24, 2026.
- Written as the theme song for TV Asahi’s Thursday drama Ohkuko 〜GATE24〜.
- Fully self-produced — the duo wrote, composed, and arranged every part themselves.
- The music video premiered on YouTube the same night at 9pm JST.
- Their first-ever hall tour, Rikon Densetsu HALL TOUR 2026-2027, has been announced.
- A theme song that shares its title with the drama
- Who Rikon Densetsu actually are
- What to listen for in the arrangement
- How this song actually gets listened to
- Why the drama’s choice is actually a bold one
- Where this sits in their catalog — and why self-production matters
- Where to start next
- The question the song leaves open
- Related reading
A theme song that shares its title with the drama
Sharing a title with the drama it accompanies isn’t rare in Japan. What’s unusual is that “Ohkuko” was written specifically for the show, and the airport that gives the drama its name has been pulled directly into the song title.
An airport drama with a song literally called “Airport.” On paper, the most obvious matchup possible. It works because the airport in this song isn’t a physical one at all — it’s an emotional terminal. Per the official description, the track is about the encounters and farewells that keep flashing back every time summer air touches your skin, and about carrying those memories forward as light instead of letting them settle quietly into the past. That’s the exact reason the classic “airport = goodbye” shorthand doesn’t land here in the usual way. Rikon Densetsu shifted the frame one click.
The other thing worth flagging: the duo’s identity survives the tie-in. That flattening effect that often happens with theme songs — where the artist’s edges get sanded down to fit the show — isn’t happening here. It’s still their song, just wearing the drama’s face.
Who Rikon Densetsu actually are
Quick background. Rikon Densetsu is a Japanese male duo who started activity in 2022 and made their major-label debut in 2024. The name comes from the Japanese title of Marvin Gaye’s 1978 album Here, My Dear. They self-produce everything: audio, visuals, styling, concept. The origin story is charmingly low-stakes — Matsuda and Beppu met in 2018 working part-time at a live karaoke bar where staff played instruments and customers sang, then during the pandemic downtime of 2020 they started swapping simple acoustic sketches, and once they’d built up enough of those, they moved into full production.
Naming your band after Marvin Gaye’s divorce record already tells you where they stand. They write about love, but they’re not interested in extracting the sweet part alone. They’re more interested in what’s left after the sweetness collapses.
Matsuda’s soft, glowing high register and Beppu’s technically strong but deeply lyrical guitar wrap around each other to sing love songs, and their track “Ai ga issou mellow” (愛が一層メロウ) — which musician Kenon Kawatani placed at #6 on his personal best-of list on the TV music show Kanjam Kanzen Nensho SHOW — sums up what the duo does. R&B/soul vocabulary applied to Japanese pop isn’t unusual by itself; what’s unusual is how cool the temperature of that vocabulary runs in their hands. Call it R&B that refuses to belt.
What to listen for in the arrangement
Matsuda dials the vocal back here. He can push into the high register and stay comfortably up there — and choosing not to is harder than it sounds. If you can hit it, you want to hit it. Instead he lets the middle of his voice carry the weight. It reads as a deliberate choice not to over-lift the humidity of summer with the vocal.
Beppu’s guitar stays understated, as usual. Understated doesn’t mean sparse — it means it refuses to act like the lead. His playing has been described as rooted in soul, mellow in color, and versatile enough to slot into rock or city pop without losing character, and that instinct shows up in the chord voicings here, which carry a distinct 70s soul afterglow.
The rhythm section is where it gets interesting. For a song set inside an airport, the rhythm refuses to crowd the beat. Crowding it would create urgency. Leaving space creates aftertaste. This track very clearly chose the second option. Whatever the drama’s doing that week — chase, reunion, missed connection — the song refuses to rush the viewer. That’s what makes it strong as a theme.
Worth a note: the visual team that’s been with Rikon Densetsu since the beginning of their activity is on the MV as well. Because they’ve always treated the visual as part of the composition, watching the MV and then returning to the audio genuinely shifts what you hear. Try both orders.
How this song actually gets listened to
My read: this song hits hardest around 1 AM. The most natural placement is right after the drama ends. But I suspect it does more work on someone who’s never seen the show, walking home late at night. The airport as a symbol is one of the few places on earth where the place you leave from and the place you come back to are literally the same building. That doubleness is baked into the arrangement.
Summer humidity, and the slightly-too-cold air conditioning of a late-night room. Two opposite temperatures living inside the same four-and-a-half minutes. Drop it into a bright summer playlist and it sits a little heavy. File it under breakup songs and it isn’t wet enough. That awkward category-fit is probably why it’ll survive past the season. Songs that fit their moment too neatly get shelved the day the moment ends. This one won’t.
One more read: it gets lighter the more you replay it, and I don’t mean that as a flaw. First listen, it’s a theme song. Third listen, it’s walking next to your own memory. Tenth listen, it’s just part of the air in the room.
Why the drama’s choice is actually a bold one
An airport ensemble drama has plenty of obvious theme-song lanes: driving rock, dramatic ballad, breezy up-tempo pop. Songs that push the story forward. “Ohkuko” is none of those. It’s a song that fills the negative space around the story instead of pushing it. The kind that plays over the credits and then follows you into the next morning.
A more obvious track would give the drama a stronger opening hook. But what actually soaks into a viewer’s life across a full season is usually a quiet song, not a loud one. It’s a bet on cumulative listening time instead of first-impression punch. Both sides delivered on that bet.
Where this sits in their catalog — and why self-production matters
Up to now Rikon Densetsu have mostly been discussed inside the soul/R&B and indie conversation. A prime-time drama tie-in routes them to ears that weren’t hitting that shelf. What matters is that the routing hasn’t diluted the sound. Their debut album Rikon Densetsu was re-released via Ariola Japan on July 23, 2025, and “Ohkuko” arriving in 2026 fits the picture of a duo committed to steady output past year two of the major-label run.
Theme song commissions are normally a room full of opinions — network, agency, label, drama production. The song ends up at the arithmetic mean of everyone’s notes. On “Ohkuko,” that smoothing barely happened. The track leans toward the drama where it needs to. But the low-temperature soul signature that makes Rikon Densetsu Rikon Densetsu is untouched. That’s hard to pull off without a self-produced setup. When two people are making the final call, the lines between what to concede and what to protect stay sharp.
Then there’s the tour. How “Ohkuko” gets reshaped inside the setlist of their first-ever hall run is going to be a real thing to watch. I’m more curious about the live rebuild than the studio version, honestly. Two people who met working at a live karaoke bar, now filling their own halls with their own songs. They walked that distance in roughly four years.
Where to start next
Next track: “Ai ga issou mellow.” The one Kenon Kawatani flagged at #6 on his personal best list on Kanjam Kanzen Nensho SHOW, often cited as the clearest expression of what the duo actually sounds like. If the temperature of “Ohkuko” worked on you, this song lets you fall the rest of the way in.
Album to sit with: Rikon Densetsu (self-titled 1st album). Same title as the band name — a kind of statement piece. If one track pulled you in, the album-length version of that world is the fastest way to actually live inside it for a while.
The question the song leaves open
Some listeners will hear “Ohkuko” as a farewell song. Others will hear it as a reunion song. Neither is the right answer, because an airport is already the one place on earth where both things happen at the same moment — and the track leaves that ambiguity fully intact. Which side you enter from probably depends on the shape of your day when you press play. So — which side did you come in from?
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