When Santaro Ishihara (Yo Oizumi), a just-fired supermarket salesman, arrives at the Sakuragaoka Sogo Hospital, three young patients have hijacked the broadcasting studio and are blaring dance music throughout the wards. It is their rebellious tribute to a just-deceased friend.

Unperturbed by the thorny welcome, Ishihara accepts a job to teach at the inhouse school. His students suffer serious illnesses like leukemia, kidney disorders, asthma and diabetes. Confident of the curing powers of laughter, Ishihara walks into class wearing a clown's red nose and proceeds to unleash jokes and gags. Two boys walk out of class in disgust.

The complicated attitudes of teenagers battling disorders aren't the only challenges facing Ishihara. There's the hard-nosed pediatrician Haruka Nanase (Yu Kashii) who believes the children need medical treatment above all else and wants to shut down the school. Ishihara's supervising teacher (Satomi Kobayashi) also looks askance at his bumbling antics to win over the children since she has carefully developed a trusting relationship with the patients and doctors. "Akahana no Sensei" follows the journey of Ishihara as he tries to convey his faith in optimism to his students while he also learns from them about their own coping methods with their illnesses. The drama deals with the heavy themes of sickness and death, dreams and reality and the limits of modern medicine. But the comic antics of Ishihara, the cool sarcasm of his opponents and the uplifting acting of the young patients make "Akahana no Sensei" a heart-warming, inspirational and, at times, hilarious drama.