Sadayo Kawakami

Sadayo Kawakami is a character from Persona 5. She is a teacher at Shujin Academy.

Appearances

 * Persona 5: Supporting Character; Temperance Confidant
 * Persona 5 (Manga): Supporting Character

Design
Kawakami has dark brown unkempt hair, dark brown eyes and consistently has a somewhat long and sleepy face.

She wears a yellow striped sweater with white and red horizontal lines, a blue denim skirt, white heels and carries a notebook.

She also wears her own french maid uniform while working as a domestic helper along with changing her hair into 2 pigtails.

Personality
Kawakami is a highly competent and professional teacher who never lets her ever-mounting stress and exhaustion show visibly in either of her jobs. While she initially acts very coldly towards the protagonist, this was because she thought he was a problem student and felt unsafe around him. After he stands up to Suguru Kamoshida, she realizes that he was given a poor reputation for no good reason and becomes far friendlier, showing her more compassionate and involved side. She is also something of a hopeless romantic, developing an attraction towards older students who show her kindness and understanding, which leads to her occasionally projecting her own amorous feelings on the protagonist during the early part of her Confidant. Unlike Kamoshida, however, she is aware pursuing a relationship with a student would be unethical and cares about whether or not her students consent to her attentions-in a romantic version of the Confidant, she tells the protagonist to come back after he graduates from high school to prevent putting undue pressure on him.

In her "health delivery" job, Kawakami effects a stereotypically moe personality, acting energetic, cute and naive. As she herself admits, her age makes this come off as shallow and fake, and she regularly breaks character out of fatigue.

Persona 5
Kawakami is a Japanese language and homeroom teacher of class 2-D at Shujin Academy. She appears on the day when the protagonist first arrives at the school on Sunday for registration. The principal assigns the protagonist to her class which is also attended by Ann Takamaki and Yuuki Mishima because it is the only class of second year with a vacancy. Knowing her new student is a juvenile on probation, Kawakami displays anxiety and expects a tougher male teacher would be more suitable to handle such student.

After her primary occupation, Kawakami dons the French maid uniform and works as a domestic service provider. Ryuji Sakamoto and Yuuki one day are interested in looking for a hot French maid after seeing a flyer advertisement and invite the protagonist to a vacant apartment that Ryuji knows about. They call the maid agency without specified preference and Kawakami ends up being dispatched and is depressed to learn that her customers are her students. The protagonist can later call her to his residence. Instead of feeling embarrassed, she compliments his sense of justice for opposing Suguru Kamoshida. She agrees to comfort him assuming her student short of friends due to the bad rumors about him spread by Kamoshida, but asks him to keep her part-time job a secret.

Initially, she lies that she has a sick sister who needs to pay her expensive medical expense. As the protagonist continues to use her maid service, Kawakami finally confesses the real reason she moonlights for money. When she was teaching in the previous school, she was ordered by the principal to persuade a student called Taiki Takase who had the lowest grades and skipped school frequently to transfer to another school. Kawakami pitied Takase for losing his parents and working three part-time jobs to support his life, hence she tutored him personally to improve his grades. This act of kindness met with criticism and the principal ordered her to either stop the tutoring or resign because of rumors about Takase being a juvenile delinquent. Kawakami had no choice but to up on Takase. Takase received her phone call about her difficult decision during his delivery part-time job under heavy rain. He died in a car crash apparently because of exhaustion from his part time jobs and studying. Takase's relatives who adopted him blamed Kawakami for his death and threatened to sue her unless she pays them and an "apology" for Takase's death.

Takase's guardians become increasingly insatiable by raising their demands more frequently. When Kawakami is hospitalized because of being overworked, they only visit her to urge her payment to cover their debts. At this point, the protagonist protests them using their late son to guilt-trip Kawakami and convinced her to stand up against them, with it quickly being revealed that the true motive behind their blackmail is to pursue a hedonistic lifestyle they originally forced Takase to pay for. After the couple shows up in Shujin Academy to threaten her by making her second part time job (which they assumed to be prostitution after their latest increase of their demand) known to all Shujin faculties, the protagonist asks Kawakami about their full names and steals their hearts in Mementos so she can be liberated from her extortionists. After that, she quits all of her part time jobs and informs the protagonist that she can finally put full energy in education.

During Shido's Palace heist, Kawakami plays a part in the heist. Ann mention that she's informing the staff and students that the protagonist has gone home for a month due to family issues. This allows the protagonist to better remain hidden from the general public due to his "death" as the Phantom Thief.

Confidant
Unlocking her Confidant requires participation in "Operation Maidwatch" with Ryuji Sakamoto and Yuuki Mishima in Shibuya and Ryuji's home after May 24th. Then, talking to Kawakami and Ms. Chouno after school will give Ms. Chouno the implication the Kawakami is acting as a tutor for the protagonist. After that, given that the protagonist's Guts is at level 3 or higher, he can dial Kawakami to his residency using the public phone in Cafe Leblanc to initiate her Confidant relationship. The call-out service for basic house cleaning costs 5,000 yen each time and is only available on Friday and Saturday regardless of weather. Additional domestic service also costs 5,000 yen each time. However, all domestic services will be free of charge upon reaching Confidant rank 8.

Her Confidant abilities are huge time savers so the player can spare the precious time for other activities like raising social performance or participating in other Confidant events.

Sadayo's farewell gift to the protagonist on the last day after maxing her Confidant is Unlimited Service, a special Coupon that gives the player the ability to use her Special Massage from the start of New Game+ once her Confidant has been established. If the player pursues a romantic relationship with Sadayo, she will gift the protagonist a Pen Case on Christmas, allowing the player to earn more points when using a Temperance Persona during their Confidant in NG+, and Sadayo's Chocolate on Valentines Day, which fully restores SP to one ally when consumed.

Trivia

 * Kawakami's name resembles (川上 貞奴), originally a geisha and became a famous actress since her performance in the United States in 1899.