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
 * Persona 5 The Animation: Supporting Character

Design
Kawakami is a youthful looking woman of a medium height and a slender build. She has dark brown unkempt hair, dark brown eyes and consistently has a somewhat long and sleepy face.

While teaching, she wears a yellow long sleeved shirt striped with white and red horizontal lines, a blue denim skirt and white kitten heel shoes. During her off-time, she wears a beige blazer over her outfit.

During her second job, she wears a French-styled maid costume and has her hair pulled into twin tails.

If she's the protagonist's date during the Hawaii trip, she wears a blue and yellow striped bikini, a white graphic t-shirt with a red flower design and the number 14 on it, and yellow and white flip-flops. Around her neck is a whistle hung on a red strap.

Personality
"Welcome home, Master. ❤ I'm going to fill your tired heart full of lovely energy. ❤ Meow! I'm Becky, and I have the pleasure of serving you today. ❤ We're going to get along so well! Meeeooowww! ❤❤"

- Becky, before realizing the protagonist is her student

Kawakami is a highly competent and professional teacher who never lets her ever-mounting stress and exhaustion show visibly in either of her jobs. She is laid-back and outspoken, once saying "crap" in class.

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 "" maid job as "Becky," Kawakami effects a stereotypically personality, acting energetic, cute and naive. She also acts like a cat and says "meow ❤ ." As she herself admits, her age makes this come off as shallow and fake, and she regularly breaks character out of fatigue, at one point, even collapsing on the protagonist's bed and complaining about all the work and odd jobs she has to do.

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, though Ryuji and Yuki flee the room before they find out. 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 was 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 give 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 mentions that Kawakami'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. Normally, if the protagonist spends the afternoon in the Metaverse, he loses the nighttime slot to recuperate. Once he has reached Rank 10, Kawakami can perform a Special Massage which will rejuvinate him and allow him to use the night slot rather than waste it after a day in the Metaverse.

Kawakami's Confidant provides a wide range of services and features that allow the protagonist to save time. Her initial ability will sometimes allow the protagonist to have free time during classes lead by her to craft thief tools and read books. Later in the Confidant, she can even help the protagonist do this during classes lead by other teachers. At Rank 3, Kawakami can help with household chores such as cooking curry, making coffee, making thief tools, and washing laundry, saving the protagonist time at night to focus on Confidants. At Rank 8, utilizing Kawakami no longer costs anything. Normally after the protagonist spends an afternoon in the Metaverse, he cannot act at night, but at Max Rank, Kawakami can give a special massage that revitalizes the protagonist and allows him to go out on night on those days.

Kawakami'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 Kawakami, 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.
 * The 14 on Kawakami's beach T-shirt is a reference to her arcana, Temperance, which is card #14 in the tarot.