NHK's popular yearlong period drama series for 2019 will focus on Japan's involvement in the Olympic movement, a year before Tokyo hosts the summer games, the public broadcaster said Wednesday.

Specifically, the drama will depict how Japan participated in the Olympics for the first time in the 1912 Games in Stockholm and hosted the 1964 Games in Tokyo, and events that took place in between. Tokyo will be the setting for most of its scenes.

The historical drama series, which often features feudal warlords and their wives as the main characters, will take up a modern historical theme for the first time in 33 years.

Kankuro Kudo, a successful screenwriter, will write the script. Other details, including the title and actors, have yet to be decided.

"It will be about a group of people who were swayed by the war, the politics and the economy," said Kudo in a statement. "I plan to write carefully over a year about the changes that happened to people and the city as a result of their exposure to historical happenings."

Yukinori Kida, a senior executive of the broadcaster formally known as Japan Broadcasting Corp., told a news conference he expects the drama to "portray people who lived between the Meiji period (1868-1912) and Showa period (1926-1989) in an unprecedented way."