It was revealed on September 12th that actress Hinako Sakurai will be appearing in the stage play "Shining Women," starring Yuriko Yoshitaka. The play is a group portrait of women whose stories move back and forth between the present and the past, shedding light on the complicated relationships and the state of modern people living in the age of social media. Sakurai will play Shirasawa Kimi, a junior colleague of the protagonist Kai Kaneda (Yoshitaka). Shirasawa is a modest character who regularly writes about her loneliness on social media.
The play is written and directed by Ryuta Horai. Honami Sato will play Yamagata Keiko, Kaneda's best friend and fellow member of the women's futsal club from her university days, while Yamaguchi Sayaka will play Kawagoe Mizuki, the club's advisor who is harboring inner conflict behind her strictness. Other cast members announced include Onodera Zuru, Hasegawa Nagi, Lee Sojin, and Namura Tatsu.
The story is about Kai Kaneda, who, while working as a member of society, repeatedly sneaks into funerals, eats at the buffet, and then leaves. One day, at the funeral he sneaks into, he happens to come across some familiar faces.
They were her teammates from the women's futsal club she was captain of at university. She saw her best friend Yamagata Keiko (Sato). She even saw her coach Kawagoe Mizuki (Yamaguchi), whom she had always looked down on. In the funeral portrait, she saw her junior Shirasawa Kimi (Sakurai), who had played on the same pitch. "Why wasn't I invited?" The funeral venue and her glorious university days intertwine. Was that brilliance truly brilliance? The story asks.
The play will run from December 7th to 28th at the PARCO Theater in Shibuya, Tokyo. Performances will also be held in Osaka, Fukuoka, Nagano, and Aichi.
