Actress Hinako Sakurai appeared on Tetsuko Kuroyanagi's long-running talk show "Tetsuko's Room" (TV Asahi) on April 24th. She talked about how she won the Grand Prix at the Okayama Beautiful Girl Contest in 2014 when she was in her second year of high school.
Although she won the grand prize, she wasn't particularly interested in the entertainment industry. Because the contest offered prizes like Disneyland tickets, she entered with the "impure motive of hoping to win something." "I never imagined I would actually win the grand prize."
I ended up joining an agency that was sponsoring the contest. My parents didn't think that being scouted by the agency would mean I'd be pursuing a career solely in the entertainment industry. They didn't really understand it, but they sent me off with a "do what you want to do, if that's what you want to do" kind of attitude.
She won the Grand Prix and became a hot topic, being called the "Miracle of Okayama," but she says, "My agency didn't come up with that name. Someone in the entertainment industry who learned about me through online news came up with the name 'Miracle of Okayama,' and that name spread on its own."
