Tokyo was bathed in warm sunshine in the run-up to 2016, and when Takehiro Hira meets me at a rehearsal studio his smile is beaming just as brightly — while in his arms he's carrying a box of mikan (mandarin oranges) to share with the rest of the team as they prepare for this month's rerun of Ai Nagai's acclaimed "Kaku Onna" ("A Writing Woman").
The award-winning play from 2006, which Nagai is directing, is a moving, multilayered work inspired by one of Japan's most important female writers, Natsuko Higuchi. Though she died at the age of 24 in 1896, Higuchi (who used the pen name Ichiyo Higuchi) achieved such standing in her short life that her face now graces the ¥5,000 banknote.
In this production at Setagaya Public Theatre, 41-year-old Hira plays Tosui Nakarai (1861-1926), a real-life journalist who wrote serialized fiction for a newspaper and became the writing coach and career adviser to Higuchi (played by Haru Kuroki) — and maybe, or maybe not, her lover, too.