TOKYO: NAMIKI Eri, playwright and producer of “Over the Silver Lining – Kamikaze” after many years of successful performance across Japan and in several venues in New York before the pandemic, has reached her long held dream of taking her play to the UAE.

The theme of her play, she told Arab News Japan, is a story of young people who put their lives at risk in order to protect something they believe is important.

The story itself connects the past with the future through a radio broadcast – as two friends in Japan prepare a kamikaze plane for attack in 1945, they hear a radio report from the future and realize that Japan lost the war. They ask themselves why they are giving their lives for defeat.  

More than 7 decades have passed since the end of the war but it is said that many young people in today’s Japan have no purpose for their lives. Her play asks if the young people who lost their lives in the war wished for the Japan of today.

In the interview, Namiki said her production company, Sandy Co., Ltd first put out a version of the play as a radio drama in 2000 for which it won the 38th Encouragement Award at the Galaxy Awards.

The Tokyo based theatre company, Ateliege which is supported by many enthusiastic volunteers has now reached 23 years of performing this play all over Japan but the English language version planned for Dubai will have less performers in order to make the story easier to understand.

Namiki has been leading Sunday Co. for 46 years, during which she has challenged a wide audience to ask themselves what they should do with their lives and what should they live for. She noted that a sequel has been made into a film and entered in the Cannes Film Festival 2024.