A recent survey by Theater Guide magazine put Koki Mitani ahead of even Shakespeare as the dramatist best known in Japan.
Admittedly this isn't just because of his stage work. In recent years he has enjoyed success with scripts for both the big and small screen too, including last year's movie "Ryoma no Tsuma to Sono Otto to Aijin (Ryoma's Wife and her Husband and her Lover)," the TV sitcom "HR" and the megahit detective show "Furuhata Ninzaburo." If this wasn't enough, he also writes a popular weekly column for Asahi Shimbun.
Mitani is, in short, a phenomenon, and thanks to that, tickets for "Okepi" -- which he both wrote and directs -- are near impossible to come by, despite the fact that the play is enjoying a relatively long run of more than a month in Tokyo, plus stops in Nagoya and Osaka.