On November 21st, NHK began their promotions for the 2013 taiga drama 'Yae no Sakura' with the release of the main poster featuring starring actress Ayase Haruka.

Ayase is disguising herself as the protagonist Niijima Yae, a female warrior that can be described as the Japanese Jeanne d'Arc during the closing days of the Tokugawa shogunate. In the poster she is holding a spencer rifle and is glancing into the camera with a serious expression. The tagline on the poster reads "I will bloom in this era".

Yae is the daughter of her domain's gunnery instructor and participated in the Boshin War disguised as a man. During the war she barricaded herself with 500 women in Tsuruga castle, Aizu. She prefers to fight with a spencer repeating rifle, a breech loading rifle that can be loaded with a seven tube magazine; and always carries around 100 bullets around her back in order to be prepared for the worst. For the poster they also added a kimono with a sakura pattern, but this was only used to emphasize the mixture of east and west and won't be a part of the outfit in the drama itself.

During the Meiji era, Yae marries Niijima Jo or Joseph Hardy Neesima, who worked and taught Christianity as an educator and founded the Doshisha University as well as the Doshisha Women's College of Liberal Arts. The drama depicts her whole life from 1845 until 1932.

The supporting cast includes Odagiri Joe, Nishijima Hidetoshi, Hasegawa Hiroki, Tamayama Tetsuji, Kuroki Meisa, Gouriki Ayame, Oguri Shun, Sorimachi Takashi, and many more.

'Yae no Sakura' is scheduled to air its first of 50 episodes on January 6th, 2013.

Source: Mantan-Web