Kuroda - is the Daimyo of Chikuzen, the regional governor of modern-day Fukuoka, on Japan’s southern island of Kyushu.

Kuroda is played by  Christian Jon Billett who was trained classically at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama and the Royal Academy of Music. Professional credits include: The Phantom of the Opera, Martin Guerre, Showboat, Sweeny Todd, Evita and many solo concerts with the Hallé, Royal Liverpool
Philharmonic and BBC concert orchestras. He will be featured on Friday Night is Music Night for Radio 2 at the end of this month. His album "Be my Love" is out now.

The Fujino - Kuroda’s mother who moans she longs to be a granny.

Annie Wensak (Fujino) has worked in theatre in the UK and across Europe in a wide range of productions from Sondhiem to Shakespeare. She has also choreographed several musical shows and revues, and is a member of the Actors Temple, a company that specialises in the Miesner
technique. She will be seen waving her wand this Christmas at Bury St Edmunds Theatre Royal, the last working Regency playhouse in Britain.

Shino - the daughter who is abducted by the money lender

Leila Suleyman (Shino) is currently training at the D&B Performing Arts School, having studied dance at Westway School of Dance and Banstead
Academy of Dance. Trained in both musical theatre and classical styles by her vocal teacher, Helen Watkins, she has performed in Kiss Me Kate (Lois Laine), Les Misérables School Edition (Cosette), 42nd Street (Peggy Sawyer) and Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat (Narrator).

Tanaka is Kuroda's faithful Lord Chamberlain. Kuroda's father rescued him from Seppuku  in the past when Tanaka's enemy made false accusations and Tanaka is Fujino's right hand  man as well.

Simon Parrish (Tanaka) studied Drama and Literature at Sheffield
University, then at the Webber Douglas Academy and performed in more than 20 countries with the acclaimed English Teaching Theatre. West End credits include Return to the Forbidden Planet, Buddy, and the hit musical Jailhouse Rock. Panto roles include Captain Cock-up in Dick Whittington and Preen in Beauty and the Beast. He played Eric “Rubber Legs” Devine
in A Slice of Saturday Night and is part of the creative team behind The Elvis Years, (www.theelvisyears.com). He is also a voiceover artist for Classic FM.

Shino's Mother. She is always positive but very worried about Shino who has been kidnapped by the moneylender. She suggests Hyoichi visits Kuroda's Bugyousho (Edo period's police station/court room) to find her.

Shino's Father. A silk farmer who lost all his wealth when Hakata was flooded and is unable to pay his debt.

Nana. The moneylender's wife who is reputed to be the most beautiful woman in Hakata and is a cunning manipulator.

Jonathan Butcher has wide experience of working in the theatre conducting a diverse range of musicals from Phantom of the Opera, West Side Story, Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, Follies and Into the Woods to operas as wide ranging as Britten’s Peter Grimes & The Turn of the Screw, Falstaff & Eugene Onegin. More recently, he has conducted performances of Donald Swann’s exquisite yet rarely heard opera Perelandra based on the novel by C.S. Lewis.