(Imanari and Aoki: The [lady-]boys are back in town.)

While Sengoku’s tail-spin has been Dynamite!! 2010 on New Year’s Eve. The silence was broken today at a press conference in Japan, where DREAM organizers announced a May 29th event at the Saitama Super Arena — the promotion’s first show of 2011.

DREAM.17 will feature the quarterfinals and semifinals of their Japan Bantamweight tournament, which will feature the following native competitors: Hideo Tokoro, Masakazu Imanari, Kenji Osawa, Darren Uyenoyama, Keisuke Fujiwara, Atsushi Yamamoto, Takafumi Otsuka, and Yoshiro Maeda.

According to Nightmare of Battle, the finals and third-place fight (between the losing semi-finalists) will take place at a subsequent event in July. The winner and loser of the final match and the winner of the third-place fight will advance to the DREAM World Bantamweight Tournament (date TBA). N.o.B passes along even more details…

- The tournament’s bantamweight limit will be 61kg/134.5lbs.

- Possible participants in non-GP matches at the May 29th event are Mitsuhiro Ishida, Joachim Hansen, Shinya Aoki (who confirmed his participation here), Akiyo “Wicky” Nishiura, Katsunori Kikuno, and Caol Uno.

- The event will be scaled-back compared to previous events, using the “hall” configuration of the Super Arena, which seats 7,000. Production of the event will be kept to a minimum. Television broadcast plans are still in the works at this point.

- A ‘Fight for Japan’ t-shirt will be sold at the events, with proceeds benefitting earthquake relief.

- DREAM event producer Keiichi Sasahara says they’ll continue their fighter exchange with Strikeforce and Scott Coker.