Nishikawa Miwa's 'Children Untold' Premieres at TIFF — SkimNews
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- Nishikawa Miwa directed 'Children Untold,' a drama based on archival testimony about Japan’s WWII orphans, which premiered at the Toronto Intl. Film Festival and releases in Japan on Oct. 16
- Kotoko, the film’s protagonist, is a 12-year-old girl who hides her gender and identity to survive in postwar Tokyo, reflecting real historical accounts of children erasing themselves to stay alive
- Yakusho Koji reprises his connection to Nishikawa’s exploration of war orphans, starring as Jinpei in 'Children Untold' after portraying a former orphan in her 2021 film 'Under the Open Sky'
- Nishikawa Miwa resisted framing Japanese war orphans as innocent victims, instead showing how they were shaped by militarist indoctrination and complicit in Japan’s wartime aggression before suffering its aftermath
- Nishikawa Miwa cast mostly non-professional child actors with little knowledge of WWII, using weekend rehearsals to build their understanding of the era alongside their performances
- Nikaido Fumi co-stars as Sone, Kotoko’s former teacher who turns to prostitution after losing her fiancé and job postwar, then searches for the student she once failed
Why it matters: The film forces a reckoning with Japan’s unacknowledged responsibility toward war orphans, whose trauma was compounded by state neglect and societal erasure. By centering a girl who must hide her identity, it exposes how survival often meant sacrificing personhood—something archival silence and lack of compensation laws have extended into the present.
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