Japanese director Nishikawa revisits untold story of orphaned girl after WWII

Japanese director Miwa Nishikawa explores the long shadow of war in "Children Untold," centering on an orphaned girl and a woman grappling with the loss of who they once were in postwar Japan.

The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last week, becoming the first Japanese title to open the festival's competitive Platform section.

Set in the aftermath of World War Two, when an estimated 120,000 children were left orphaned, "Children Untold" follows Kotoko, a 12-year-old girl who loses her family and disguises herself as a boy to survive on Tokyo's streets. Meanwhile, her former schoolteacher, struggling to survive herself and forced into prostitution for occupying troops, sets out to find Kotoko.

Though the term "war orphan" often evokes the image of a boy, Nishikawa wanted to focus on girls whose stories have largely gone untold. "There must have been just as many girls orphaned by the war,” Nishikawa said in an interview. “I wanted to examine how they survived and how their lives unfolded."

"War does not end when the fighting stops,” she said. “Even after it is over, people continue to fight different battles in their lives. I wanted today's children to understand that."

When she began developing the film in 2020, Nishikawa feared the theme might feel too distant for modern audiences. But wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Iran have made it more relevant than she expected.

"Rather than my film reflecting today's world, the world itself has moved closer to what I portrayed in the film," she said.

Against a backdrop of global conflicts, Nishikawa said there were growing signs that Japan's pacifist principles, upheld for the past 80 years, were beginning to erode.

As a filmmaker from Hiroshima, where the legacy of war feels especially immediate and personal, Nishikawa described depicting war as "heavy." But she stressed the need to revisit Japan's past mistakes, including how people were swayed by propaganda, drawn into war and failed to take responsibility for its consequences.

The next challenge, she said, was engaging people who felt the subject had already been discussed enough.

“A new generation of creators, not only in Japan but around the world, needs to find ways to carry these stories forward," she said.

-Reporting by Atsuko Kitayama in Toronto; Editing by Caroline Stauffer and Nia Williams/Reuters