Nianchan (My Second Brother)

This film - set in the coal-mining region Kyushu - was based on the diary of a ten-year-old girl of Korean descent. The story is set during the recession that followed the Korean War. A man’s death leaves his four children to fend for themselves at a time of widespread unemployment and bitter poverty. The diarist’s young “second brother” runs off to Tokyo in search of work and is eventually brought back, bedraggled and undefeated. This warm-hearted celebration of the indestructible vitality of the poor and underprivileged, raises a number of social issues - not only poverty and unemployment, but the inadequacies of the Japanse educational system and social services, and the treatment of Korean Japanese as second-class citizens.