Do we stop telling stories of war and suffering because they become repetitive? Too painful? Or because we think time has passed, and we no longer need to learn lessons from the past? Perhaps we’ve grown numb, recognizing the pain of those lost when we read or see these stories of suffering from war, nuclear blasts and genocide assuming it can never happen again. But war is rising once again, people are growing increasingly divided, and those who fail to learn from the past are merely doomed to repeat it. Perhaps we need a reminder?
Ever since first seeing Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window almost 1 year ago, these questions have rarely left the forefront of my mind. The film is based on one of the best-selling books of all time in Japan by now-91-year-old TV personality Tetsuko Kuroyanagi, herself a fascinating figure in Japanese entertainment. While today she is a UNICEF ambassador and hosts the longest-running variety show in Japan, as she has since 1972 as one of the trailblazing women of post-war Japanese media, this memoir is a recollection of her childhood at the unique Tomoe Academy during the ever-degrading domestic circumstances of World War II.
Amidst recalling what this welcoming school was like for her, the book is a creeping reminder of how no one is free from suffering in war. The memoir contrasts experiences of the supportive atmosphere enjoyed at the school as a neurodiverse child expelled from the public education system with the backdrop of war. As food supplies degrade, violent patriotism rises, and war encroaches on her once-peaceful youth. As much as it is a memory of the past, it’s a warning from a woman old enough to remember the impossible suffering of nuclear war and World War II and see its echoes in the modern day. Today, it’s hard not to see the increased suffering in war and rising fascism and fear we are repeating a destructive past.
No wonder these questions never left my head. I’m being reminded of how little we understand of this message every time I turn on the news.
It’s why, as I sat down with director Shinnosuke Yakuwa over Zoom during his current trip to the UK to celebrate the film’s screening at Scotland Loves Anime, where the film added a Jury Award prize at the festival to a growing awards collection including one of the top prizes at Annecy Film Festival, I had to ask why he felt compelled to bring this memoir to life. As he notes, ever-present reminders of humanity’s destructive tendencies are not a 2024 invention, and it was this which had the biggest impact on his decision to adapt this story to the screen.
“I started planning [Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window] in 2016,” he explains. “In that year, it was in the news that children were dying as a result of chemical weapons being used in the war in Syria. There were attacks taking place in a facility for disabled people in Sagamihara in Japan. With all the dark news stories taking place during that year, I started worrying that my children wouldn’t grow up in a safe world. I started thinking about what I could do about it, and I thought I should make an anime with a social focus.”
“At that point I was making Doraemon and entertainment full of adventure and battles with the enemy, but I thought I should make something set closer to the real world. That was when I came across [the book] Totto-chan.”
Despite its incredible sales and place nowadays as reading text in the Japanese education system, the story has never been adapted to other mediums. This is in part on the insistence of the original author Tetsuko, who has felt attempts to create a live-action adaptation would be unable to match her own memories and risk erasing their intent.
So why change this stance, then? Perhaps it’s because now is the right time to revisit this moment of her life, both for herself and for a world in need of a reminder of the lessons of the past. The film coincided in Japan with the release of a sequel to her original memoir touching further on the war after she left Tomoe Gakuen following its destruction in bombing campaigns. It was a book she long resisted writing as she didn’t want to return to these painful memories of the past, but one she was inspired to write after seeing images of children living through war in Ukraine. For the film, being in animation also allowed at least this version to match closer to her memories, as she could consult and help ensure it matched her vision.
As Shinnosuke continues, “If we were making a live-action adaptation, you would need actors to play Totto-chan and the principal of the school, Kobayashi, whereas in animation we could fit it as closely to [Tetsuko’s] photos and testimony. Another reason is that in 2016 there was an attempt to change the Japanese constitution.”
This attempted change to article 9 of Japan’s post-war constitution by the ruling LDP would reinterpret the prohibition on the building of a Japanese army and transform the Self-Defense Forces from a defensive unit prohibited from starting or assisting in conflict to an offensive army. “There were increased concerns within Japan that the country could become involved in war once again. I think Tetsuko wanted to make sure that the next generation were aware of her experiences of the cruelty of war. I think the timing was right for making this film because it was when she was also concerned about these issues.”
Far from a dry, overly-particular adaptation overly focused on accuracy and simply existing as a warning, this is a story created with the desire to capture the intent of the original memoir. Of course, maps and photos of the time were used to accurately recreate this past, newspapers were referenced to ensure events and timelines were accurate, in an effort described both as reward and “a lot of effort” by Yakuwa. Importantly, this research went beyond official records, often swayed by propaganda and censorship at the time, to first-hand accounts on the actual dates for air raids beginning and clothing transitioning from Western styles to more traditional outfits amidst jingoistic nationalism alongside a desire to repurpose fabrics.
For recreating Jiyugaoka, the setting of the film and location of the real-life Tomoe Academy, this meant both speaking to researchers and getting old scraps of history from photos to memories from people living there today. Often passed through generations, this ensured that an accurate sense of place could be created.
But this is ultimately a fictionalized recreation connecting these strands of memories and places into a cohesive story and message that both recalls the pasts and resonates in the present. It’s not a slave to realism. There is inevitably some dramatization of her father’s struggles with conforming to the censorship and expected whole-hearted support of the war as a pro-piece orchestra player. Totto-chan’s overactive imagination that even makes the train carriages that make up the classrooms of the school move is brought to stunning visual clarity through sequences of vibrant, larger-than-life animated flair far beyond the bounds of reality.
Yet as the kids declare a love for the school, as we watch Totto’s friendship with a young polio-stricken boy named Yasuaki Yamamoto, as we see subtle changes in how the ticket man is replaced with a young woman implying he was sent to war, the reminder of the encroaching, destructive reality of war on happy, peaceful civilians is never forgotten.
We want to remember the good, and that’s why Tomoe Academy is remembered. Even today, a school driven by childish curiosity, embracing all abilities and disabilities, finding hope in these difficult times, is unfortunately rarer than it should be. The good of this school was a ray of hope in a dark time, and we need that now as much as it was needed then. But it’s in remembering this ray of hope that it contrasts and reinforces the pain of war, and the necessity for peace, then and now.
It’s why, as our conversation continues, the legacy of the past and present in the wake of Totto-chan continues to raise its head. Tetsuko even now has voiced opposition to war in Ukraine and Palestine, a reminder of her experiences she wants to avoid seeing repeated. Violence begets violence, and everyone suffers. As Yakuwa ponders, “There are lots of anime that deal with children suffering through Japan’s experience of nuclear war, the likes of Barefoot Gen and Grave of the Fireflies, showing Japan and these children as victims. Totto-chan plays the same role, but what’s important is that even before Japan was involved in the Asia-Pacific War, it had already been invading China and other countries.”
“Totto-chan’s destiny and that of Tomoe Gakuen are shaped by things that happened way before she is born. The same is happening in Gaza. The children who are dying in Gaza today have been dragged into a war that began way before they were born and are dying because of it. What I’m trying to say is that the tragedy of wars is one that starts much earlier and continues much later, connected throughout. It’s the same in Gaza, in Japan, in the US, in China. Any country, any race, will have a history as both the victim and the aggressor. What’s important is that we move forward with mutual understanding.”
This message is where Totto-chan takes a story of war and school and elevates into something that continues to resonate today. “In Totto-chan I tried to show that not through mutual understanding between different countries but through children with different forms of physical or learning disabilities understanding one another. I only hope that countries currently involved in war, whether Russia, Ukraine, Israel or Gaza, and the countries that are observers currently in Europe, the US and Japan, that this will help them to consider where the solution might lie.”
At the end of it all, if we are to end this cycle of suffering today and learn the lessons that Totto-chan hopes to espouse to its audience, we must remember why we fight for war to end in the first place: hope. The ultimate goal of any generation is to create a better world for the next, in the hope that more people don’t have to face the same struggles. What makes Totto-chan so effective as a piece of anti-war literature isn’t just that it says that war is bad, but it reminds us of the sparks of joy that can only exist in an environment freed from the suffering and anxieties that conflict can bring.
“It was important to get the children and the aspects of war in the same scene, because I wanted the audience to see the contrast,” notes Yakuwa as our conversation comes to an end. When I hear that, I think of how the war manifests in subtler ways than the most obvious radio announcements or heavy-handed police officers. The bountiful bento boxes themed to the land and sea replaced by grains as rations run dry. Seeing how the way some kids transform from hopes of the future to pretend wars while those who experienced are forever scarred by the experience.
Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window is a special film. I think even now to its quieter moments, of Totto-chan helping Yasuaki climb a tree for the first time and play till his clothes get dirty. The experience sends his mother to tears, because after worrying his illness would prevent him from having a normal childhood he can have an experience like this. And yet, even a moment like this can’t last forever.
This is a film that matches animated craftsmanship with a story that’s not only emotional and entertaining, but important and necessary. What future do you wish to build for the next generation? Because you’re building that world right now.
