Caught between two homelands

The 60-minute film follows six elderly Japanese war orphans and a child of a war orphan, documenting their complex journey between two countries and cultures.

Adopted by ordinary Chinese families, they grew up as "Japanese war orphans" in name but lived essentially as Chinese — their habits, accents and emotions rooted in the land that sheltered them.

"Unlike most productions about the war, which focus on grand historical narratives, we wanted to examine this period through a more intimate, human lens," says Xie Shenzhao, chief director of the documentary. "The war orphans' stories have an inherent international dimension. By focusing on the lives of individual orphans, we can see how ordinary people, regardless of nationality, were shaped by the war in ways that statistics or military accounts can never convey."

The documentary team traveled extensively across China and Japan, visiting cities including Harbin, Mudanjiang, Changchun, Shenyang and Lingyuan in northeastern China, as well as Tokyo, Saitama, Nagoya, Kumamoto and Osaka in Japan, to track down survivors now in their twilight years.

They found that while most orphans returned to Japan during repatriation efforts in the 1980s and 90s, their sense of identity and belonging remains unresolved.

"When we first approached them, we thought we'd be interviewing Japanese people. But their northeastern Chinese dialect was stronger than mine. They were essentially Chinese grandparents," notes Xie, who hails from Northeast China.