THE MOVING PICTURE BOY ARCHIVE

KAZE NO NAKA NO KODOMO

Original title: 風の中の子供
Transliteration: Kaze no naka no kodomo
English translation of title: Children in the Wind
Year of release: 1937
Director: Hiroshi Shimizu
Country of Production: Japan
Genre: Drama
Length: 1 hour 26 minutes
Language: Japanese
Availability: A DVD with English subtitles has been released (the screenshots below are from this DVD), but the quality is not the best, and at time of writing no better quality version seems to be available.

Principal boys: below, left, Jun Yokoyama as Sampei, credited in this and other films of the time as Bakudan Kozô ('Bomb-boy' or 'Explosive-boy', presumably to suggest the tearaway persona of the characters he tended to play); below, middle, Masao Hayama as Zenta, Sampei's older brother. Below, right is the boy who plays Kinta, the two brothers' chief local rival, but the Editor has been unable to ascertain the actor's name.

Synopsis
In this beautiful work by Hiroshi Shimizu, when young Sampei's father is arrested on suspicion of embezzling funds from his company, Sampei and his brother Zenta's world begins to fall apart. Their mother is forced to work, and Sempai himself is sent away from his mother to live with his uncle. The story is told from Sampei's point of view; the boys can scarcely comprehend what is going on in the adults' world, just as the adults, preoccupied with their own troubles, do not understand what is going on in their children's world.

This film featured in Mark Cousins' 2013 documentary A Story of Children and Film (available on DVD).

Source material
Based on the 1936 novel of the same name by Jōji Tsubota, the novel has been translated into English and can be read here (PDF opens in a new tab).

Screenshots