On the Nordic Asia podcast this week Dr Satoko Naito interviewed Dr Kanako Kuramitsu about her research on an unseen population: children of consensual relationships between Japanese fathers and Chinese mothers in the war years. The emphasis on the word “consensual” is mine, meant to underscore that this is not the most commonly heard narrative coming out of the region in those years. This research is part of the Children Born of War (CBOW) project. The short podcast was pretty eye-opening for me and it also introduced a short film that Dr Kuramitsu helped develop to bring these stories to a wider audience. It highlights the love those relationships had, and the challenges that the mothers and children faced during the Cultural Revolution, forcing them to burn all records of their fathers, making “repatriation” to Japan very difficult after relations normalized in 1972. You can watch this short film below, and learn more on the project website →