My Second Brother
1959 film by Shōhei Imamura
My Second Brother (にあんちゃん, Nianchan) is a 1959 Japanese drama film by Shōhei Imamura. The screenplay is based on the diary of ten-year-old zainichi (ethnic Korean Japanese) Sueko Yasumoto, which became a bestseller upon publication.
Plot
The film tells the story of four orphans living in an impoverished mining town.
Cast
Hiroyuki Nagato as Kiichi Yasumoto, eldest brother
Kayo Matsuo as Yoshiko, eldest sister
Takeshi Okimura as Kōichi, second brother
Akiko Maeda as Sueko, younger sister
Kō Nishimura as Gorō Mitamura
Yoshio Ōmori as Seki
Toshio Takahara as shop assistant (bicycle shop)
Taiji Tonoyama as Gengorō Henmi
Shinsuke Ashida as Sakai
Kazuko Yoshiyuki as Kanako Hori
Shōichi Ozawa as Haruo Kanayama
Natsuko Kahara as Kanako's mother
Reception
Film scholar Alexander Jacoby called My Second Brother an "uncharacteristically tender film" for the director.
Awards
Mainichi Film Award – Best Supporting Actress (Kanako Hori), Best Sound (Fumio Hashimoto)
Blue Ribbon Awards – Best Actor (Hiroyuki Nagato), Best Supporting Actor (Shōichi Ozawa)
References
External links
My Second Brother at IMDb
Lie, John. "Zainichi Recognitions: Japan's Korean Residents' Ideology and Its Discontents". The Asia-Pacific Journal. Retrieved 4 August 2021.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “My Second Brother” as 1959 film by Shōhei Imamura. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 1959 film by Shōhei Imamura. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2386819. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1959 and 2021.
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This entry incorporates text from “My Second Brother” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.