The opening scene shows mother Keiko (You) and her 12-year-old son, Akira (Yûya Yagira), lugging heavy suitcases on public transportation through Tokyo and up the steep stairs of their new apartment building. Once inside the new digs, two younger children emerge from the suitcases and are praised with big smiles from mother for being so quiet and good. A fourth child, daughter Kyoko, sneaks in later. Keiko treats this and the other ordeals she puts them through as though life is great sport, for which the children quietly pay a big price.

It is not the first time Keiko has burned her bridges and been forced to move from previous homes on the sly, and the kids play along. They have little choice. She’s cheerful, playful, affectionate and totally, cruelly, irresponsible. In their new situation, she reminds them of the rules of the game: the three younger children are to stay quiet and stay indoors, at all times. Not long after the move, she goes to work and leaves a note with some money saying she’ll be gone for a while. Akiru is left to make do as surrogate parent - keep them quiet, get them fed, and field their questions. He does a bang up job, but he is a child, as are they all. He wants to go to school. Instead, they home-school each other. Eleven-year-old Kyoko sees to the clean linens, taking care not to be seen on the porch with the laundry. The casting is inspired and impressively authentic. Though the action is sparse for much of the two-plus hours, all act wonderfully like kids, but it is Yûya Yagira who shoulders the film as the child-man whose nuanced performance captures the astonishing strength, pride, geniality, anger, resilience, anguish, and compassion of Akira.