Finding Takashi

Finding Takashi tells the true story of Takashi Akutagawa, the second son of Japan’s greatest writer, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa. After Ryūnosuke’s suicide shocks the nation, Takashi is left to grow up in the shadow of his famous father, along with his older brother, Hiroshi, and his younger brother, Yasushi. While Hiroshi pursues a career in the theater, and Yasushi demonstrates musical aptitude even from a young age, Takashi hopes to follow in his father’s footsteps as a novelist.

The Second World War uprooted many lives, and the Akutagawa family was no exception. A prodigious student of the literary arts, Takashi is drafted into the Imperial Japanese Army as an interpreter and infantryman. Art gives way to action, and he is initially sent to Korea and then to far-off Burma to engage in brutal jungle warfare. Painstakingly researched, using records from the Imperial Japanese Army, letters sent by Takashi, and personal accounts by his brothers, comrades-in-arms, and those close to him, Finding Takashi is a tragic and inspiring story of the inhumanity of war, and of the timeless bonds of fathers and sons.