Over forty years ago, Japanese pop culture icon Tetsuko Kuroyanagi ended the memoir chronicling her childhood adventures at the unconventional Tomoe Gakuen with that beloved school burning down amidst the bombs of WWII. Now, inspired by contemporary events, she has returned to continue Totto's tale! ¬Beginning with her family's frantic effort to escape Tokyo and the worst of the war, ¬Kuro¬yanagi details how that little girl persevered through starvation and suffering to become a trailblazing actress, a champion for the deaf and children the world over, and one of the most successful entertainers in Japanese history.

Totto-chan, the Little Girl at the Window: The Sequel is written by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi. English translation by Yuki Tejima. Published by Vertical (Kodansha), November 18, 2025.

Kevin Cormack
Rating:

To call this book long-awaited is an understatement. It's the belated sequel to the phenomenally popular autobiographical Totto-chan, the Little Girl at the Window, first published in 1981. More recently, that book became a remarkable anime, and I voted it my top anime movie of 2024. Author Tetsuko Kuroyanagi is a darling of Japanese television entertainment; at the age of 92, she still presents the same weekday talk show she began back in 1976. Her irrepressible energy and joyfully eccentric personality shine through in every word of this fantastic sequel, published over forty years after the original.

The original memoir (and movie adaptation) ends during one of the later years of World War II, with Totto-chan's (the child Kuroyanagi's affectionate nickname) school destroyed in an air raid. It's a solemn end to a story filled with equal parts joy and despair. Split into four sections, the sequel brings us right back to Totto-chan's early childhood with a collection of delightful vignettes about her upbringing by her resolutely non-conformist parents in late 1930s and early 1940s Tokyo. Presumably, these anecdotes didn't quite fit into the earlier book's structure. Along with the second section, where Totto-chan and her family are forced to evacuate Tokyo following the school's destruction, these are by far the most evocative and engaging parts of the book. It's not that the later sections are boring – far from it, but there's something about the way Kuroyanagi narrates tales from a child's eye view that's little short of hypnotic. She writes in the third person, with Totto-chan herself like a character in a story – a mischievous, playful, energetic, yet always considerate child. It's easy to see how Kuroyanagi held onto her childlike nature even now, as she approaches her mid-nineties; she sounds like a fun, irreverent auntie telling a fascinating bedtime story.

Sections three and four illustrate Totto-chan's adolescence. Following a few years in the country, she returns to Tokyo to attend an all-girls' school, before eventually joining NHK's fledgling radio-and-TV training academy. It's at this point she name-drops a great many prominent Japanese entertainers of yore who may be familiar to native readers, but perhaps not to most Westerners! While the dangers of war and starvation are left far behind, Totto-chan's struggles with self-doubt eventually blossomed into a phenomenally successful career as an entertainer remain very compelling. It's clear she's always been a hard worker and an inspiration to many.

I can't recommend this second volume of Totto-chan's story enough. If you're a fan of autobiography or war memoirs, do yourself a favor and pick up either the first volume or watch the movie, and then treat yourself to what happened next. I'm glad I did.