'Homeless Chugakusei'

The homeless in Japan are mostly older men down on their luck, sleeping on cardboard in train stations or under blue tarps in public parks. Some are mentally disturbed or chronically ill, but their image in popular culture is surprisingly positive — ranging from the lovable loser to the ragged sage.

Based on a best-selling memoir by comic Hiroshi Tamura, Tomoyuki Furumaya's "Homeless Chugakusei" ("The Homeless Student") shows another, less common face of homelessness. It's hero is Hiroshi (Teppei Koike), a second-year student in an Osaka suburban junior high school who, just as summer vacation is about to start, comes home to find his family's furniture piled outside the front door of their apartment. His feckless father (Issei Ogata) has gotten them evicted, but neither Hiroshi's older brother, Kenichi (Akihiro Nishino), nor older sister, Yukiko (Chizuru Ikewaki), know his whereabouts. (Their beloved mother [Yuko Kotegawa] died when they were still children.)

Then Dad pedals up nonchalantly on his rattling bike, urges his three incredulous children to "stay strong" and, after calling this impromptu family meeting "dismissed" (kaisan) pedals away to who knows where. Instead of staying with his two siblings, Hiroshi tells them he will be all right and runs off with a few belongings and a handful of change. He spends that night sleeping in a nearby park, on a slide shaped and colored like a spiral pile of poo. He has just found his new home.