Sandakan No. 8

Journalist Keiko Mitani locates Osaki, an elderly woman living with many cats in a remote village, and persuades her to tell her life story. The film then shifts into flashbacks to reveal Osaki's past and wartime experiences. This framing creates an intimate, documentary-like tone for the narrative.

Osaki is sold by her poverty-stricken family to work as a maid in Sandakan, believing she is heading to a hotel. Her mother gives her a hand-woven kimono as a last parting gift, a treasured keepsake she will cling to for years. The journey marks the start of a harsh, controlled life far from home.

On parting, Osaki's distraught mother gives her a kimono woven by hand, a symbol of home and love she cannot forget. Osaki resolves to keep it as a source of comfort in the years ahead. The kimono becomes her most treasured possession through the hardships of Sandakan.

Osaki arrives at Sandakan No. 8, a place she believes to be a hotel but soon learns is a brothel. She begins as a maid and struggles under the oppressive, transactional environment. The discovery marks the start of decades of exploitation tied to the brothel.

After two years, Osaki is coerced into becoming a prostitute by the brothel's owners. She endures long nights of service and the emotional toll that comes with commodified intimacy. The work erodes any early sense of security she might have hoped for.

During the long years at Sandakan No. 8, Osaki experiences a brief romance with a poor farmer who abandons her after seeing her exhausted and disheveled after a night of work. The encounter offers a fleeting glimpse of love but ends in abandonment. It underscores the loneliness of her life in the brothel.

As WWII ends, Osaki leaves Sandakan and returns to Japan. Reunifying with her homeland is overshadowed by the scorn she faces from family who see her past at Sandakan No. 8 as a stain. Her brother and sister-in-law reveal they bought a house with the money she had sent them and frame her as an embarrassment.

Osaki returns to Sandakan after facing rejection in Japan, seeking some stability or reconciliation with her past. The war's aftermath frames her choices and relationships, continuing the cycle of hardship she has endured. The flashbacks hint at unresolved trauma that haunts her identity.

At the end of the war, Osaki marries a Japanese man in Sandakan, seeking companionship and legitimacy. The marriage is short-lived as her husband dies, leaving her further isolated. His death compounds her sense of loss and displacement.

Returning to Japan, Osaki is shunned and treated as a pariah because of her Sandakan past. The stigma extends to her son, who lives a respectable life in a large city. The social rejection underscores the lasting consequences of trauma and exploitation.

Osaki endures a solitary life in Japan, living with cats and clinging to the kimono as a memory of home and survival. Her days are defined by recollection and quiet suffering, even as others move on around her. The frame emphasizes the human cost of wartime exploitation and stigma.

The documentary-tinged ending frames Osaki's memories as a crucial historical record about Japanese women who were sex slaves in Asian brothels. The interviewer preserves Osaki's testimony for public memory, ensuring the past is not forgotten. The film closes with a sense of testimony rather than resolution.