At the close of Shinji Somai’s seminal childhood portrait “Moving” (1993), its young protagonist takes a detour on her way home from school, running lightfooted along the pavement — and the film’s scrolling credits — stopping just short of a hop, skip, and jump. A passerby asks where she’s going. “To the future!” she said.
It’s a mantra that the film’s co-screenwriter, Satoko Okudera, has taken to heart. After winning the Japan Academy Prize for Best Screenplay in 1995 for “Haunted School,” she cemented herself along with animator Mamoru Hosoda when they worked together on “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time” (2006), an anime sequel to Yasutaka Tsutsui’s iconic adolescent sci-fi novel. Hosoda and Okudera would go on to collaborate on two further anime features: familial cyberthriller “Summer Wars” (2009) and parenthood drama “Wolf Children” (2012).
It’s a triple occasion for which to speak with Okudera: Her collaborations with Mamoru Hosoda have returned to theaters in new 4K remasters, “Moving” is now streaming internationally on MUBI, and her latest script, “Kokuho,” directed by Lee Sang-il, has surpassed box-office expectations to become the #2 highest-grossing Japanese live-action film of all time in its home country. The film centers on the life of a male kabuki actor who plays female roles and is Japan’s entry for the 2026 Best International Feature Oscar.
Ahead of the film’s release, Okudera spoke warmly and candidly with IndieWire about her three decades as a semi-visible creative in Japan’s film industry — the first interview she has ever given to an English-language publication.
Writing was a pursuit that came naturally to Satoko Okudera from an early age. “I loved constructing sentences and fitting words together,” said Okudera. “I applied to competitions as a student, and after applying to several, I won one, which gave me my start in my career.”
Okudera’s first professional screenwriting credit was on Shinji Somai’s feature “Moving,” now widely regarded as one of the greatest Japanese films of its era. “Since the protagonist is an elementary school student, I think [Somai] wanted someone who was at that time an amateur, if you will — to capture that essence,” said Okudera. “That’s why Satoshi Okonogi and I both worked on it together. We both received offers, and the original intent was to pick the better screenplay, but in the end, it turned out that the director felt the sum of both parts would be the best out of all possibilities. That’s why there was a two-writer situation.”
Renko, the film’s child protagonist, stands out. She’s headstrong and determined, always speaking her mind. It’s an honest archetype that resonates in Okudera’s subsequent screenplays. “When I would watch movies as a child, women were portrayed as the sexy tool or the device to drag the male character’s feet in a movie,” said Okudera. “I remember being very frustrated. Why can’t they be more human? Why can’t they save themselves from a pinch rather than always having to rely on the male character? I think a lot of that type of frustration comes out in my screenplays.”
Okudera excels at writing intimate interpersonal moments between characters that are believably and recognizably everyday. “I don’t try to create fictitious characters; it’s more that I try to create a projection of someone I think would exist,” she explained. “Perhaps that’s why there isn’t much abstraction in these characters.”
Okudera’s work spans horror, fantasy, and historical drama, but the heart of the screenplay is always a coming-of-age narrative. “In a lot of the films that I tend to gravitate towards, we get to see the growth of the main character,” she said. “Watching our protagonists go from their previous version, watching them overcome challenges, doing what we can as an audience in cheering them on, and seeing them become the next version of themselves — I find that very satisfying.”
Many of Okudera’s screenplays have been based on novels, including “Moving” and “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.” Domestically, it’s commonplace for films to draw from best-selling novels or manga. “Whenever I’m adapting from an existing work, my first step is to fall in love with it,” she said. “I’ll try to tell people, as a fan, ‘Look, guys, there’s such a fun and amazing story here.” I keep that lens in mind as I begin to write. I don’t want to make a carbon copy of whatever the original underlying work is — I think ‘adaptation’ carries important meaning. Thinking about the moments in the story that leave an impact and how to translate them to the screen is a key part of the process.”
A decade on from “Moving,” Okudera received an offer from then-up-and-coming anime director Mamoru Hosoda to pen his reimagining of “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.” “At the time, it was rare for live-action screenplay writers to work on anime,” said Okudera. “But Hosoda is a huge cinephile, so perhaps he had seen some of my films and enjoyed them.”
“I don’t approach [writing for anime] too differently — you’re still given a two-hour time window within which to tell a story. But anime has more freedom,” she said. “Oftentimes with live-action, I’m told, ‘Well, we can’t do the scene that way — because it’s just not feasible within the production budget.’”
Okudera’s role in working with Hosoda took on a different form with each project, but a collaborative back-and-forth defined their process. “With ‘The Girl Who Leapt Through Time,’ we were working from a source novel,” said Okudera. “I wrote the draft, then Hosoda would refer back to the source novel, and we’d make adjustments to the screenplay accordingly. ‘Wolf Children’ was more of a joint writing process. I’d write the first draft, and Hosoda would take that and make a second draft, and pass that back to me, from which I’d make a third draft.”
Hosoda’s personal experiences are at the core of “Summer Wars” and “Wolf Children.” “In the process of marrying his wife, he had to visit her hometown and extended family, an experience he tried to capture in “Summer Wars.” “‘Wolf Children’ is a story about his own mother,” explained Okudera. “We tried to extract what we believed were the key points that would build the foundation for a movie. My process wasn’t so much to try to match his experience to my own, but to match those personal moments that moved him to experiences that a lot of us have been through — perhaps in different ways, but with a similar essence.”
Asked if hers is an emotionally propelled process, Okudera said, “I’m a very emotionally driven person. The person who taught me screenwriting used to say, ‘Emotion is what drives action — without emotion, there are no actions.’ To this day, I keep that in the back of my mind when writing characters.”
Satoko Okudera still works in relative obscurity despite contributing to many of Japan’s biggest films. “The Japanese film industry cares a lot about a film’s cast and its director, rather than the more technical creatives behind a film,” said Okudera. “I’ve been in this industry for 30 years, and yet I’m still asked in interviews, ‘Oh, what else have you written?’”
“It was very challenging over the last three decades to be a woman in this industry. I think it’s only in the last decade where we’ve begun to see a lot more female producers and directors — and that’s shifting the perspective,” she said. “In the two decades prior, I would typically be the only woman in the rooms where key creative decisions were being made. Often, my opinions or feedback would be passed over in favor of other directions that the team wanted to steer the ship in. Take a film’s heroine, for example. Oftentimes, they would want to turn that character into something that would serve the male audience. More recently, that type of direction has become outdated — in a way, even embarrassing to request. The environment has become more conducive to integrating and incorporating women’s perspectives and opinions.”
Indeed, women are at the forefront of Japan’s internationally recognized cinema today. Chie Hayakawa premiered “Renoir” in competition at Cannes this year, a film that pays homage to “Moving.” “Hearing that parallel drawn makes me extremely happy,” said Okudera. “I think, as a creator, it’s impossible to fully escape from the influence of those who have come before you — and I, too, am part of that ecosystem. If my contributions to the industry can in any way help cast that bridge from the past to the future and be part of that larger history, nothing would make me happier.”
Okudera is cognizant of her audience as she writes. “I try to imagine the type of audience that would come to see this type of story. With so many forms of entertainment at our fingertips, the decision to go see a movie becomes more meaningful, so I do everything I can to make sure it’s an enjoyable experience,” she said. “I find myself wondering, ‘Who are the people going to see the film?’ You have your theories, but you never really know until the film releases. I imagined a lot of older kabuki fans going to see ‘Kokuho,’ but it turned out a lot of younger audiences showed up for it — it was them that pushed it into major hit territory.”
“I want to deliver stories to the people who need them the most,” Okudera added. “When I was a salaryman, I would stop by the theater on my way home and watch a film. Whatever was weighing on me at the office simply blew away because of that film journey — that rollercoaster ride that I decided to board on the way home from work. I like to go to the theater anonymously when the film I’ve worked on releases. Sometimes, I’ll hear the person sitting next to me turn to their friends and say, ‘That was such a fun movie,’ ‘it was amazing.’ Those comments mean more to me than what’s said on social media.”
“Kokuho” has filled theaters with many of these comments, and its success has surprised its writer. “On the day of the first screening of ‘Kokuho,’ I felt a surge of joy, thinking, ‘This is exactly what I’ve been wanting to see!’” she said. “At the same time, I had no idea whether audiences would be interested in a three-hour film about traditional performing arts, and I was worried about its box-office performance. None of us ever imagined it would become such a hit. A North American release has been confirmed for next year. I feel both anxious and excited to see how audiences there will respond to this story of a man who sought to become one with his art.”
With thanks to Mikey McNamara and Kanako Fujita for translation. GKIDS opens “Kokuho” in theaters starting November 14.