Alternate Best Actor 2004: Yuya Yagira in Nobody Knows

Yuya Yagira did not receive an Oscar nomination, despite winning CANNES, for portraying Akira Fukushima in Nobody Knows. 

Nobody Knows follows a family of children abandoned by their mother (You). 

Yuya Yagira plays the oldest of the children, although oldest though still very much a child, who is charged with initial responsibilities of taking care of the other children and running essential chores like grocery shopping. Yagira’s performance is one of those child performances, where the notion of it being on any alternative level instantly leaves your mind. There are no traits of anything related to weaker children turns, he’s wholly within every scene instantly, though this shouldn’t be too surprising given the film is directed by Hirokazu Kore-eda who has a particular knack for getting strong work out of his child performers. Yagira’s performance is remarkable by the way we see the face of the boy but often there is the spirit of the man. As much as his features obviously are of youth, his eyes are from a much older person, as we almost instantly are granted the history between Akira and his mother. Unlike the other children who are still in a state of accepting essentially the reality presented to them by their mother, Akira very much knows the facts of the reality, and that is something we see in Yagira’s face. There are no illusions about it, even when she speaks initially with a phony “sell” about their situation, we see in every reaction from Yagira the absolute reality of the situation without a hint of delusion. The years of coming to terms is in this little boy, whose mother in no way is allowing him a child’s levity in his life. 

Yagira’s performance often is working within silences of his existence, where he skillfully emphasizes the way this is just the only way of life for Akira at this time. There is a certain passivity that still remains dynamic in his performances as he goes about his “chores” which are far more the actions of an adult maintaining his family. When we see him at the convenience store he carries a weight in his actions of routine, a routine of the many years of going through these motions of his life that isn’t at all the life of what a boy should be. Even when he is temporarily taken by the shop wrongly believing he shoplifted toys from the store, though in fact other boys in the store planted the toys in his bag, Yagira’s delivering is stating his case simply that he didn’t steal anything, however he doesn’t becomes distressed nor does he becomes desperate. Rather there is a knowing quality of this just being another problem in his life problems, and only puts up a basic defense before being saved by another worker at the store who actually saw what happened. Yagira wonderfully is able to genuinely embody someone taking it all inside which is so incredible because he still has the face of this young boy however with the real burden of so much more. One particularly incredible moment comes when his mother is making yet another excuse for why she will be away, and Yagira’s truly exasperated delivery of essentially calling her a bad person and mother, has such a powerful impact. Yagira’s words cut through with those years of her making excuses and the pent up dismay releases itself in that moment. 

Unfortunately Akira’s verbal attack just leads to more nonsense from his mom who seems to fully disappear leaving Akira to now fully try to take care of his other siblings. A task which is beyond a boy with limited resources and Yagira’s performance becomes a fascinating chimera between youth and age. There are moments of genuine warmth where we see him trying to cheer up his siblings, such as emphasizing the reality of Santa Claus. Yagira’s fantastic in his ability to balance this combination between playing the dad and also being the child himself in these moments. He is able to naturally segue between an attempt at maturity, the boy just having fun, but also a bit of a struggle within it to try to rectify the two sides of the situation. The strength of Yagira’s performance is how natural it all is despite how specific every moment of his life is. We follow him as the difficulty of the situation eats away at him. That quiet exasperation being the exasperation of someone truly older, and what ends up becoming an escape is Akira trying to make friends, and in turn act like just a normal boy his age. Yagira, even in these largely silent moments, or at most the dialogue is largely just kids interacting with one another, realizes this strange dichotomy. Where the boy is just being a boy, yet even in these interactions of just trying to play, there’s more so of a nagging quality in his eyes in his physical manner of someone who knows just playing is in some way a failure on his part to meet his responsibilities. There’s no simplicity in Yagira’s performance as he emphasizes the forced unnatural state of being so naturally. 

A contrasting idea to the moments of being the boy is when we see him looking for any kind of help, particularly from the men he thinks may be fathers. Yagira is so matter of fact in every moment, he isn’t playing it as a son seeking a father so much, as just someone desperately but quietly and sincerely looking for some source of help for his family. There’s a degree of shyness but even more so this direct maturity where as much as you sense he’s keeping it inside, the pain of the situation is something you see just sitting with him. The situation continues to essentially exacerbate consistently and where we see Akira’s own resolve fading as he does, which should never have been an outside notion for him, he starts to play around more as a kid himself. Whether it is with his questionable friends, who shoplift and dismiss his smell, or finding time in a baseball field, Yagira artfully shows the boy coming out more, but still a strange imperfection even then. There is no freedom of the situation at any point fully, even as he is playing on the baseball field earnestly, in a way a boy should, but Akira can’t due to the selfish nature of his parents. He’s never quite pure and the burden is there even when he’s desperately trying to escape it. Something that becomes all too evident when the family is faced with a tragedy bound to happen given the situation. Yagira’s performance throughout this sequence is very moving, albeit not in an overly emotional way in the way you might expect. The pain though is very real, though painful in the way you see that even how he interacts with the grief still has a distance of someone who can only do so much and still even in this is taking on responsibilities that should never have been his own. The tragedy of it is all the more difficult because we see that in his moments here his reaction isn’t of true change, as their situation is as desperate despite the harrowing circumstances. Yagira still presents the dutiful nature of Akira struggling his way through being an “adult” he should’ve never had to be. It is a captivating and powerful performance, one that exists on just the truth, a theoretically idiosyncratic truth, however not for a second does it feel like acting, or unnatural, it feels like a deeply painful reality thanks to Yuya Yagira outstanding performance.