The World of Kanako

Tetsuya Nakashima directed this 2014 Japanese crime thriller, which follows Akikazu Fujishima, a former police detective whose violent tendencies and drinking have already torn his family apart. When his daughter Kanako goes missing, his ex-wife asks him to find her. Kanako was widely seen as a model student and a well-liked girl, so as Akikazu works through the people and places in her life, the picture he holds of her gives way to something far darker than he imagined. His search becomes a descent through the parts of her life she kept hidden, and it forces him to confront how much of himself he recognizes in what he learns.

The film sits between Nakashima's Confessions (2010) and The Brightest Sun (2026) in the director's filmography, and he wrote the screenplay with Miako Tadano and Nobuhiro Monma. Koji Yakusho plays Akikazu, with Nana Komatsu as Kanako. The large supporting cast includes Hiroya Shimizu, Satoshi Tsumabuki, Joe Odagiri and Asuka Kurosawa, among 46 credited performers.

Reception placed the film in middling territory. On IMDb it holds 6.5 out of 10 from roughly 6,500 votes, and on TMDB 6.4 out of 10 from about 230 votes. A critics' rating of 6.6 out of 10 from 19 reviews is close to the audience scores, suggesting broad agreement rather than a sharp divide between reviewers and viewers. The film runs 118 minutes.