Over the past 14 years, Kou Aizhe, the host of the Chinese podcast Gushi FM (Story FM), has been searching for the midwife who delivered him. She was a Japanese woman who arrived in 1940 in the puppet state of Manchukuo, working at a hospital in Huadian County (桦甸县), Jilin Province.
In 1945, as Japan lost the war, her family of four attempted suicide — she and her husband strangled their two children before taking poison themselves. She was the only one who survived, rescued by local Chinese. She later married a Chinese man and remained in northeast China, becoming a respected obstetrician. After retirement, she worked as a midwife — delivering all four of Aizhe’s cousins.
In 1992, she and her husband returned to Japan. Since then, Aizhe’s family and their neighbors in China lost contact with her.
In 2024, Kou Aizhe traveled between Japan and northeast China seven times, searching the midwife, interviewing Japanese and Chinese survivors, family members, neighbors, and researchers. He unearthed rare archives, photographs, and testimonies that reveal not only the tragic legacy of war for ordinary people — including Japanese civilians — but also the human connections forged between Chinese and Japanese individuals in the decades after the war.
2025 marks the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. Gushi FM presents a visual documentary and a companion podcast series, re-examining the war through a tumultuous personal story.
On August 22, 2025, Blaues Haus Stiftung will host a public screening of this documentary at our Hannover library. The protagonist of the film and the director of its namesake audio documentaries (podcast series), Kou Aizhe, will attend in person for a post-screening discussion. Admission is free, registration required via Eventbrite. Please scan the QR code below to register the event.
Screening Information
Date: August 22, 2025
Time: 19:00–21:00
Location: Blaues Haus Bibliothek
Address: Blaues Haus Bibliothek, Maschstr. 7, 30169 Hannover
Film Information
Title: In Search of My Japanese Midwife
Director: Fang Manman
Release Year: 2025
Languages: Chinese & Japanese (with English subtitles)
Film Length: 53 minutes
Post-Screening Guest Speaker
Kou Aizhe is the protagonist of the film In Search of My Japanese Midwife and director of the namesake audio documentary. He is the founder of Gushi FM (Story FM), a Chinese audio documentary platform dedicated to real-life storytelling. He previously worked for Swedish National Radio and Canadian Television Network’s Beijing bureau, with over 15 years of media experience, including 7 years as a foreign correspondent.
Event Review:
