Resumen:
This article examines how childhood is adressed in the Hirokazu Koreeda's films Nobody Knows, I Wish and Like Father, Like Son. Being identifiable as inheritances of the original Japanese homu dorama -or home drama-films, they constitute an homogeneous corpus to explore the issue of family destructuring from a childish perspective. This issue happens to be a main plot motif in the filmography of the japanese director. Using a textual analysis supported by particularly expressive scenes this article explores, first, how the protagonist children physically and emotionally face this traumatic experience: their isolation before their parents, their yearning for them and their efforts to regenerate the family ties. All of these are constant tropes in the identified films. Second, this article analyses two archetypes produced by family destructuring: the inmature adult and the adult-child. Finally, Koreeda's knowing look to children is made clear in the exceptional capacity of creating strong bonds that he attributes to them. This fact reinforces another thematic constant in his ouvre: the conception of family as an institution supported by affective more than blood ties.
