Wife of a Spy 2020

Set in Kobe during 1940, Yūsaku Fukuhara, Issey Takahashi, runs an international import-export business and finds himself drawn into a tense web of suspicion when a British silk merchant is arrested on espionage charges by a unit of the military police. Taiji, Masahiro Higashide, the unit’s newly promoted leader and a childhood friend of Satoko, warns that Yūsaku is under scrutiny under the National Mobilization Law because of his Western clothing, overseas connections, and open contact with foreigners. The arrest ends with the merchant’s departure to Shanghai, and the scene lightly reveals how dangerous the climate has become for anyone seen as too cosmopolitan.

Satoko Fukuhara, Yu Aoi, is introduced as a glamorous, quick-witted figure who stars in an amateur heist film alongside Yūsaku’s nephew Fumio, Ryota Bando. Back at the office, Yūsaku screens this little film for colleagues during a bo nen kai, a ritual of year-end drinking and camaraderie. After the new year, a business trip is proposed—to Manchuria—to import affordable medicines and other goods. The journey is extended beyond the planned two weeks, and upon their return they bring back a woman whom Yūsaku does not tell Satoko about. This mystery woman is Hiroko Kusakabe, Hyunri, and soon a rumor circulates that she has been murdered.

Satoko’s suspicions sharpen when Taiji hints that Hiroko’s death might be connected to Yūsaku’s travel. Satoko confronts the new arrival, Fumio’s reports become clearer, and she learns that Yūsaku and Fumio have uncovered something chilling: a series of biological experiments conducted in Manchuria, involving civilians and contagious diseases, carried out by a covert facility operating in the region. The evidence includes notes translated into English by Fumio and a short film that shows the facilities, the corpses, vivisection, and the burning of bodies. Satoko’s anger flares as she accuses Yūsaku of being an American spy or a traitor to their own country, but Yūsaku clarifies that his aim is not espionage for any nation—he wants to reveal the truth in the name of justice.

Back at work, Yūsaku places the incriminating package into a safe, but Satoko learns the combination and opens the safe herself. A missed chess move turns fatal: a misplaced chesspiece signals that the notebook containing critical notes has vanished. Fumio is arrested by Taiji and the military police and tortured for sharing national secrets with an enemy. When Taiji brings Yūsaku in, the officer reveals that Fumio confessed, though Taiji remains skeptical of forced statements. A second, longer film exists—one that purportedly contains more detail—and Yūsaku explains that he intends to show it to the Americans.

The political climate tightens as 1941 unfolds and the United States imposes an oil embargo on Japan. Legal exit becomes impossible, but Yūsaku manages a hazardous escape plan: he and Satoko decide to leave by smuggling themselves out of Japan in a shipping crate. They swap yen for watches and jewelry to fund the voyage. The plan is to separate, with Satoko taking the film of the experiments hidden in a freighter’s shipping crate and Yūsaku attempting to reach America from Shanghai. However, the smuggling effort encounters treachery: the man hired to smuggle Satoko betrays her under the watch of the military police, who interrogate her with the same force used on Fumio. Satoko pleads to Taiji to show the same kindness he once did, but he strikes her instead, declaring that she has earned death for treason. The film Satoko carries is screened by the police, only to reveal that Yūsaku swapped it with an amateur film of Satoko and Fumio, leaving Satoko with no hard evidence. She is released, and Yūsaku sails away alone toward Shanghai.

In March 1945, Satoko has spent months in a mental hospital, awaiting release through the help of a friend, Dr. Nozaki, Takashi Sasano. Nozaki returns with a rumor that Yūsaku was seen boarding a ship in Bombay bound for Los Angeles, a vessel believed to have sunk. Later that night, Kobe is ravaged by an air raid, and Satoko, left barefoot, wanders the devastated city to the sea, crying out in grief and fear as the hospital collapses around her.

The closing note frames the broader tragedy: Yūsaku Fukuhara is officially listed as dead in 1946, though hints of a forged death certificate whisper that not all truth has vanished. Satoko, by contrast, eventually leaves for the United States a few years after, carrying with her the memory of a husband who chose to reveal unspeakable acts to the world rather than let silence protect complicity.

This sweeping, morally cautious drama unfolds with a quiet insistence on memory, accountability, and the cost of seeking justice in a time when fear and loyalty blur into each other. It builds its tension not through overt battles but through the slow uncovering of evidence, the strains within a family, and the dangerous calculus of doing what is right under a regime that does not welcome truth.