To fully understand Hirokazu Koreeda’s new science fiction film, “Sheep in the Box” (箱の中の羊), you need to know two things about Japan: Japan is using dolls in interesting ways and Japanese homes have limited storage space is limited.
Japan has a growing elderly population and there are companies who make dolls to help people who are lonely and even those suffering from dementia.
Life-sized dolls are repopulating or keeping the memory of the people who have left alive in at least two rural Japanese towns Nagoro in Shikoku and Ichino in Kyushu.
- An Aging Japanese Village Put Life-Sized Dolls Everywhere to Feel More Alive (28 October 2024)
- This Japanese Village Was on the Verge of Being Deserted so a Resident Filled it with Life-Size Dolls (18 November 2023)
It’s from this cultural context that Koreeda has written and directed the film, “Sheep in the Box.” The title doesn’t come from Japanese, but instead from a 1943 French children’s book, “The Little Prince.” In Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s book (Le Petit Prince), the Prince isn’t satisfied with the drawings made of the sheep by the narrator, a pilot, until the pilot makes drawing is made of a sheep in a box. While the Prince cannot see the sheep, in his imagination, he can see the sheep exactly as he envisioned it.
In the film, “Sheep in the Box,” a young couple’s grief is answered by a heart-shaped question that comes in a box. Otone Komoto 甲本音々（こうもと おとね）(Haruka Ayase) and Kensuke Komoto甲本健介（こうもと けんすけ） (Daigo Yamamoto) have not been able to move past their young son’s death. They live in a Japan that is similar to the current reality except that robots now can be manufactured to look like and act similar to one’s departed loved ones. Both are involved in constructing customized housing and it’s interesting to see the considerations they discuss. Houses must fit the land, but also the needs of a specific family.
The Komoto family is broken. The death of their son hit them hard. Maybe a humanoid boy would allow them to say things they wished they could have said or do the things they never had a chance to do with Kakeru before he died. While Otone favors the purchase of the humanoid robot who becomes like the boy, Kakeru 甲本翔（こうもと かける, that they lost, Kensuke resists yet eventually forms a connection with Kakeru. Kakeru and other humanoid robots from the same company are able to learn, trying to play off cues from their owners, attempting to be as much like the lost loved one as possible.
Yet in a healthy person, grief has stages. Japanese culture recognizes anniversaries of death and has a time (O-bon) for greeting the souls who return one a year. However, one of the stages of grief is acceptance. And when that comes, what happens so a humanoid who will never get older in terms of appearance, but can discern human emotions. What happens to these robots when their owners no longer need them and move on?
The bright and optimistic humanoid Kakeru considers what will happen, particularly when he meets other robots who wander aimlessly now and Kakeru learns lessons from his parents Otone and Kensuke to come up with a solution.
In some ways, this reminds me of the Japanese TV series “The Hot Spot,” in comparison to “Resident Alien.” In the Japanese series, the extraterrestrial isn’t a threat and just wants to live a comfortable life. Koreeda’s film seems to mix the question of whether these humanoids have souls since they can think with the Shinto belief that everything has a spirit of some sort.
“Sheep in the Box” is a gentle, contemplative science fiction film that looks at death and grief and whatever helps to get us through them and builds on our affection for cute robots by making them human but helpless. Science fiction and thinking robots don’t have to be threatening to humans in which case, maybe the humans become the problem. “Sheep in the Box” seems like an imaginative reaction to things that are happening in Japan.
Cinematographer Ryūto Kondō shot in 35 mm and presents a world that is clean and forests that are almost magical. Life is only complicated by grief. This journey is worth taking not only for what it says about grief, but also because is shows another concept of humanoid robots reacting and rejecting the world of humans and their purpose in it.
“Sheep in the Box” had its world premiere at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival on 16 May 2026. It was released by Toho in Japan on 29 May 2026 and will be released in the US on 24 July 2026.
Characters NB:
甲 means of the first rank.
音 means sound.
健 means health or strength, but the character is close to 建築 which means architecture.
翔 means to soar, to glide or fly.