{"id":61185,"date":"2025-11-20T10:00:26","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T16:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/?p=61185"},"modified":"2026-01-16T20:10:04","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T02:10:04","slug":"totto-chan-the-myth-of-hans-asperger-and-disability-pride-amidst-fascism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/totto-chan-the-myth-of-hans-asperger-and-disability-pride-amidst-fascism\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cTotto-chan,\u201d the Myth of Hans Asperger, and Disability Pride amidst Fascism"},"content":{"rendered":"

I used to think the story of Hans Asperger, the Austrian doctor for whom \u201cAsperger Syndrome\u201d was named, would make the perfect movie. This was back when it was believed that Hans Asperger was working to protect his neurodiverse patients and students from the Nazi death camps. The original 2015 edition of Steve Silberman\u2019s book NeuroTribes<\/em> gives an overview of the old understanding of who Asperger was: he operated under Nazi rule but never joined the party, and when speaking to Nazi officials, he highlighted the most gifted kids on the autism spectrum in hopes that this would spare those of all functioning levels from eugenics. That understanding of Asperger as a savior of the neurodivergent changed with the 2018 publication of Asperger<\/em>\u2019<\/em>s Children<\/em> by historian Edith Sheffer, which contained the bombshell discovery that Asperger referred several of his more severely disabled patients to the Am Spiegelgrund death camp.<\/p>\n

Suddenly this history seemed a lot less inspirational and movie friendly. After this revelation, the term \u201cAsperger\u2019s\u201d went from a merely dated diagnostic term for hyperverbal forms of autism to something uglier\u2014most people wouldn\u2019t want to describe their disability with the name of a eugenicist Nazi collaborator.<\/p>\n

Halfway across the world, at the same time Asperger was operating his clinic\/school in Vienna, another man, Sosaku Kobayashi, was doing what few others were doing in providing comprehensive education for children with a variety of abilities\u2014and he was doing all he could to protect even his most vulnerable students from Japan\u2019s authoritarian government. The story of Kobayashi is the inspirational cinematic tale that I once envisioned Hans Asperger\u2019s story being, and it turns out an amazing movie of this story already exists. I got to attend the US premiere of Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window<\/em> at the 2025 New York International Children\u2019s Film Festival, where it won the festival\u2019s Animated Feature Grand Prize. It\u2019s the best new movie I\u2019ve seen this year, and its portrait of discrimination, caregiving, and war-making is one that we desperately need right now.<\/p>\n\n

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Related readings<\/div>\n\n
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\n \"\"<\/a> <\/figure>\n <\/div>\n\n
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\n Reviews<\/a>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n Autism Aesthetics<\/a>\n <\/h5>\n\n
\n \n \"Michael <\/a>\n \n Michael B\u00e9rub\u00e9 <\/a>\n <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n \n

For half a century, Tetsuko Kuroyanagi has hosted Tetsuko<\/em>\u2019<\/em>s Room<\/em>, Japan\u2019s first TV talk show, winning a Guinness World Record for most TV broadcasts by the same host. Born in 1933, she didn\u2019t receive any formal diagnosis of neurodivergence as a child. But in her 1981 memoir\u2014a common text in Japanese elementary schools\u2014and in the 2023 anime based on that memoir\u2014Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window<\/em>\u2014the young Tetsuko shows clear signs of ADHD, and possible signs of autism. Affectionately called \u201cTotto-chan,\u201d the young girl can\u2019t sit still, can\u2019t read the room, and says whatever pops into her mind. On her first day of school, she drives her teacher crazy by fidgeting loudly with her desk, and nearly falls out a window when she sees street musicians pass by. Within the first week of first grade, Totto is expelled.<\/p>\n

After being dismissed from regular school, Totto fortunately transfers to Tomoe Gakuen, a progressive elementary school teaching students with a wide range of abilities. When she first arrives, she\u2019s excited to see the school\u2019s classes are held inside a train car (like many a neurodivergent kid, she\u2019s very<\/em> into trains). Her first meeting with the school\u2019s headmaster, Sosaku Kobayashi, confirms that Tomoe is the place she needs to be. Mr. Kobayashi lets Totto talk about whatever she wants for hours, eventually leading her to talk about her biggest fear: that she might be a \u201cbad kid.\u201d The headmaster assures her that she\u2019s a \u201cvery good kid.\u201d This is the first part of the movie where I get close to tearing up.<\/p>\n

When writing about her time at the real-life Tomoe Gakuen, Tetsuko emphasizes how the school sheltered its students from the horrors of the outside world\u2014World War II was accelerating all around this small Japanese school\u2014until it became impossible to do so. \u201cTerrible things were beginning to happen in various parts of the world,\u201d reads one passage from the memoir. \u201cBut as the children discussed their tiny field, they were still enfolded in the very heart of peace.\u201d<\/p>\n

Totto-chan<\/em> ends with Tomoe Gakuen being burned to the ground in the firebombing of Tokyo. Totto and her family flee the city by train, while Mr. Kobayashi looks upon the destruction with the promise that the next school he builds will be even better (he never did get to build another). This refuge for outcast children within an authoritarian state ultimately gets destroyed by the armies at war with said state\u2014the same fate met by Hans Asperger\u2019s school in Vienna, except Tomoe Gakuen seems to have been a true refuge for all its students and not just the ones who could pass as \u201cnormal.\u201d
\n<\/p>\n

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These are terrifying times for people with disabilities. \u201cTotto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window\u201d shows a hopeful vision of how it\u2019s possible for us to thrive even in terrifying times.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t hear [Republicans] talking about making sure disabled kids have access to a public education,\u201d remarked Jessica Tarlov, the host of Fox News\u2019s The Five, <\/em>on March 20, 2025. In response, Greg Gutfeld\u2014who now says he identifies as a Nazi<\/a>\u2014gave the game away: \u201cBecause we\u2019re against it.\u201d<\/p>\n

As I write this piece in October 2025, reports are spreading<\/a> that the entire department of special education at the Department of Education\u2014the whole of which the Trump administration has previously threatened to destroy entirely\u2014has been eliminated. In America today, \u201cDEI\u201d (diversity, equity, and inclusion) has become the right wing\u2019s go-to slur, and many of the anti-DEI orders stealthily add an extra letter to the demonized acronym: \u201cA\u201d for accessibility. Trump claims that after the Department of Education is destroyed, special education will now be handled by the Department of Health and Human Services, which is run by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a conspiracy theorist who blames autism on vaccines, Tylenol, and circumcision.<\/p>\n

At the same time, the richest and most powerful man in the world, who helped lead this assault on disability services earlier this year back when he was in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency, claims a diagnosis of autism as his excuse for doing Nazi salutes.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d joke that Elon Musk was our \u201cfirst autistic president,\u201d if not for how many psychologists suspect Thomas Jefferson was probably also autistic. Someday, G-d willing, we\u2019ll have an autistic president who\u2019s not extremely racist. Now let me process the shame that, by the same \u201cwho\u2019s actually making decisions for Trump now\u201d standard, Stephen Miller might be our first Jewish president \u2026<\/p>\n

A relevant clarification: when Musk came out as autistic on Saturday Night Live<\/em> in 2021, he specifically described himself as having \u201cAsperger\u2019s.\u201d While some grace should be given to people who stick to whatever diagnostic language they were first given, in Musk\u2019s case, it\u2019s hard not to think about the divide between those autistic people Asperger sent to the camps and those he did not. On the one hand, Musk brags about his \u201cAsperger\u2019s\u201d; on the other hand, he stripped services from other <\/em>autistic people. For Musk and those like him, \u201cAsperger\u2019s\u201d isn\u2019t just an excuse for doing a Nazi salute: it\u2019s part of a belief that those disabled people deemed useful to the Reich get to live, while the others can perish.<\/p>\n

\n

Where the book repeatedly states terrible things are happening outside the children\u2019s understanding, the movie finds different ways to imply the effects of World War II on the margins of that understanding. The movie cuts a chapter contrasting English lessons from an American student at Tomoe with the outside culture deeming English the language of the enemy; in its place, we get a scene of Totto\u2019s parents warning her against using English words already part of her normal vocabulary.<\/p>\n

The book mentions how Josef Rosenstock, the Jewish conductor of the orchestra Totto\u2019s dad played in, fled Hitler\u2019s Germany for Japan; the movie gets across this information by showing Josef confronting two of his musicians celebrating Japan\u2019s new alliance with Germany. In one movie-original scene, Totto\u2019s surprised to see a woman at the train station in the place of her usual ticket taker\u2014viewers can infer the young man got sent off to fight.<\/p>\n

The film is not just morally courageous, but cinematically brilliant. Director Shinnosuke Yakuwa handed select sequences to other animation directors. The animation is high quality throughout the film, but these stylized expressionistic moments push it into downright breathtaking. An early fantasy sequence by Y\u00fbta Kanbe expresses Totto\u2019s excitement for learning in a manner befitting the aesthetic the internet has dubbed \u201cUtopian Scholastic\u201d (think the DK Eyewitness<\/em> intro or the old Discovery Channel store). Kunio Kat\u014d, director of the Oscar-winning short film La <\/em>m<\/em>aison en <\/em>p<\/em>etit<\/em>s c<\/em>ubes<\/em>, lends similar joy to an underwater fantasy during the school\u2019s pool day (though I would not be shocked if this sequence is the reason the film still lacks an American distributor\u2014Tomoe Gakuen allowed skinny-dipping as a lesson in body positivity, but any school that tried the same here would get a lesson in lawsuits). Setsuka Kawahara uses cut-out animation, reminiscent of the witches in Puella Magi Madoka Magica<\/em>, for a nightmare in which Totto processes the growing wartime horrors through the lens of Uncle Tom<\/em>\u2019<\/em>s Cabin<\/em>, the last book her friend Yasuaki lent her.<\/p>\n

I cry for real twice in the subplot exploring Totto\u2019s friendship with Yasuaki, a well-read Christian boy who has a weak arm and leg due to polio. Totto loves to climb trees, but Yasuaki has never even thought of doing so for obvious reasons. The scene where she figures out a way for him to climb a tree with her made me cry from its beautiful kindness and commitment to radical inclusivity. The second Yasuaki tearjerker scene is much more brutal, and should be required viewing for any parent having even the slightest doubts about the necessity of vaccinating their kids.<\/p>\n\n

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Related readings<\/div>\n\n
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\n \"\"<\/a> <\/figure>\n <\/div>\n\n
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\n Reviews<\/a>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n Miyazaki\u2019s Last Flight<\/a>\n <\/h5>\n\n
\n \n Michael Szalay <\/a>\n <\/div>\n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n \n

Before knowing the truth about Asperger\u2019s involvement in Nazi eugenics, I thought his story would have been perfect movie material. Turns out Sosaku Kobayashi\u2019s story is the one that actually needed a movie. This was a man who wanted everyone to have the best education, who designed sporting events where a student with dwarfism could take the lead, who encouraged kids playing in the dirt so poor students wouldn\u2019t be judged for lacking clean clothes, who spoke in favor of gender equality and confronted students misbehaving with curious understanding rather than cruelty. I don\u2019t know if Mr. Kobayashi had some secret dark side that Tetsuko remains unaware of in her nearly saintlike portrayal of the headmaster, but I can rest assured he probably couldn\u2019t have been as bad as Asperger: for all the many problems with Imperial Japan, at least they weren\u2019t sending disabled citizens to death camps.<\/p>\n

As for how Mr. Kobayashi got away with running his school with such freedom in a decidedly unfree society, Tetsuko explained in the book\u2019s postscript, \u201cMr. Kobayashi hated publicity, and even before the war did not allow photographs of the school or any publicity about its unconventionality. That may have been one reason this small school of under 50 people was allowed to continue. Another was that Mr. Kobayashi was highly regarded at the Ministry of Education as an educator of children.\u201d<\/p>\n

These are terrifying times for people with disabilities. Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window<\/em> shows a hopeful vision of how it\u2019s possible for us to thrive even in terrifying times. It also shows how things get much scarier when the food runs out and the bombs start falling; the director has spoken openly about the relevance of those parts of the film to the current conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.<\/p>\n

I hope that professionals working with disabled children follow the example of Kobayashi\u2014of the old myth of Asperger\u2014rather than that of the real Asperger or of the likes of RFK, Jr.<\/p>\n

And for those of us with disabilities, struggling to make it through these scary times, I hope we can follow the lead of Totto. In the scene where a group of bullies sing insults about Tomoe Gakuen, Totto flips their own song against them, turning words of bullying into words of celebration. Her classmates join in and sing along with her, the group of them overwhelming the voices of those who tried to mock the \u201cweird\u201d school with the \u201cweird\u201d kids.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the lead up to World War II, one headmaster educated children with a variety of abilities\u2014and doing all he could to protect his students from Japan\u2019s authoritarian government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":61194,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2497],"tags":[192,756,104,74,650,36,305],"pbpartner":[],"section":[1863,1759],"pbseries":[],"class_list":["post-61185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-autism","tag-department-of-education","tag-disability","tag-education","tag-fascism","tag-film","tag-world-war-ii","section-disability","section-film"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n\u201cTotto-chan,\u201d the Myth of Hans Asperger, and Disability Pride amidst Fascism - Public Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In the lead up to World War II, one headmaster educated children with a variety of abilities\u2014and doing all he could to protect his students from Japan\u2019s authoritarian government.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.publicbooks.org\/totto-chan-the-myth-of-hans-asperger-and-disability-pride-amidst-fascism\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u201cTotto-chan,\u201d the Myth of Hans Asperger, and Disability Pride amidst Fascism - 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