General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Survival Family (サバイバルファミリー)

Survival Family (サバイバルファミリー) is a 2017 Japanese comedy-drama directed, written, and conceived by Shinobu Yaguchi, in which an ordinary Tokyo family must survive after every use of electricity suddenly stops working across Japan.¹ It was produced by Fuji Television, Toho, Dentsu, and Altamira Pictures, distributed by Toho, and released in Japanese theaters on February 11, 2017, with a running time of 117 minutes.²

Key fact	Detail
Director / writer	Shinobu Yaguchi (original story, screenplay, and direction)²
Japanese release	February 11, 2017; 117 minutes; distributed by Toho¹
Suzuki family	Fumiyo Kohinata as father Yoshiyuki, Eri Fukatsu as mother Mitsue, Yuki Izumisawa as son Kenji, Wakana Aoi as daughter Yui²
Premise	All electricity stops without explanation; trains, cars, gas, and water fail, and even batteries do not work³
Japanese box office	800 million yen on 528,000 admissions⁴
Festival screenings	2017 Macao International Film Festival & Awards, Jeonju International Film Festival, Shanghai International Film Festival²
Production	Fuji Television, Toho, Dentsu, Altamira Pictures; studio Altamira Pictures²

Spoilers

Plot

The Suzuki family of Tokyo is an ordinary household that barely talks: father Yoshiyuki watches television, the taciturn son Kenji is absorbed in his headphones, and daughter Yui cannot put down her smartphone.⁵ One morning every electric appliance has stopped, and the same is true throughout the neighborhood.⁶ The failure extends beyond electricity: with no power source, gas and water service stop, trains and cars are immobilized, and even batteries are unusable.³

After a week without restoration, Yoshiyuki decides the family must leave Tokyo.³ Hearing an unverified rumor that western Japan still has power, the family sets out by bicycle for Kagoshima, where Mitsue's father lives, a journey the film presents as an epic road trip with food, drinking water, and even a proper map in short supply.⁷^•⁸ Along the way the family members, initially helpless without modern conveniences, gradually discover practical abilities and grow closer.⁹

Origin and development

A long-gestating idea. Yaguchi has said the concept of a world without electricity dates to just after Waterboys (2001); he originally planned it as his next film.¹⁰ He attributed the idea partly to his own poor handling of computers and mobile devices, joking that it began as a grudge: if electricity stopped working, the world might actually become easier for him.¹⁰

The direct trigger was news coverage of the 2003 North American blackout. Yaguchi was struck by the image of New York office workers walking home in droves across the Brooklyn Bridge once air conditioning, trains, and elevators failed, and he became convinced the subject would make a film.¹⁰ He wrote a plot and proposed it to Masui Koji, president of Altamira Pictures, but the project was repeatedly postponed in planning meetings as too large in scale, and Yaguchi made Swing Girls (2004), Happy Flight (2008), and Robo-G (2012) in the meantime; by his own account the film took about ten years to realize.¹⁰^•¹¹ He believed improved CG technology finally made the scenario feasible, then told the production he wanted to shoot everything on location instead.¹⁰

The 2011 earthquake. Many interviewers assumed the idea came from the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, but Yaguchi said the film started elsewhere entirely; after the disaster he initially thought the project could never be made, because the subject felt too close to the suffering of those affected.¹⁰ About two years later, observing how quickly people outside the affected areas let disaster preparedness fade, he decided that if the film were to be made, sooner was better than later.¹⁰

Production

Yaguchi worked from his own original script, writing storyboards before shooting, the working style he has used throughout his career.¹² Filming was an all-location shoot across Japan lasting two and a half months, including closing a highway for the cycling scenes and crossing a winter river on a raft; a Fuji Television making-of program documented the shoot.¹³ Yaguchi's stated conviction was to rely on real locations rather than compositing or CG.¹⁴ For survival details, he consulted a survival expert about which wild plants are edible, and had the cast try them.¹⁰

The music was composed by Takashi Nomura, and the theme song was performed by SHANTI.¹ A novelization written by Yaguchi was published by Shueisha.⁵

Reception

The film screened at the 2017 Macao International Film Festival & Awards, the Jeonju International Film Festival, and the Shanghai International Film Festival.² In Japan it earned 800 million yen on 528,000 admissions.⁴ A Chinese release under the title 生存家族 was planned for 2018.¹⁵

Critics read the film as a satire of technological dependence. James Marsh, reviewing for the South China Morning Post, called it a scathing satire on the modern family that speculates humorously about technological dependency, rating it 3.5 out of 5.¹⁶ The Japan Times critic Mark Schilling, a veteran film reviewer for that paper, described the premise as a more mundane cause of civilizational collapse than Hollywood's usual dystopias, and noted that Tokyo residents had a brief glimpse of such conditions when trains stopped after the March 11, 2011 earthquake.¹⁷ On Rotten Tomatoes the film held an 81% Tomatometer score from two critics' reviews.¹⁸

Yaguchi described his aim not as a panic movie but as a story of family rebirth within a state of emergency: people deprived of convenient tools recover human vitality and grow stronger and brighter.⁹

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 21, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026