Hayao Miyazaki's World Picture 0786496479, 9780786496471

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Hayao Miyazaki’s World Picture

ALSO BY DANI C AVALLARO AND FROM MC FARLAND The Late Works of Hayao Miyazaki: A Critical Study, 2004–2013 (2015) Japanese Aesthetics and Anime: The Influence of Tradition (2013) Synesthesia and the Arts (2013) Art in Anime: The Creative Quest as Theme and Metaphor (2012) CLAMP in Context: A Critical Study of the Manga and Anime (2012) Kyoto Animation: A Critical Study and Filmography (2012) The Fairy Tale and Anime: Traditional Themes, Images and Symbols at Play on Screen (2011) The World of Angela Carter: A Critical Investigation (2011) Anime and the Art of Adaptation: Eight Famous Works from Page to Screen (2010) Anime and the Visual Novel: Narrative Structure, Design and Play at the Crossroads of Animation and Computer Games (2010) Magic as Metaphor in Anime: A Critical Study (2010) The Mind of Italo Calvino: A Critical Exploration of His Thought and Writings (2010) Anime and Memory: Aesthetic, Cultural and Thematic Perspectives (2009) The Art of Studio Gainax: Experimentation, Style and Innovation at the Leading Edge of Anime (2009) Anime Intersections: Tradition and Innovation in Theme and Technique (2007) The Animé Art of Hayao Miyazaki (2006) The Cinema of Mamoru Oshii: Fantasy, Technology and Politics (2006)

Hayao Miyazaki’s World Picture Dani Cavallaro

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Cavallaro, Dani, 1962– Hayao Miyazaki’s world picture / Dani Cavallaro. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7864-9647-1 (softcover : acid free paper) ISBN 978-1-4766-2080-0 (ebook)

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1. Miyazaki, Hayao, 1941– —Criticism and interpretation. 2. Animation (Cinematography)—Japan. 3. Philosophy in motion pictures. I. Title. PN1998.3.M577C384 2015 791.4302'33092—dc23

2015004448

BRITISH LIBRARY CATALOGUING DATA ARE AVAILABLE

© 2015 Dani Cavallaro. All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. On the cover: Hayao Miyazaki, 2004 (Photofest) Printed in the United States of America

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640 www.mcfarlandpub.com

To Paddy who, like Hayao Miyazaki, has not forgotten either that he is a child or that he is an animal. And to Frank, for his smile.

We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is. —Kurt Vonnegut (1988) If you don’t laugh, you cry. —traditional Liverpool saying

Contents Preface

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1. Myth Laid Bare

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2. Time

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3. Space

69

4. Vision

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5. The Courage to Smile

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Filmography

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Bibliography

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Index

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Preface At Pixar, when we have a problem and we can’t seem to solve it, we often take a laser disc of one of Mr. Miyazaki’s films and look at a scene in our screening room for a shot of inspiration. And it always works! We come away amazed and inspired. —John Lasseter (1996)

Hayao Miyazaki has gained recognition across the globe as a leading figure in the history of animation, alongside names such as Walt Disney, Milt Kahl, Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, Yuri Norstein, and John Lasseter (to name but a few illustrious instances). What still calls for critical consideration as a subject in its own right is the world picture underpinning the director’s art. The premise behind this contention is that Miyazaki’s oeuvre tackles philosophical and political questions of grave relevance to today’s world. As a result, it invites reflection on issues which affect us all, regardless of whether or not we happen to be anime aficionados. The book embraces a broad spectrum of theoretical perspectives. These range from Zen, Classical philosophy, and Romanticism to Existentialism, critical theory, poststructuralism, and psychoanalytic theory. In appraising Miyazaki’s reflections on contemporary culture and its financial priorities, relevant aspects of social theory and economic thought are invoked. Fiction writers exhibiting salient ainities with the director’s Weltanschauung are also cited in the course of the analysis. The relevance to a single creator of so disparate a gamut of positions might at first seem implausible. Nevertheless, it is quite congruous with the eclectic breadth of Miyazaki’s perspective. This contention is substantiated by the director’s feature films, and by his writings on miscellaneous subjects, to which reference is here made where appropriate.

A A A 1

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Preface

The book comprises five chapters. Chapter 1—Myth Laid Bare argues that Miyazaki’s world picture rests on the resolve to examine the unquestioned assumptions which rule our lives without us being aware that this is the case: namely, mythologies. Miyazaki’s engagement with the exposure of mythologies is discussed in relation to the function and cultural production of these ubiquitous fabrications. The concept of work is investigated in detail as one of the most ingrained mythologies supporting the modern world. The social construction of nature is then addressed, with a focus on the human propensity for hubris. The opening segment of Chapter 2—Time looks at Miyazaki’s views on the subject of childhood. These encompass his reflections on infantile nostalgia, his appraisal of language as the chief suppressor of children’s intuition, and his critique of institutionalized education as a means of curbing a wide range of human capacities. Miyazaki’s perspective on history and on its distortion by oicial historiography is then addressed. In its final segment, the chapter considers some significant links between Miyazaki’s own philosophy of time and Zen’s positions on this concept. Chapter 3—Space investigates Miyazaki’s views on the natural and the social domains. In exploring the director’s approach to the former, the chapter looks at the legacy of Shintō, and at the prevalent attitudes conducive to environmental despoliation. The director’s views on political and economic issues shaping contemporary global culture are then examined, vis-à-vis his work ethos. In discussing Miyazaki’s commitment to collaboration, the discussion speculates about the identity of his possible successor. The chapter’s closing segment offers a case study of the Ghibli Museum as a space sui generis. Chapter 4—Vision opens with an analysis of animation’s power to translate what the animator sees into a reality. Its capacity to create alternate worlds renders animation akin to a form of magic. The assessment of the practical manifestations of Miyazaki’s magic gives special attention to his determination to keep hand-drawn animation alive. The director’s attraction to visionary prospects relating to technological and social transformation is then examined. Visionariness, it is argued, makes animation a subversive art, given to defy the realist ethos. Lastly, the chapter looks at landmarks in the pre-history of animation attesting to the desire to translate an artist’s vision into sharable pictures. Chapter 5—The Courage to Smile reflects on the overall significance of Miyazaki’s worldview in the context of contemporary culture. The director avers that the world is headed for disaster. Yet, he also believes that as long as we are here, we might as well do our best, and reckons that we

Preface

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have the capacity to do so. Miyazaki employs animation to suggest that we can all find the courage to move forward, instead of giving in to either misery or apathy, by questioning the unexamined mythologies which mold our lives. Having been assessed in detail in the first chapter, and then revisited in the concluding chapter, the subject of mythologies thus provides a critical frame for the book as a whole.

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Myth Laid Bare The unexamined life is not worth living and the unlived life is not worth examining. —Socrates (5th century BC) The true secret of happiness lies in the taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life, in elevating them by art instead of handing the performance of them over to unregarded drudges, and ignoring them. —William Morris (1888)

The Function of Mythologies: The Cultural Construction of “Truth” Hayao Miyazaki’s world picture urges us to question the unexamined beliefs which govern our lives unbeknownst to us. These hold the status of mythologies whose authority rests on their acceptance as the legitimate validators of specific codes and conventions. Such a status enables them to promulgate oicial notions of truth within specific cultures, and impart an aura of naturalness on what are in fact arbitrary human constructs. The latter are managed with great care in order to project the image of a solid cultural set-up, and thus render the status quo invulnerable to any questioning voices which might strive to expose its fraudulence. “Everything is arranged so that it be this way,” declares Jacques Derrida. “This is what is called culture” (Derrida 1995, p. 340). For Miyazaki, as for Socrates, “the unexamined life is not worth living, and the unlived life is not worth examining” (Socrates). Like Derrida, moreover, he recognizes the extent to which cultures ensure their stability by arranging their materials in certain ways. In both his films and his writings, the director invites us to take cognizance of the many aspects of our lives we take for granted (out of convenience, unimaginativeness, or sheer 5

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laziness). The unpalatable truth he thereby enjoins us to acknowledge is that entire lifetimes can go by without any questioning of the unwarranted rules which preside over human existence. In the process, Miyazaki alerts us to the danger of accepting any given principles without quizzing their validity and goals. In questioning myth, the director also invites us to wonder just how much of the reality around us is truly real, and how much of it is delusory, simulated. Not all of the things we call “real” are natural, for many of them are simulacra: intangible entities enfleshed so as to ensure their acceptance as real. This pseudo-reality becomes more and more solid and authoritative over time as a result of habit and ritual repetition. It could, of course, be argued that the art of animation itself pivots on the creation of simulacra, and that Miyazaki, as one of its most distinguished representatives, is complicit in the dissemination of pseudorealities of sorts. The director would never deny that animation is a means of constructing whole worlds from scratch, and that its images are therefore akin to phantoms, to ephemeral apparitions. Furthermore, he admits with utter frankness to his personal penchant for “telling fantasy stories” (Miyazaki, H. 2013a; my translation). Nonetheless, he also avers that when its resources are handled with courage and imagination, animation urges us to mistrust the ultimate reality of anything we experience moment by moment. The very possibility that a convincing world may be produced out of flat drawings, which somehow manage to move across a screen, raises questions about both the substance of reality itself, and the sophistication of the tricks which may be used to simulate its existence in any context—including the socio- political one. The conventional conflict between reality and fantasy disintegrates, as we are encouraged to look at the most incredible things as plausible, and at real things, conversely, as an ideology’s specious fabrications.

A A A As argued throughout this study, Miyazaki’s works draw attention to several aspects of today’s world in which the ascendancy of mythologies is palpable. These encompass the politics of greed conducive to global economic downfall; the escalation of aggressive militarism; the systematic distortion of history’s erratic flow by mainstream history books; the erosion of children’s native capacities attendant on the socializing process; the feasibly irreversible depletion of the habitat through arrogance, bigotry, and selfishness. These issues, to be explored in depth in the book’s

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subsequent chapters, are briefly assessed in the paragraphs which follow, with a focus on their relationship with major cultural mythologies. The location of each issue’s detailed investigation is provided in parentheses as relevant. Greed ensues from unquestioned assumptions about the value of rampant consumption. These have come to constitute one of the most tenacious mythologies presiding over the global scene. Miyazaki intimates that greed is an urge which many of us gratify with blind self-complacency, without ever pausing to appreciate its ugliness, let alone the loneliness and atomization to which it condemns us. This alarming reality is encapsulated by the persona of No-Face in Spirited Away. Pivotal to this character’s portrayal is the juxtaposition of an insatiable appetite, and abysmal isolation. While the former is a clear symbol of greed run riot, the latter serves to foreground the extent to which people’s self-enslavement to the myth of unrestrained consumption cuts them off from one another. The politics of greed precludes the possibility of human communion, and corrupts sociability and companionship by morphing them into virtual relationships of vaporous substance and dubious authenticity. (The topos of greed is addressed in detail in Chapter 3, in the segment devoted to the idea of space as social context.) Wars are also triggered by mythologies—many of which overlap with those which sustain greed—about a culture’s supposed excellence, and hence its right to colonize, civilize, and democratize other cultures, often in the name of religion. So rooted and unexamined are the postulates at the base of today’s raging militarism as to preclude reflection on its actual objectives, even when these, as Madame Suliman eventually realizes in Howl’s Moving Castle, are just “idiotic.” Given her seeming omniscience, the distinguished witch should have recognized the inanity of war from the start, without inflicting extreme suffering on many innocent people. However, Miyazaki has no use for an enlightened despot, in this context. Retaining Howl’s Moving Castle’s war-based component until the very end is a crucial means of emphasizing the unforeseen, and utterly arbitrary, nature of Madam Suliman’s decision to put an end to the conflict. His objective, in doing so, is to throw into relief the capricious nature of the political acts underlying both the launch and the termination of military aggression in the real world. (The issue of aggressive militarism will be revisited in Chapter 2, in the segment addressing the relationship between history and historiography.) Assisting the politics of both greed and warmongering, historiography turns history into texts by editing and rewriting historical events

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themselves in accordance with the demands of specific political agendas. Behind its apparently objective words, lies an encrypted version of truth which serves to sustain a culture’ dominant mythologies. Miyazaki proposes that events are rewritten even as they happen in order to propagate particular ideologies. His swan song, The Wind Rises, conveys this idea with both subtlety and eicacy, drawing attention to the extent to which events are subjected to systematic misrepresentation by means of its protagonist’s portrayal. Jiro Horikoshi’s political myopia renders him unable to grasp the precise significance of the facts unfolding around him. The drama suggests that this flaw is not just an outcome of the designer’s total engrossment in his creative dreams. On the contrary, it is largely engendered by the regime’s determination to ensure that he remains oblivious to his creations’ intended use. The secret police is quick to hound him down as a potential criminal the moment it suspects his association with an insurgent. Fixated on the idea of projecting the image of Japan as a powerful nation to be reckoned with the world over, the establishment is hell-bent on the conception of new weapons, and formidable fighter planes. To secure that this plan proceeds without glitches, it deems it essential to keep those responsible for their ideation in the dark about their practical applications. In the process, history is conveniently reinvented, and spurious mythologies come into existence. (Chapter 2 returns to the rewriting of history in its discussion of the relationship between history and historiography.) The enculturement of children through disciplining strategies designed to curb their imaginations rests on the mythological presupposition that the human mind, as it acquires language and knowledge, becomes more and more sophisticated, penetrative, and powerful. Miyazaki rejects this potent myth by emphasizing children’s special capacities, while not only advocating, but also embodying in his own being, the desirability of preserving childlike elements through life. In dramatizing the events chronicled in Ponyo, for example, Miyazaki has been able to present the action from the point of view of a young child because he is himself capable of looking at the world from such a perspective. This ability has not been cultivated with artful care out of personal convenience, or in the service of a specific aesthetic blueprint. Rather, it emanates from Miyazaki’s spontaneous tendency to see the world with the eyes of an insightful, inquisitive, and inventive kid. If he looks at the ocean, he perceives it as an animate force, in much the same way as many imaginative children would do. Ponyo’s unmistakable verve and chromatic splendor pivot on this instinctive aptitude. (The material and psychological repercussions of chil-

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dren’s enculturement are considered in Chapter 2, in the segment devoted specifically to childhood.) Environmental despoliation is no less a product of mythologies than greed, war, historiography, or children’s socialization. Moreover, its arrant perpetration bears witness to the imbrication of mythologies with a distinctive human trait: hubris. From Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, through Princess Mononoke, to Ponyo, Miyazaki’s works offer thoughtprovoking explorations of humanity’s foolish pride in respect of the very realm it should most respect, were it to be faithful to its origins. At times blatant, at others contorted, human arrogance has led to a situation so extreme as to call into question the likelihood of the planet’s survival. This topic is expounded later in this chapter, in the segment of the discussion addressing the myth of nature’s domination. (Further facets of Miyazaki’s approach to nature are examined in Chapter 3.)

A A A Stemming from humanity’s inveterate propensity to forge narratives meant to explain the universe and its place within it, mythologies have governed people’s lives throughout history. Interpretations of mythology are almost as abundant as the stories and legends themselves. Even a cursory glance at popular sources will give readers an idea of the dizzying proliferation of both pre-modern and modern theories which have developed around the subject of mythology. A more than cursory perusal of diverse theoretical perspectives soon exposes the inextricability of mythology from specific cultural contexts. This indicates that mythological narratives do not materialize in a vacuum, but are in fact always embroiled in contingent social practices and criteria. Hence, they cannot be dismissed as mere fictions, since they actually constitute complex cultural realities whose function is often to ratify and perpetuate precise patterns of conduct. The idea that mythologies are entangled with social paradigms has gained unprecedented urgency in the context of modern critical theory as a result of the latter’s conception of language not as a tool which people use at will, but rather as an agency which shapes and delimits us. Language is neither innocent nor transparent. Innocence and transparency are themselves myths constructed in order to efface language’s disciplining function: its power to “speak us” through various discourses endowed with mythological status. Hence, as Roland Barthes asserts, “myth is a language” (Barthes 2000a, p. 11). While common assumptions about language

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are unexamined mythologies, mythologies themselves can be thought of as cultural discourses with their own vocabulary, syntax, and imagery. This linguistic disposition has prompted a critical resolve to unmask the hidden power of language: a tendency to codify myths in insidious and often invisible ways. In this perspective, understanding mythology is not only a means of grasping its entanglement with social reality. It also becomes a matter of identifying how particular mythologies intended to enforce given modes of behavior come to be embedded in seemingly impartial signifying structures. In many cultures, mythology has supplanted magic by replacing the worldview characteristic of magical thinking, where the universe results from the interaction of spirits immanent in all natural forms, with a worldview in which human beings hold a central position in a universe governed by remote deities. In Japan, the two positions have long lived together in harmony, and still do so in contemporary society. This is confirmed by the harmonious coexistence of the Buddhist creed and Shintō animism, with their respective rituals. At the same time as these two indigenous influences remain alive in present-day Japan, the legacy of the American Occupation contributes to the perpetuation of another breed of mythologies of Western derivation. These, for their part, tend to morph into tantalizing hybrids under the impact of both local traditions and ever-shifting global fashions. East and West blend no less fluidly within Japanese culture than magic and mythology, the old and the new. Japan, in this perspective, is a culture in which mythology is, and always has been, incessantly mutating, growing like a coral reef through processes of constant absorption and accretion. Miyazaki’s works reflect this cultural inclination by amalgamating disparate traditions in unexpected ways, creating mythologies of their own, and thereby exposing the mythologization of human society by furtive and deceptive forces. In exposing the cultural construction of truth, Miyazaki explodes the idea that truth can only be a product of the rational self, as an agency disengaged from the senses and from matter—yet another myth founded in Cartesian rationalism. He does so by giving center stage to fantasy: the staple ingredient of all of his works, the more realistic ones included. It must be emphasized, in this regard, that in Miyazaki’s works, fantasy never amounts to an assortment of vapid flights of fancy, but springs instead from a thoughtful and finely tuned employment of the imagination. Thus, both the director’s feature films and his short animations hark back to the etymology of the word fantasy: the Greek phantasia, i.e., “imagination.”

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Emphasizing the importance of “fantasy in the meaning of imagination,” Miyazaki argues that people should not “stick too close to everyday reality,” and should seek instead to “give room to the reality of the heart, of the mind, and of the imagination.” These are the only powers, in the director’s perspective, that “can help us in life” in a dependable and disinterested way, and hence enable us to negotiate reality’s endless challenges. Therefore, even though those capacities appear to contradict reality, it is only with their assistance that reality may be grappled with from one day to the next. Nowadays, the word “fantasy” ought to be employed with caution, warns Miyazaki, insofar the phony illusions pervading “virtual reality” are often designated as fantasies, even though they do nothing to help us come to terms with the world, and in fact constitute a stark “denial of reality.” While genuine fantasy “brings something useful to reality,” so-called “virtual reality can imprison people” (Miyazaki, H. 2002a). The problem is that the fantasies spawned by virtual reality pervert the play of “free imagination” by delivering a welter of “well-confectioned fantasies.” These are absorbed as products ready for consumption, which require no imaginative intervention on the part of their users. No less committed to combating “the banality of the real” and “the obviousness of everyday life” now than he was forty years ago, Miyazaki remains determined to challenge the delusions propagated by virtual reality in all its guises (Miyazaki, H. 2013a; my translation).

The Mythologization of Work Of the many mythologies which sustain the modern world, one of the most entrenched is that surrounding the concept of work. Its meaning has changed over time but increasingly, in the context of Western and Westernized cultures, work has come to be considered just a font of aluence. Its status as an activity with autonomous substance and meaning has therefore fallen into a state of total disregard. As E. F. Schumacher emphasizes in Small Is Beautiful (1973), work, far from being regarded as something people should enjoy, has come to be branded as “little more than a necessary evil.” For the “employer,” it has become “simply an item of cost, to be reduced to a minimum.” For the worker, on the other hand, “to work is to make a sacrifice of one’s leisure and comfort.” As a result, both parties aim at the furthermost minimization of work imaginable: “the ideal from the point of view of the employer

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is to have output without employees, and the ideal from the point of view of the employee is to have income without employment” (Schumacher, p. 39). Schumacher is heir to William Morris’ views regarding the vital importance of granting people access to rewarding employment. “A man at work, making something which he feels will exist because he is working at it and wills it,” argues Morris, “is exercising the energies of his mind and soul as well as of his body.” In modern societies, “useful work” of this kind tends to be downgraded in favor of “useless toil.” The former gives people “pleasure in the exercise of their energies,” and gives birth to beautiful and lasting products, whereas the latter amounts to mere drudgery, and yields transient commodities, meant only to signify wealth and status. Its concomitants are wasteful consumption, planned obsolescence, and environmental exploitation (Morris 1889). For Miyazaki, as for Schumacher and Morris, work is not tantamount just to getting paid for what one does. It is a creative act even when its goals may seem mundane and childish. As long as it enlists all of an individual’s intellectual, spiritual, and physical energies, work will be capable of generating something coherent and harmonious—rather than a commodity tied only to material comfort and social standing—even if it abides by a wacky logic of its own. As he emphasizes in a press conference cited by Tomohiro Osaki, Miyazaki perceives himself as a craftsman whose identity is somewhat inseparable from his work. “I started as an animator,” he declares, “so I have to draw. If I don’t draw, I can’t express myself.” At the same time, he subscribes to the idea that small is beautiful by emphasizing that what matters most is the little things—such as “animating a cut that barely even matters, drawing the wind well, doing the water well and making sure the light shines right” ( Japan Times Video Presentation in Osaki). The director’s worldview indicates that even the flimsiest and most transient of things may trigger the true animator’s imagination. This view finds a correlative in Pablo Picasso’s assertion that “the artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web” (Picasso). Only pompous glorifications of art, such as those found within the tomes of so-called art history, wish us to believe that genuine artists deal only with the grand and the impressive. Miyazaki himself is the kind of artist who is able to sense the latent power of just about anything: silent waters, invisible breezes, humble blades of grass in a deserted meadow, and even fleeting reveries. Given

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his characteristic modesty, he does not present his possession of this gift as the mark of peerless genius. Quite the opposite, he maintains that all “those who join in the work of animation,” are “people who dream more than others and who wish to convey these dreams to others” (Miyazaki, H. 2009b). It could be argued that the director’s cultural background encourages this attitude, albeit in a tangential fashion. Indeed, it consists of a tradition which is not embroiled in the demands of reason and logic in the way Western philosophy has been for millennia, and is therefore better disposed towards the perception of unfathomable levels of being. As Kitarō Nishida observes, in this regard, “at the basis of Asian culture … lies something that can be called seeing the form of the formless and hearing the sound of the soundless” (Nishida 1978, p. 6). At the same time, Miyazaki’s suggestion that animation translates a welter of dreams into a reality of sorts brings to mind Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s assertion that “the mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art” (Goethe, BrainyQuote). In the director’s universe, it is the animated image emerging from a creator’s proclivity to dream that serves as a bridge between everyday reality and a submerged, ineffable realm of innumerable what-ifs. If it is to act as the mediator of the inexpressible, the artist’s work cannot issue from a premeditated blueprint dictated entirely by daylight discernment. To emphasize this point, Miyazaki intimates that developing only those ideas of which one is “conscious” is unlikely to be conducive to “a good end.” It is far more preferable to take as one’s starting point those half-formed intimations which one cannot quite “understand” (Japan Times Video Presentation in Osaki). Relatedly, the director maintains that the embryo of an animation does not grow from thinking as such, but rather from “something” that takes place “despite the thought process.” Most of the mental activity in which we engage uses just “the surface of our brain,” avers Miyazaki. Artists should endeavor to go beyond that level, and dare to tap not only into “the subconscious,” but also into a “deeper darker place than that…. That deep place is the most diicult to get to” (cited in Guillén). The idea that conscious thought is not suicient, unto itself, to yield an effective work is grounded in Miyazaki’s conviction that all things, big and small, should first be grasped in their simple form—i.e., as yet unadulterated by any effort at rationalization. According to Nishida, perceiving things in this way constitutes a “pure” experience. This pivots on the individual’s ability to appreciate “the moment of seeing a color or hearing a

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sound” without the interference of “thought,” and without recourse to “the judgment of what the color or sound might be” (Nishida 1992, p. 3). In pure experience of this type, “knowledge, feeling, and volition are undifferentiated,” which implies that it is possible for things to be lived through not only “cognitively,” but also “emotionally and volitionally” (Abe, p. xviii). Both Miyazaki’s world picture and his works suggest that things matter for what they are, and for the sensations they elicit at any one point, and not just for what they signify, let alone how they can be interpreted. As a result, perceiving an object or event means not simply knowing it, but rather partaking of its being by integrating it into one’s entire sensorium, and hence one’s emotions, and expressing its being (through drawing, in Miyazaki’s specific case) through an act of the will. For Nishida, this kind of sensibility must go hand in hand with a resolutely non-solipsistic approach to experience. “It is not that experience exists because there is an individual,” argues Nishida, “but that an individual exists because there is experience…. Experience is more fundamental than individual differences.” It is by building on this premise, according to the philosopher, that he was personally able “to avoid solipsism” (Nishida 1992, p. xxx). Miyazaki’s works likewise indicate that the director is eager to transcend the prison of self-centeredness. They do so by intimating that in the observation of both nature and human behavior, Miyazaki does not posit himself as an agency preexisting the experience of observing. Therefore, the experiencing individual does not come before the experienced event in his perspective, any more than it does in Nishida’s. In fact, Miyazaki’s films would not evince the sensitivity and generosity which have come to define them, were the director apt to impose himself on the act of experiencing as its precondition. It is evident that Miyazaki allows experiences to happen to him, and to act upon him, thus revealing unexpected folds of diversity and richness. Echoing Nishida’s model, he is able to transcend the boundaries of the self by opening himself up to experience, rather than imposing himself upon it as its protagonist. This is why, as argued later in this discussion vis-à-vis Miyazaki’s views on the environment, he is able to feel that nature is in us as much as we are in it. The director’s aversion to solipsism is confirmed by his approach to work. This grants all members of staff, the more junior ones included, equal status within the production team, and thus the right to voice their opinions, and communicate their creativity. In this world, as in Nishida’s, experience becomes transindividual. An axial aspect of Miyazaki’s modus operandi, the collaborative method will be addressed in detail in Chapter 3.

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Nishida also avows that in pure experience, the experiencing individual and the experienced event are not distinct entities, but rather two aspects of the same reality. This means that the experiencing individual is also an experience, not only an experiencer—an entity above its experiences. Individuals are experiences, not only subjects who experience. They are not controlling agencies, somehow able to shape their experiences according to preset laws. While shunning solipsism, Miyazaki’s attitude to movie-making also subscribes to the idea that the experiencing individual is experienced, even as he or she operates as the subject of an experience. At Studio Ghibli, the members of the team involved in the production of a movie experience the process of making a movie, but are also experiences for their colleagues, who are always in a position to observe their choices and actions, and have particular feelings about them. From an Existentialist perspective, all of the team-workers are products of the object they create through cooperative effort. The drawings, frames, scenes, and sequences they choose to generate make the workers, insofar as they bring them into being. As Jean-Paul Sartre proposes, we exist to the extent that we are capable of performing certain choices, and of acting accordingly. There is no being without doing, insofar as our acts define us. Since the way we act can alter over time, there is always the possibility of change (Sartre). At Studio Ghibli, the artists and animators assembled to produce a film must continually make choices—formal, stylistic, chromatic, conceptual—and perform actions consistent with those choices. At any one point in a person’s career, the choices he or she enacts, both as an individual and as a member of a group, give shape to that person’s identity. Over time, the studio’s artists and animators may evolve in fresh directions by acquiring new styles. For example, they may become attracted to different colors and forms, develop new techniques, or experiment with alternative working schedules. In the process, both their private personalities and their collective identity develop new traits.

A A A Since at least Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776), economies have endeavored to devise strategies for streamlining the work process. The most widespread policy has been the enforcement of a production pattern governed by a strict “division of labor” (Schumacher, p. 39). The dehumanizing outcomes of this method are well-known throughout the planet. The production of goods at the greatest possible pace is the only goal in the game, and this renders the laborer’s own input so minimal and unre-

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warding as to afford no sense of achievement, let alone pleasure. No special skills are required to perform one’s task day after day, with the same robotic eiciency. Work’s multifariousness is denied in the service of productivity and GNP growth rates. These, for their part, are mythologized as the ultimate markers of a nation’s standing on the international stage in economic, technological, and political terms. The term “mythologized” is here employed to indicate that productivity and GNP increase are not natural realities per se, but rather arbitrary constructs erected as supreme signifiers of worth, and then invested with an aura of naturalness—in other words, turned into mythologies. Miyazaki’s vision of an ideal society demythologizes the elevation of productivity and GNP growth to the status of ultimate objectives. The scenario he proposes for his native country is that of a society prepared to live within its own means. Hence, he believes that Japan should aspire to become a country “with a population of around thirty million, with an economy that has been de-nuclearized and promotes shared prosperity, grounded understanding of how goods make it from farm, field, or factory to a consumer’s hands, and environmental sustainability” (Rizov). It would appear that in Miyazaki’s political philosophy, small is indeed beautiful. At the same time as it enforces deskilling through the division of labor, the modern world thrives on more and more refined forms of specialization. At one end of the spectrum, stand the unskilled workers, whose mechanized activities foreclose the development of any transferable knowhow. At the other end, stand the professionals, who are endowed with high levels of (lucrative) expertise. It is to the latter that society accords the right to shape people’s lives, as specialization comes to dominate all of its sectors. According to Ivan Illich, the professional classes control their society’s knowledge by containing it behind the bastions of specialized institutions. This implies that knowledge only reaches ordinary people in the form of bundles of data, chosen by professionals for them to learn. If educational establishments of a centralized kind were to be abolished, as Illich proposes in Deschooling Society (1971), and replaced by computerized learning networks which allowed people to share and swap their skills freely, the myth of institutionalized knowledge would disintegrate. “The operation of a peer-matching network would be simple,” writes Illich with extraordinary prescience. “The user would identify himself by name and address and describe the activity for which he sought a peer. A computer would send him back the names and addresses of all those who had inserted the same description. It is amazing that such a simple utility has never been

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used on a broad scale for publicly valued activity” (Illich 1971, p. 66). In addition, learning networks would host databases of people wishing to exchange their skills with one another. As things stand, however, knowledge is still enclosed within impregnable institutions. Illich develops his ideas in Tools for Conviviality (1973), where he maintains that the corollary of institutionalized knowledge is a world in which people “give up their native ability to do what they can do for themselves and for each other,” as well as “the ability to satisfy personal needs in a personal manner,” by relinquishing this prerogative to an establishment (Illich 1973, p. 65). In such a society, specific products and tools dominate people’s lives to the extent that no room is left for the deployment of “natural competence.” At the same time, people are subjected to the logic of “compulsory consumption”—i.e., the imperative to acquire predetermined products—which further “restricts personal autonomy.” Regulatory interventions of this kind impose what Illich terms a “radical monopoly” on all sorts of spheres (p. 63). Alongside education, the latter include health care, agriculture, and construction. According to Illich, a system which thrives by depriving its members of their most elemental rights—and by inducing them to do so of their own accord—amounts to a dangerous erosion of the concept of society as such. “Society can be destroyed,” warns the philosopher, “when … it extinguishes the free use of the natural abilities of [its] members, when it isolates people from each other and locks them into a man-made shell, when it undermines the texture of community by promoting extreme social polarization and splintering specialization” (p. 5). Like Illich, Miyazaki is not in favor of the increasing levels of specialization we witness today in practically all areas. In fact, his writings suggest that all people need to pursue an eclectic disposition if they are to develop into fully rounded humans. As shown in Chapter 3, this outlook provides the foundation of the director’s advice to would-be animators, whom he encourages to accumulate knowledge from disparate sources, without hesitating to absorb information, and acquiring skills, which might at first appear irrelevant to their prospective career. Variety and range, in Miyazaki’s opinion, are far more important components of a person’s evolution than his or her possession of any one specialism in a limited field. Over time, gaining detailed knowledge of the ins and outs of a specific facet of the profession might become desirable. However, until such a time, one’s ability and willingness to try one’s hand at a variety of tasks, regardless of their distinction, will yield not only the greatest degree of productivity, but also the greatest pleasure.

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Moreover, Miyazaki concurs with Illich in disapproving of the workings of institutionalized knowledge, which he perceives as coterminous with the curtailment of the individual’s free access to learning resources, and right to encounter things first-hand, rather than with the stultifying mediation of mentors. The director elaborates this idea in his critique of children’s early education. He senses that in the type of school prevalent today, kids are kept insulated from the real world by their entrapment in sedentary lifestyles. These prevent them from interacting with their material environment, and from experiencing its many facets in a multisensory manner. Few people would refute the contention that a sedentary existence— in particular, one in which digital equipment features prominently—is bound to prioritize sight and hearing, while sacrificing the rest of the senses. Everybody stands to suffer from this endemic attenuation of the human sensorium. Yet, its implications are most hazardous for kids, since it can impair the achievement of a balanced interplay of mind and body. It is through the conception and integration of school-time activities which engage the pupils’ bodies no less than their minds, that the necessary equilibrium can be restored. It is important, in Miyazaki’s view, for these activities to be centered on play. This idea will be revisited in Chapter 2. Like Illich, Miyazaki is also concerned with the inevitable evaporation of the notion of community attendant on the erosion of people’s natural capacities, and simultaneous subjection to the dire rule of compulsory consumption. Caught in a pincer movement between these two phenomena, communities dissolve into mere aggregates of atomized lives. In Miyazaki’s world picture, as in Illich’s, this state of affairs emerges from unbalanced economies, and from the confines which these place on the individual’s right to choose—what to learn, what to consume, and how to express his or her capabilities in a spontaneous way. One further aspect of Miyazaki’s worldview bears important ainities with Illich’s theories. This is his concern with the extent to which knowledge only reaches people, and children in particular, in the form of prepackaged information. Due to the twin impact of “increasing consumerism and the virtual world,” argues the director, such information is designed for rapid obsolescence and heedless consumption. Moving on to assess Japan’s economic priorities in the light of these considerations, Miyazaki reminds us that successive governments have given precedence to projects intended to satisfy the demands of a wholly adult market. Children have been left behind, as ghostly presences in a society ruled by, and designed for, grown-ups. This policy has crudely disavowed the country’s

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dependence on the young as the sole guarantee of its future existence. “Rather than looking at how to stimulate domestic demand by building bridges or roads,” argues Miyazaki, “we should provide a proper environment for our future generations because children are Japan’s best investment” (Miyazaki, H. 2008a). It is also noteworthy, in this context, that Illich’s remarks on institutionalization chime with Michel Foucault’s philosophy and, in particular, with the latter’s reflections on the production of docile subjects through compartmentalizing social formations. These include asylums, prisons, hospitals, factories, schools, and barracks, as well as strategies of disciplinary control designed specifically for the normalization and regulation of human sexuality (mainly through psychoanalysis). Aiming to enforce preordained notions of normality, all of these institutions depend for their existence on discourses: i.e., statements which define a certain cultural concern (e.g., madness, criminality, sexuality), and determine the lexicon and techniques to be adhered to in its study and discussion (Foucault 1973; Foucault 1979).

A A A The character of Madame Suliman in Howl’s Moving Castle offers a superlative fictional interpretation of the élite professionals theorized by Illich. The royal palace itself emblematizes the type of institution behind which, according to the philosopher, experts shield themselves in order to propagate the myth of their excellence. In addition, it recalls the structures posited by Foucault, insofar as it functions as a prime means of producing docile subjects. The palace is so designed as to render its visitors passive in a literal sense. It thus provides a vivid literalization of the processes through which modern societies, according to Foucault, ensure their subjects’ compliance with the dominant ideologies of the day: i.e., the mythologies designed to govern their behavior, and predetermine their choices. Colonel Muska’s techno-mystical regime in Castle in the Sky, and Lady Eboshi’s proto-industrial government in Princess Mononoke foreshadow Madame Suliman’s autocracy. The “institution” over which Madame Suliman presides protects both an impervious locus of power, and a sanctuary of forbidden knowledge: a clever synthesis of the Royal Witch’s own expertise in the magical arts, and that of all the wizards and witches she has drawn to the palace for the sole purpose of draining them of their powers, and redirecting their distinctive capacities in keeping with her nefarious schemes. She has thus

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created what Illich would term a “radical monopoly”—a structure of power and knowledge which in effect deprives her subjects (magicians and lay people alike) of their intrinsic abilities, and compels them to operate exclusively within the parameters sanctioned by her monopolistic tyranny. On the other hand, the power to create a radical monopoly held by products, rather than institutions and experts, is exposed in Spirited Away. In this film, money itself is presented as the ultimate, and most dangerous, product to which people relinquish their ability—and their right—to think and act as autonomous beings. As they prepare to gorge themselves on the dishes laid out for the spirits, an act which results in their metamorphosis into pigs, Chihiro’s parents are keen to declare that they can afford to purchase anything on offer, because they have both cash and credit cards. This statement is so emphatic that it seems directed not just at their daughter but also at the audience, as though the characters’ (subconscious) aim were to assert their standing as honorary members of a particular culture and its myths. The grotesque avidity with which Chihiro’s parents devour the food on display indicates that they cannot conceive of it as anything other than an array of goods designed for rapid consumption, and hence unworthy of either ceremonial or aesthetic appreciation. At the same time, they give in without thought to the lure of those products, thus surrendering their very wills to the radical monopoly of unchecked voracity. Their gluttony provides a graphic exemplification of the ideology of greed so prevalent in Western and Westernized societies today. It is this worldview that Miyazaki seeks to expose as the repository of the most pernicious mythologies which shape our actions from day to day, without us being aware that they are doing so—let alone examining their credentials. The monetary theme is developed, as Spirited Away unfolds, as wave after wave of spirits are shown to bask in the delusory cocoon of extravagant consumption, to the advantage of the rapacious Yubaba. The depiction of the bathhouse interior as an assortment of sumptuous chambers and halls, teeming with creatures in restless pursuit of gratification, serves to symbolize the endless circulation of money (more often than not unreal), and of commodities with ephemeral satisfaction spans. The only creatures who do not appear to have bought into the mythology of consumerism are the junk-infested, unnamed River Spirit, and the film’s deuteragonist, Haku, who is also revealed to be a river deity. Both are the victims of environmental abuse, which is presented as the inevitable corollary of industrial production meant only for the solace of privileged individuals.

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Myth and Hubris: The Domination of Nature At the root of all mythologies lies hubris. Mythologies are made by humans for the benefit of humans: that is to say, to explain to humans what life and the universe are all about. What renders such mythologies hubristic is their anthropocentric slant. This emanates from the unexamined assumption that the world somehow has to be all about us. In fact, we would do well to ponder Richard Ford’s warning on the dangers of solipsism. “Does everything have to be about you?” queries the writer. “Can you not project yourself outside yourself? Can you not take on another’s life for your own benefit?” (Ford, p. 484). Taking on nature’s life obviously exceeds any one individual’s remit. Yet, were we to consider this possibility as a species, and its potential consequences over the long term, we might begin to perceive a new way of being for both ourselves and our environment: one that is indeed beneficial not only for nature but for us, too. On the contrary, we give in to the myth of human mastery over nature. This provides a paradigmatic example of the way humanity’s hubristic appetite operates. Indeed, the myth starts with a false assumption of tragic proportions: nature must be there for us, as a backdrop to our achievements—or else, it would have no reason to be. The lynchpin of this supposition is the belief that humanity is separate from nature. It is this conviction that warrants the so-called scientific urge to classify, tag, and thus dispel the shadows of the unknown. In implementing such strategies, humanity presumes to give itself a clear sense of identity: to install itself as the controlling Self against nature as the subordinate Other. Ironically, humanity’s self- enforced separation from nature is not conducive to its uncontrasted supremacy over the environment. Rather, it leads to the apprehension of nature as a hostile force to be staved off at any price. As Miyazaki himself puts it, “the only way to establish one’s ego is by negation. We can only see our surroundings as the enemy” (Miyazaki, H. 2014f, p. 15). This state of affairs echoes William Wordsworth’s contention that we become so estranged from nature as to recognize scarce commonality between ourselves and any of its other manifestations. “Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers: / Little we see in Nature that is ours,” laments the poet (Wordsworth 1806). John Drinkwater echoes Wordsworth in contrasting “the sound and sight / Of men who fret the world away,” and the “stirless peace” of an apple orchard “where every day is holy day,” and

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“the tides of time” appear to hang “suspended” (Drinkwater). Schumacher captures the spirit inherent in the words of both poets when he argues that the tragedy befalling “modern man” lies with the fact that he does not perceive himself “as a part of nature but as an outside force.” The result is a state of inconsolable alienation in which we become unable to value— or even understand in the most elemental sense—“everything that we have not made ourselves” (Schumacher, p. 3). Before long, the apprehension of nature’s (still dark) alterity turns into dread. Nature is no longer seen as an inert setting available for scientists to poke and probe, but rather as a threatening agency—an animate and latently sinister Other ready to pounce on us with the fatal elegance of a great cat, and the violence of a tsunami. In working out an answer to this menace, human beings do not, alas, prove very imaginative. They resort to the same old weapon: hubris. In the face of the looming Other, an overreaching, self-serving, anthropocentrism dominates the collective imaginary. Humanity thus resolves to master nature. While we are responsible for construing nature as Other in the first place, we come to resent this alterity and strive to keep it at bay. The environmental horrors ensuing from this decision do not need recounting. As Michael Guillén explains, Miyazaki explodes the myth revolving around humanity’s separateness from nature by maintaining that in fact, “nature is included within people” (Guillén). While discrediting the notion of separateness, Miyazaki is also eager to question the myth of mastery as a risible sham. “Is man the pinnacle of creation?” asks the director in a conversation with the German journalists Lars-Olav Beier, Tobias Rapp and Nora Reinhardt published in connection with Ponyo’s release. “Probably not,” he continues. “Perhaps we would all be more modest if we occasionally reminded ourselves that we began as amoebas. But mankind has moved so far away from nature that a return is hardly possible anymore” (cited in Beier, Rapp and Reinhardt). Miyazaki’s counsel is wise, but not very many people are likely to take it seriously. This is because the myth of mastery over nature enforces the belief that our species is superior to other animals—which is in effect a denial of human beings’ intrinsic animality. Miyazaki debunks this myth, reminding us that we are all, first and foremost, animals. His personal identification with a specific animal, the pig, runs through his world picture as a metonym for this firm conviction. Japan’s indigenous religion, Shintō, avers that every creature, rocks and rivers included, has a spiritual essence. This entails that animals are endowed with a significance which they lack in monotheistic mythologies

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of the Judeo-Christian ilk. Miyazaki’s films honor Shintō’s illustrious tradition by granting animals crucial significance on both the dramatic and the symbolic planes. Princess Mononoke offers the most comprehensive example of this trend. Nevertheless, Shintō’s philosophy reverberates throughout the director’s opus in varying degrees, making itself downright palpable in films as diverse as My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away. Furthermore, Miyazaki’s works bear witness to his profound respect for animals to the extent that they hark back to the indigenous practice of narrative storytelling (i.e., storytelling by means of sequential images), which has been ingrained in Japanese culture for many centuries. A classic example of this art is the Chōjū-jinbutsu-giga (“animal-person caricatures”), a.k.a. Scrolls of Frolicking Animals or Scrolls of Frolicking Animals and Humans: a series of paintings from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries attributed to the monk Toba Sōjō (born as Kakuyū; 1053–1140). These scrolls give a satirical interpretation of the Buddhist priesthood, portraying its members as non-human animals, such as mischievous rabbits and monkeys, engaged in all sorts of ridiculous activities, farting competitions included. The Buddha himself is depicted as a toad. Animals went on playing an important part in the history of visual storytelling beyond Toba’s masterpiece, paving the way for modern developments in manga and anime. Animal attributes are now most notable in anime’s talking companions, guides, and mascots. Works like the Chōjū-jinbutsu-giga intersect with mythology on two counts. Firstly, they often deal with tales steeped in Japanese lore, which is in itself a form of native mythology. Secondly, they have over time acquired a mythological standing of their own as alternative readings of more ancient legends, and of the archetypes embedded in them. However, the mythological import of the old scrolls is not tinged with the same pernicious undertones which taint the cultural mythologies designed to impair independent thought, and thus stunt self-determination. This is because the scrolls’ mythologies respect nature in all its forms, at the same time as they expose human folly in all its absurdity. They do not serve the interests of ideologies whose authority rests on the hubristic assumption of human superiority. Indeed, Japan’s old visual narratives provide illuminating insights into a sensibility that does not accord priority to the human animal over other beasts. Inspired by the teachings of Zen Buddhism, this sensibility regards intuition as a more important faculty than logic. It therefore sees nonhuman creatures as embodiments of intuitive genius. In addition, it draws attention to the predatory foolishness in which humans indulge as they

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go about proclaiming their primacy on the basis of their putative endowment with reason. This message runs right through Miyazaki’s oeuvre, gaining special effectiveness in the scenes which foreground the director’s environmentalist stance. In such scenes, human recklessness is epitomized by the habitat’s brutal violation in the service of power.

A A A Ultimately, the approach to nature prevalent in today’s world gives scant reason to hope, given that it is marked not only by hubris, but also by hypocritical duplicity. On the one hand, it shows a tendency to blame humanity itself for nature’s desecration. On the other hand, it evinces surprise at the realization that “the world seems headed for destruction.” In other words, human responsibility for the world’s fate is both acknowledged and denied in one single movement. “I don’t think that contradiction in our nature will ever be resolved,” argues Miyazaki. This remains the case even though it is obvious that “lots of disasters are coming.” Using the cataclysm dramatized in Ponyo as an illustration of this schizophrenic mentality, Miyazaki suggests that for many viewers, it is much more convenient to see the movie’s tsunami as a result of its heroine “being rambunctious than to think it’s the fault of governments” (Miyazaki, H. 2008b). Given humankind’s partiality for hubris, it is no wonder that Goethe’s Mephistopheles should have remained confident of success in the face of God’s conviction that Faust will be his servant in the end—and even jeered at God’s smugness with the words: “It’s very nice when such a great Gentleman, / Chats with the devil, in ways so human, too!” (Goethe 2003).

Coda The key words in the chapter headings used in this study—time, space, vision, the courage to smile—are necessary demarcators of specific aspects of Miyazaki’s thought. However, their relative arbitrariness cannot be denied. Indeed, the director’s world picture is distinguished throughout by such fluidity, and such a passion for unrelenting metamorphosis, as to be by and large unsympathetic to demarcations. In Miyazaki’s cosmos, time and space coalesce in a continuum of Einsteinian resonance. This is a universe of ancient forests and venerable gardens which appear to

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embody Andrew Marvell’s beautiful vision of a nature so all-absorbing as to be capable of “Annihilating all that’s made / To a green thought in a green shade” (Marvell). Alongside such sublime landscapes, Miyazaki’s universe features ordinary streets and homes, punctuated by all the humble vestiges of unspectacular everyday lives. The time-space in which these disparate settings find their natural abode bridges the numinous and the mundane in one elegant curve: the boundless flight path of a creativity so exquisite at so have earned Miyazaki’s endeavor the designation of the “greatest career in animation history” (Cary and Schodt). The director’s notions of time and space can be seen as pivotal components of his distinctive approach to the art of animation. This, in turn, is underpinned by a special vision: that is to say, a particular way of seeing not only the empirical world around us, but also a galaxy of other possible worlds visible only in the inner eye. It is by sharing his vision of things real and imagined that Miyazaki aspires to help his viewers find the courage to smile in an age which does not otherwise yield much reason for optimism.

A A A Miyazaki’s inclination to demystify the myths we live by stems largely from his suspicion of intangible concepts divorced from material reality. One of the main reasons for which mythologies thrive is that they peddle grand abstract ideas and, by inscribing them into the social fabric as unassailable dogmas, bar us from weighing their practical implications. For Miyazaki, even visionaries should always hold on to an element of concreteness, and to an awareness of the here-and-now. A crucial corollary of Miyazaki’s pragmatic temperament is that he is eager to appreciate and enjoy the material parts of everyday existence, the most humdrum tasks included. This temperament makes him impatient of abstract moral dictates and vapid theorizing. The importance accorded by Zen to the value of materiality comes to mind. Like Miyazaki’s worldview, Zen thinking is averse to theory divorced from practice. As Daisetz T. Suzuki emphasizes, Zen has little time for “conceptualization,” and therefore “insists on handling the thing itself and not an empty abstraction.” As a result, it “neglects … engaging in discourse on abstract subjects.” At the same time, it attaches great importance to “teaching by action, learning by doing” (Suzuki, D. T., p. 9). This description brings to mind the image of Miyazaki, as a creator whose art takes form instant by instant at the drawing desk, and is not

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discussed as an incorporeal topic as long as practical engagement is feasible. As Miyazaki’s longstanding friend and colleague Isao Takahata points out, the director “always stresses the absolute importance of being concrete. In his daily life, he is usually intensely opposed to idealism that lacks in concreteness.” Undeniably, “when he is himself inspired by something, he … sees all sorts of illusions” (Takahata 2009, pp. 456–457). Nevertheless, even amidst a swirl of “illusions,” Miyazaki is on the whole governed by a pragmatic disposition. The “illusions” themselves tend to be connected to a tangible reality. Even the director’s forays into the supernatural are rarely, if ever, escapist. More often than not, they are ways of reflecting on an actual state of affairs. Moreover, the ways in which viewers receive and interpret Miyazaki’s visions, and then proceed to assign them certain cultural values, serve to anchor those visions to a concrete cultural milieu. This is exemplified by the character of Totoro, the fruit of one of Miyazaki’s most glorious otherworldly explorations. So epoch-making as to have risen to the status of Studio Ghibli’s logo, Totoro bears witness to a cultural phenomenon of great consequence: the extent to which a culture’s collective imagination holds on to images meant to fulfill a shared necessity of increasing urgency. Therefore, even though Totoro “is supposedly the forest keeper,” this is merely “a half-baked idea,” according to his creator. In fact, “it would be more accurate to consider him a creature that modern Japanese had to make up out of desperation” (Miyazaki, H. 2005a, p. 102). The despair Miyazaki speaks of is spawned by an actual social reality: one which accords little space to the mind’s right to entertains fantasies and dreams, by damning both as unproductive pursuits, and robs nature of its mystical aura, by encouraging a wholly utilitarian take on its wonders. It has been said, and is here reported on the basis of word-of-mouth information, that Miyazaki, whenever he leaves his desk, also leaves his music playing and his drawing equipment ready for use, as though he always meant to return to his work without unnecessary delay. In this perspective, being is synonymous with doing—much as it is in the philosophy of Existentialism. Since living means shaping one’s life from one moment to the next, it can be seen as a creative effort in its own right: a process akin to the production of an artwork—and an animated one indeed. “I was surprised to learn that there was this freedom made of nothing but words,” says the narrator of Nic Pizzolatto’s Galveston (Pizzolatto, p.

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240). If adapting this beautiful sentence were forgivable, it could be argued that enjoying the fruits of Miyazaki’s mind leaves one essential impression: surprise at the discovery that there is a freedom made of nothing but drawings.

For Further Thought (1): Roland Barthes’ Mythologies Myths tend towards proverbs. Bourgeois ideology invests in this figure interests which are bound to its very essence: universalism, the refusal of any explanation, an unalterable hierarchy of the world…. Popular, ancestral proverbs still partake of an instrumental grasp of the world as object. A rural statement of fact, such as “the weather is fine” keeps a real link with the usefulness of the weather. It is an implicitly technological statement; the word, here, in spite of its general, abstract form, paves the way for actions, it inserts itself into a fabricating order: the farmer does not speak about the weather, he “acts it,” he draws it into his labour…. Popular proverbs foresee more than they assert, they remain the speech of a humanity which is making itself, not one which is. Bourgeois aphorisms, on the other hand, belong to metalanguage; they are a second-order language which bears on objects already prepared. Their classical form is the maxim. Here the statement is no longer directed towards a world to be made; it must overlay one which is already made, bury the traces of this production under a self- evident appearance of eternity: it a counter-explanation, the decorous equivalent of a tautology, of this peremptory because which parents in need of knowledge hang above the heads of their children. The foundation of the bourgeois statement of fact is common sense, that is, truth when it stops on the arbitrary order of him who speaks it.—Barthes 2000a, pp. 154–155

.2,

Time If my heart can become pure and simple like that of a child, I think there probably can be no greater happiness than this. —Kitaro Nishida (1911) The writing of history reflects the interests, predilections, and even prejudices of a given generation. This means that at the present time there is an urgent need to re-examine our past in terms of our present outlook. —John Hope Franklin (1994)

Childhood As mentioned in Chapter 1, Miyazaki is deeply concerned with the rampant diffusion of virtual-reality experiences, and the extent to which these are little by little replacing genuine fantasy constructs. The latter invites everyone in its proximity to embark on a stimulating exploration of new and unfamiliar territories. At the same time, it opens up fresh perspectives on the world we think we know, but soon discover we might only be acquainted with in a superficial way. In so doing, it transforms everyday life itself into an unforeseen dimension. Fantasy challenges us to reassess our common standards of plausibility and truth. It invites us to develop a more capacious purview of reality, and to reflect on humanity’s place within this expanded domain. In the presence of an authentic fantasy construct, we cannot just sit back in a state of stolid inertia. In fact, we must play a creative role in the ideation of its worlds, alongside the artists responsible for its initial orchestration. Virtual realities, by contrast, encourage the consumption of pre-packaged commodities precluding any opportunities for interaction. Kids are the most frequent casualties of this cultural phenomenon. “It seems to me that we’re doing everything under the sun,” 28

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argues Miyazaki, “to make sure that children lose their sense of curiosity. We adults give them all sorts of things like television, animation, and manga—things they can passively lap up” (Miyazaki, H. 2014l, p. 272). Miyazaki’s conception of temporality grants childhood a privileged place, not only as a stage in an individual’s personal development, but also as a transhistorical, collective state. This understanding of childhood as something which goes well beyond the compass of the single person’s evolution is underpinned by three interrelated premises: the perception of the child as the repository of special faculties which gradually disappear, or are attenuated almost to the point of insignificance, with the transition into adulthood; the idea that the infant falls heir to a universal mnemonic legacy at birth; the notion that the experience of nostalgia is as keen in the very young as it is in mature and tested adults. The most fundamental of the child’s distinctive capacities is an intuitive grasp of the world whereby occurrences and situations which most adults would deem quite preposterous, and therefore unacceptable, are understood at a visceral level, and accepted as entirely normal. Miyazaki opines that “children understand everything, through intuition.” So developed is this faculty that its purview “mostly goes beyond what adults are capable of ” (Miyazaki, H. 2008b). Intuition fosters an inquisitive spirit which enables children to take a keen interest in their environment’s tiniest manifestations, unhampered by arbitrary hierarchies or values. As a result of their inheritance of recollections which transcend their own temporal location, children are the receptacles of a special kind of percipience. This is the very wisdom which makes the child, as William Wordsworth puts it, “the father of the man” (Wordsworth 1807). “I believe that children’s souls are the inheritors of historical memory from previous generations,” Miyazaki maintains. “As they grow older and experience the everyday world that memory sinks lower and lower.” This supposition underlies the director’s mission as a whole, his goal being “to make a film that reaches down to that level.” In fact, he reckons that if he “could do that,” he “would die happy.” On a broader plane, Miyazaki regards the effort to reach down to the core of childhood wisdom as a worthwhile objective for all art, not solely cinema, let alone anime. “If, as artists, we try to tap into that soul level—if we say that life is worth living and the world is worth living in—then something good might come of it,” he states. “Maybe that’s what these films [of mine] are doing. They are my way of blessing the child” (cited in Brooks). At the same time as they celebrate children’s intuition and participation in an atavistic world, Miyazaki’s works also honor their boundless

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imagination as the springboard of spontaneous creativity. On the other hand, their ability to engage grown-up, no less than young, audiences bears witness to their aptitude to appeal to the child dormant in all of us, regardless of the degree of socialization to which we have been subjected. Of course, such potential is not always actualized, since it is undeniable that not all adults respond to Miyazaki’s films with equal amounts of enthusiasm. However, this fact does not detract from the director’s capacity to reach adults as well as children. Rather, it shows that disparate individuals embrace the dictates of enculturement with different levels of compliance. Their ability to continue communing with their inner child depends on the degree of their commitment to society’s adult rules, on how far they have accepted the existence of an adult norm with the right to sanction what is acceptable, and on the extent to which they care whether or not they conform with that norm. The incremental evaporation of the child’s mnemonic treasure triggers the genesis of a universal human disposition which, according to Miyazaki, colors anyone’s experience of time: nostalgia. To appreciate the full import of the director’s hypotheses on the universal character of the feeling of nostalgia, it is desirable to look at the context in which they are promulgated at some length. This is an essay first published in 1979, where Miyazaki offers his views on the reasons underlying the popularity of anime within a specific demographic: kids in junior high school (12–15 years of age). Such viewers are attracted to anime because they feel “oppressed,” forced as they are to devote their lives to books when life is beginning to reveal possibilities they would much rather explore, such as the prospect of romantic attachments. “To escape from this depressing situation,” Miyazaki contends, “they often find themselves wishing they could live in a world of their own—a world they can say is truly theirs, a world unknown even to their parents.” One of the reasons for which many types of anime prove particularly popular among teenagers is that they disclose alternate realities which young viewers feel at liberty to “incorporate” into their own personal worlds. Of course, these surrogate dimensions have never obtained in a literal sense. Nevertheless, Miyazaki feels that they hold the wistful quality of realities which have in fact existed but gradually evaporated, and whose traces are just about perceptible in the present. Thus, a young person’s desire for a private world unshackled by the strictures of the everyday is comparable to the “yearning for a lost world.” It is in this connection that Miyazaki comments on the universality of nostalgia, arguing that this feeling is widespread among all human beings, irrespective of age. “Human

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history exists in a continuum encompassing both the past and the future,” argues the director. “but the moment someone is born into this present instant, … he or she has already lost certain opportunities or possibilities, including the chance of being born in other ages.” The “fantasy worlds” yielded by anime at its best—and indeed any genuine work of the imagination—enable us to inhabit some of these myriad lost possibilities, albeit in a vicarious form. “We can achieve a type of satisfaction,” adds Miyazaki, “by substituting something for the unfulfilled portion of our lives” (Miyazaki, H. 2009a, pp. 19–20). Behind each teenager’s—or indeed grown-up’s—craving for alternate worlds lies the baby emerging into this world as the inheritor of a wideranging historical memory. This encompasses all the different possibilities entailed by an inestimable number of imaginable lives across the ages: a multidimensional spread of feasible realities which could never be comprised by a single life, not even the most adventurous. The extinction of the infant’s precious patrimony de facto begins to ebb at birth. This is the moment at which the creature’s infinite potentialities are curtailed, and reduced to one limited existence. Nostalgia starts taking form at a very early age in response to this seminal experience of loss. It is therefore “one of the rare characteristics which make us human. Human and children. In living, we lose something, little by little. Life becomes, for everyone, nostalgia” (Miyazaki, H. 2013a; my translation).

A A A The eponymous heroine in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is an adolescent, yet it is the child in her who enables the brave princess to sense the toxic jungle’s underlying healthiness, and its ability to cleanse the contaminated topsoil while producing clean water. That same latent child lets her grasp that the Ohmu, as the jungle’s guardians, play a critical role in guaranteeing that ecosystem’s ongoing regeneration. Nausicaä’s child self is still very much alive at the core of a character otherwise required by circumstances and status to reach a degree of maturity uncommon among girls her age, and a corresponding sense of responsibility. Thus, though wise beyond her years, Nausicaä carries intact within her soul all of the purity and candor she possessed as a toddling tot. Admittedly, the princess is also an accomplished scientist whose tenacious research and ingenious experiments bolster her belief in nature’s inherent knack of self-renewal in a world weakened by both environmental and martial hostility. Nonetheless, Nausicaä owes to the indomitable inner

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child her intrinsic grasp of the habitat’s secrets, and hence her recognition of the key to her beleaguered valley’s prosperous survival. Kushana, the epitome of disenchanted and embattled adulthood, is only capable of resorting to military initiatives devoid of even a shred of either humanity or foresight. It is against the background of this murky adult mentality that the heroine’s climactic apotheosis shines forth as the triumph not only of an individualized personality, but also, and more importantly, of a universal child self: the guardian of an ancient wisdom to which grown-ups have become oblivious. My Neighbor Totoro and Ponyo are no doubt the two works, out of the whole of Miyazaki’s spellbinding output, in which the child’s intuition, inquisitive temperament, and imagination assert themselves with unrivaled energy. Mei’s interaction with the giant Totoro is quite spontaneous and relaxed. None of the prejudices which would have unhampered the mind of an adult in the presence of a fantastical entity of this caliber— assuming, that is, that the Totoro would have chosen to reveal itself to an adult—limit the little girl’s purview of her surroundings: a world which always allows for the possibility of magic to exist side by side with the routine of daily duties and prosaic concerns. If anything, the fashion in which Mei reacts to the discovery of the fuzzy creature deep inside a cave is more matter-of-fact than the attitude she displays earlier in the movie at the sight of tadpoles in a little stream. Even Satsuki, Mei’s elder sibling, has retained enough of a childlike disposition to be capable of responding to unusual events without any hint of adult reserve, skepticism, or fear. This is demonstrated by the scenes in which both girls, shortly after their move to the rural abode, chance upon a colony of vivacious susuwatari (“soot sprites”). Later in the film, the undiluted joy exuding from both sisters aboard the Catbus further confirms their shared childhood wisdom. In Ponyo, Miyazaki puts the alternate fairytale format to superb advantage to uphold the child’s unique qualities. Central to this enterprise is the creation of a hero of elementary school age who is endowed not only with generous doses of intuition and innate wisdom, but also an impressive flair for adapting to the most extraordinary circumstances. Moreover, Sōsuke demonstrates an ability to learn from experience without any need for the intricate attempts at intellectualization to which grown-ups are prone. These qualities are encapsulated in the sequence in which Ponyo returns to Sōsuke’s home in human guise, having appropriated her father’s forbidden magic to achieve her goal. It takes the boy hardly no time at all to guess that the red-haired girl facing him is the

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metamorphic goldfish from the depths, and ask, quite certain of the reply, “Ponyo?” (Miyazaki, H. 2013b, p. 245). Through Sōsuke, Miyazaki shows that children are capable of grasping and processing much more than adults tend to give them credit for, and harbor imaginative powers which outshine by far those of grown-ups. It is in the portrayal of the titular heroine that Miyazaki makes the most of the fairytale genre’s penchant for hyperbole, dramatizing the character’s energy with such exuberance, passion, and delight as to defy without scruples the strictures of convention and decorum. The powers deployed by Ponyo, as a human child begotten by magic and a love of superhuman intensity, are such as to turn the natural equilibrium upside down. Ponyo’s essence is captured most memorably by the electrifying sequence in which, having engendered the tsunami which will reunite her with Sōsuke, she rides the waves with unbridled glee. Awash in a mood of sheer ecstasy, the sequence is a paean to nature’s sublime, indeed terrifying, magnificence.

A A A Language plays a key part in the erosion, and eventual inhibition, of the child’s unique capacities. “Language gradually replaces intuition as people grow up,” states Miyazaki. “I suspect the tipping point is 5 yeas of age” (Miyazaki, H. 2008b). Especially regrettable, in the director’s view, is the tendency to start teaching kids “how to write” at a stage in their lives when “their bodies” are still the principal means by which they glean information about their environment, and learn to negotiate its challenges. Far more desirable, given the sedentary character of the average child’s life today, would be to design “kindergartens and elementary schools, which are the entry point to their future world,” in ways which encourage physical exercise. As a result, it would become possible to model many teaching and learning practices around playground-based physical activities. In this way, play would no longer constitute a secondary aspect of children’s existence, relegated to the periphery of their daily schedules by a prescriptive adult society, but rather come to occupy a central place in their development (Miyazaki, H. 2014e, p. 141). Not only is Miyazaki convinced that the body is central to the processes through which children encounter their surroundings and learn about them: he also believes that it should be granted a major role in an adult’s pursuits. Thus, he has endeavored to make the corporeal dimension pivotal to Studio Ghibli’s work ethos. According to the director, one should

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never lose sight of either the part played by the human body in the creation of a work, or the material significance of the creation itself. He is therefore eager to underline that Studio Ghibli does not produce its anime by means of “long banks of computers,” that its works are actually made “by ‘humans,’ who are surrounded by physical ‘things,’ and the finished films are also physical ‘things’” (Miyazaki, H. 2014l, p. 269). Respecting the body is instrumental in preserving a modicum of childlikeness in adult life. Accordingly, it is a sine qua non of one’s ability to perceive the world in a commodious and imaginative fashion. This idea will be revisited later in the present discussion. Miyazaki’s approach to education capitalizes on the idea that the very young have an inborn capacity to interact physically with their surroundings in ways which most grown-ups barely recall. Moreover, it is based on the premise that the child’s propensity for interactive learning is grounded in a natural tendency to approach the world with all the senses, not just sight, and to allow the five senses to intermingle with scarce regard for their boundaries. In familiarizing themselves with their environments, children need “not just to see things, but to touch them, to smell them, and to taste them” (Miyazaki, H. 2014l, p. 273). Many eminent researchers, Daphne M. Maurer among them, have argued that the human sensorium evinces innately synesthetic tendencies. An essential facet of the baby’s normal functioning is indeed the crossmodal transmission of data: a kind of sense experience which entails the collusion of two or more sensory channels (e.g., sound and smell, or taste, sight and touch). Maurer maintains that synesthesia is a natural stage in a human being’s growth. “A variety of evidence supports the hypothesis that young infants confuse their senses in a synaesthetic mixture,” states the scientist. In intermingling “input from different senses,” the “newborn baby” is fundamentally “synaesthetic,” and therefore “forms schema independent of modality”—i.e., achieves an overall sense of a portion of his or her environment with no conscious awareness of the sensory channel or channels he or she has employed in order to do so. This entails that the baby “responds to changes in energy over space or over time ignoring the modality of input,” continues Maurer. Furthermore, “cross-modal matching is ephemeral and visual preferences are easily shifted,” which implies that infantile perception is inherently fluid (Maurer, p. 237). As argued earlier in this chapter, the child’s entry into language is largely responsible for the fading away of the child’s distinctive capacities, and especially intuition, a fertile imagination, and a special connection with the world’s universal memory. Synesthesia, their concomitant, like-

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wise evaporates as children are instructed to replace their hands-on experience of the physical world with abstract sign systems which sever communication from the body. Education plays a key part in subjecting the child’s sensorium, and attendant modes of perception, to a stringent process of sanitization. The more corporeal of the senses are marginalized due to their connection with the crude reality of the flesh and its leaky surfaces, while sight gains center place as a virtually incorporeal sense, insofar as it allows for the maintenance of varying degrees of distance between the perceiver and the perceived. According to Cretien van Campen, “for most children, the discovery of the senses is … suppressed by the school system. Of course, children do not attend school in order to daydream or fantasize. But I wonder if the school system is not too focused on developing cognitive skills. After all, though it is true that children learn a lot in school, they also unlearn certain skills in school” (Campen, p. 43). It is likely that Miyazaki would concur with the scholar, having indicated that he would very much like to see the educational system relax so that children—in particular, those who do not have a natural ainity with study in the classic academic sense—may develop unhindered their ability to “learn from hands-on experience rather than from abstract thought” (Miyazaki, H. 2014l, p. 271). This does not mean that the senses should be given unconditional priority at the expense of conceptualization and ratiocination. Thus, the director does not ignore “the need for a good education in the sciences.” Nor does he wish to deny parents their right to encourage their kids to “study hard.” What it does mean, however, is that the kind of education which aims to sever the young from their roots in the material world is bound to have an adversarial impact on the most creative and resourceful facets of their minds. This, in turn, is likely to curtail the child’s acquisition of adequate intellectual powers, insofar as the ability to develop thought, and to visualize mentally, depends to a significant extent on a substratum of unfettered imaginative activity. In addition, Miyazaki argues that the children produced by that type of schooling tend to be “frail,” “easily hurt,” and “sensitive, to the point where they are emotionally vulnerable,” which is barely an achievement of which either a parent or a teacher should be proud (Miyazaki, H. 2014k, p. 265). If the senses are not allowed to flourish alongside a person’s knack of abstract thought, the resulting human being will not be equipped with a truly comprehensive range of either experiential or analytical tools. “A more spontaneous (and less rational) development of the senses,” argues van Campen, “might teach children how to deal intuitively and instinc-

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tively with other people and events in life. In contrast, the rationalization of the senses—the conditioning of the senses as tools that process bits of information in an eicient way—certainly has advantages in subjects such as maths and grammar. However, children can have a wider repertoire to use as they become acquainted with the world in which they live. Their senses contain more way of knowing than the school system may suggest, or allow” (Campen, p. 43). In both his films and his critical writings, Miyazaki commends the desirability of maintaining a childlike disposition throughout life. People with an aptitude to see the world with the eyes of a child regardless of their actual age do not rely on their mental capacities and abstract concepts alone. They do not disregard their bodies and their senses as secondary aspects of their existence as humans. In fact, they tend to perceive both objects and events with both their minds and their bodies, absorbing their import into their being in a spontaneous and inventive fashion. As anticipated in Chapter 1, Miyazaki himself is a paradigmatic incarnation of the type of adult who is given to looking at life with the curiosity, ingenuity, and the commodious disposition which by and large characterizes the very young.

A A A Miyazaki’s reflections on the role played by language in suppressing children’s intuition echoes Jacques Lacan’s theories regarding the transition from the pre-linguistic realm, which he terms the Imaginary, to the domain of codified and socially agreed signs, the Symbolic. In the imaginary, the infant lives in an illusion of plenitude predicated on its perception of itself as whole, and senses an inseverable unity between its own body and both those around it and its environment. The entry into the Symbolic signals a traumatic disruption of this blissful, albeit delusory, state. Yet, it is an inevitable precondition of a person’s adjustment to his or her social destiny: a process which simultaneously releases humans to the possibility of social intercourse, and condemns them to a state of implacable lack. This is because it is the prime attribute of words—which are only arbitrary and conventional symbols, not real things—to be different from what they stand for. Words lack substance and materiality. As Lacan aphoristically puts it, “the word is the murder of the thing” (Lacan). As each human gains access to the Symbolic Order of language, he or she is reduced to an “I”: a mere word. Hence, the entry into language deprives humans of their own original substance and mate-

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riality, and of the chance to express its being in its fullness, multifacetedness, and depth. Miyazaki, likewise, is well aware that language cannot be resisted, and that the child’s absorption into a world which is bound to deny his or her instincts is therefore inexorable. Nevertheless, he goes on trusting animation’s capacity to appeal to those aspects of a person’s mind and sensorium which have retained a childlike disposition. These may be concealed, perhaps submerged almost to the point of extinction, by the requirements of the socializing process. Yet, they abide with great tenacity, as their roots delve deep not only in the person’s private experience, but also in a collective substratum whose elements have been steadily accumulating for time immemorial. The submerged forest in Ponyo could be regarded as a symbol of the dormant child relegated to the psyche’s recesses by the dictates of enculturement. The forest’s ainity with ancient (and pre-individual) human proclivities which have been swamped and hidden from sight is confirmed by the fact that it is home not only to the familiar environment overwhelmed by the tsunami—namely, the protagonist’s coastal town—but also prehistoric species of arresting beauty. The educational system is founded upon the primacy of language as an ensemble of codes and conventions regulating human self-expression and interpersonal communication. Not only are the child’s natural capacities curtailed by the entry into adult language: they are further suppressed by schools, and related sites of instruction, through the imposition of increasingly specialized discourses by which the child is increasingly defined. This means that instead of being at liberty to use language as a vehicle for the articulation of their creativity, children are restricted, regulated, indeed spoken, by specific types of language: those which the educational system considers appropriate to the inculcation of its lessons. These, in turn, are designed to pave the way to the pupils’ economic usefulness in the adult domain, and thus sustain the ideology of a profitoriented society. Even before the school system acquires center stage as the young’s prime mover and shaker, “parents are apt to stamp out their children’s purity and goodness,” by imposing the idea of what a “good kid” should be on their instinctive proclivities and inborn wisdom. It is mainly for this reason that Miyazaki wishes to make the sorts of films he “wanted to see” when he himself “was a child” (Miyazaki, H. 2009e, p. 50). Miyazaki does not approve of any institution or social structure geared towards the curbing of children’s intuition and free imagination. His works intimate that knowledge contained within the strongholds of

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privileged organizations is bound to place grave restrictions upon children’s natural development, and stun their innate attraction to play as an activity in which pleasure and learning happily coalesce. It is therefore plausible that Miyazaki would readily sympathize with the model proposed by Ivan Illich in Deschooling Society as a means of putting an end to institutionalized knowledge, and to the dogmas, preconceptions, and specious hierarchies promulgated by this system. Likewise feasible is the director’s ainity with Michel Foucault’s reflections on the operations of disciplinary power in Discipline and Punish. “The success of disciplinary power,” writes the philosopher, “derives no doubt from the use of simple instruments; hierarchical observation, normalizing judgement and their combination in a procedure that is specific to it, the examination” (Foucault 1979, p. 325). The first of these strategies is predicated on the premise that the profitable “exercise of discipline presupposes a mechanism that coerces by means of observation.” Space is no longer organized so as to ensure that the powerful could enjoy maximum visibility: a function which in bygone ages was achieved by the “ostentation of palaces.” Nor is architecture meant to serve the status quo by being planned so that it will make “external space” observable, which was once the purpose of “fortresses.” In fact, modern structures of observation monitor the “internal” world of the people they strive to subjugate. What these system aim to “render visible” is neither the powerful nor the outside world, but rather the individual’s inner world (p. 326). The objective is to penetrate a person’s very core, to expose private strengths and weaknesses to the merciless gaze of disciplinary power, and thus turn the observed subject into a docile and exploitable body. The supreme structure of observation would make it possible for a single observer to see everything. The architectural model which most closely approximates this ideal is Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon: a structure whose principles have come to permeate the whole of modern society, as attested to by the functioning of contexts as disparate as factories, hospitals, and, most importantly in this context, schools. The achievement of control is no longer conditional on the use of overt material constraints, but rather on the internal supervision of those under control. A culture in which the individual’s inner world has become the prime object of scrutiny denies the very possibility of a real inner self: a private realm to which each of us may lay claim as an inviolate possession. Foucault’s Discipline and Punish was originally published in 1975. Since then, society’s organs of surveillance have grown exponentially. As Alex Preston observes in connection with the erosion of privacy in con-

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temporary society, in our world, as in Bentham’s Panopticon, it is “perhaps best to follow Winston Smith’s bitter lesson from Nineteen Eighty-Four: ‘If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.’” If we wish to keep something secret, this something is likely to matter a lot to us. To protect our safety, we may well get into the habit of keeping secrets, of pushing the things we most value to the darkest recesses of the self, and of blinding ourselves to their very existence. It is very likely that in doing so, we will completely lose touch with our innermost self, and come to know only the surface of our being. Life itself will become shallow, uninspiring, a ravenous minute-by-minute pursuit of the targets set up by society as the benchmarks of material success. Preston’s argument is directly relevant to Miyazaki’s world picture because it pinpoints the imagination as the ultimate fatality of today’s ubiquitous surveillance. In forcing us to become oblivious to the depths of our being, unrelenting observation suppresses all leeway for the burgeoning of this capacity. “By denying ourselves access to our own inner worlds,” argues the critic, “we are stopping up the well of our imagination, that which raises us above the drudge and grind of mere survival, that which makes us human” (Preston). Miyazaki intimates that children are likely to be the first victims of a society which denies the imagination. However, his films make it abundantly clear that all human beings, regardless of age, have a right to protect their inner space. It is here that the child each of us once was still abides, shrunk but undefeated by the adult world’s arbitrary rules. It is here, therefore, that the vestiges of our powers of imagination, creativity, and play dwell like buried treasures. The second strategy posited by Foucault as the lynchpin of disciplinary power, normalizing judgement, is based on a strict definition of normality, and is designed to enforce patterns of behavior which conform with this criterion. Within the educational system, normalizing judgement operates by subjecting children to practices which will induce them, with variable degrees of rigidity and severity, to comply with the preestablished norm, punishing them or ostracizing them should they deviate from the accepted code in the direction of presumed abnormality. Hierarchical observation and normalizing judgment join forces in the third of the strategies discussed by Foucault: the examination—for example, of pupils in schools. At the same time, the examination exemplifies what Foucault calls power/knowledge—namely, power constituted through accepted forms of knowledge—to the extent that it amalgamates “the deployment of force and the establishment of truth” (p. 184). Knowledge predicated on the dictates of power is bound to stultify the individ-

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ual’s indigenous ingenuity—to flatten all of a society’s multifarious members to one amorphous mass of depersonalized subjects. Foucault’s argument echoes Miyazaki’s implied aversion to any educational institution liable to smother the young’s native intuition, inspiration, and wisdom. No doubt, the director would much prefer a schooling system which seeks to foster such capacities through the implementation of democratic, as opposed to dictatorial, rules. It is worth noting, on this matter, that the idea of a children’s democracy is not a wholly utopian concept. Summerhill, a co-educational boarding school founded in 1921 by A. S. Neill, is a very real place, and its achievements are well-documented. In such an environment, children are free to be themselves and learn according to their own rhythms, not to external criteria of success and failure. It is undeniable, however, that the vast majority of schools are nothing like Summerhill. The moment children are marshaled within the hallowed confines of the average school, they are subjected at once to disciplinary measures: methods of training which, in keeping with the model discussed by Foucault, monitor and scrutinize them, and expect them to behave in specified ways at all times. Miyazaki does not deliver an explicit critique of either Japan’s or any other actual country’s educational system. However, he accords schools a very marginal presence in his works, which contrasts sharply with current trends in anime, where educational establishments tend to be granted a central role as both settings and plot triggers in many series. By declining to give schools either of these roles, Miyazaki intimates that it is not within the walls of regular schools that real learning takes place. All of his films, including the early, slapstick-oriented, The Castle of Cagliostro, chronicle journeys of self-discovery and self-development: processes which clearly involve the acquisition of important lessons. Yet, these are not the sorts of lessons one can gain from ordinary school teachers. In fact, the strictly pre- programmed instruction patterns to which children are enslaved within mainstream institutions fade into insignificance in comparison with the gravity and depth of the lessons learned by Miyazaki’s young (and indeed not so young) protagonists. At times, the learning curves traced by Miyazaki’s yarns imply that the import of the knowledge which the sanctioned educational system is so eager to inculcate is downright paltry. Worse still, it is quite inimical to the retention of a commodious approach to one’s surroundings: an attitude without which no genuine learning is possible. Indeed, systematized instruction which grants children no self-determination is bound to

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restrict the young mind’s purview, insofar as its chief (or even sole) aim is to facilitate the pupil’s integration into a profit-driven world. In today’s society, children are not only regimented by the strictures inherent in linguistic communication, by the inflexible rules imposed upon them by the educational system, and by the ubiquity of sundry surveillance strategies. No doubt, the importance of these factors can hardly be overestimated. Nevertheless, it is crucial to remember that today’s kids are also burdened by their parents’ ambitions, and by the pressure first to excel academically, and then to obtain gainful employment, in a world which offers them few opportunities to accomplish either goal. The result is a sense of uncertainty which curbs the child’s native tendency to explore the world with levels of ingenuity and elasticity unknown to most grown-ups. So pervasive is this feeling in contemporary culture as to render it the age of the “mass popularization of insecurity” (Miyazaki, H. 2014m, p. 389).

A A A Neither Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind nor Castle in the Sky features any schools in the modern sense of the term. When Miyazaki’s films introduce something approximating an educational system, this is shown to operate in a fashion detrimental to the young’s welfare. Princess Mononoke is a case in point. The system championed by the elders in order to perpetuate tradition as the supposed fountainhead of virtue and truth harbors scarce sympathy for the young, as evinced by its response to Ashitaka’s plight. Even though the curse to which the youth has fallen victim—courtesy of a god, incidentally—is the result of his effort to protect the village from certain devastation, tradition decrees that he must find the cure to his aliction elsewhere—and by himself. Valiant and generous though he is, Ashitaka cannot expect any support from the guardians of ritual and custom. The only other repository of knowledge presented in Princess Mononoke is the forest: a sublime world transcending the limitations of all human institutions, and therefore unscathed by the trivial preconceptions which taint the knowledge divulged by ordinary educational establishments. However, Miyazaki suggests that even this superior context accommodates traces of a dangerous dogmatism. This is embodied by the boars, and particularly by the clan’s leader, the blind Okkoto. The animals’ undiluted hatred of humans leads them to assault Irontown without pondering the consequences of their actions, making them instrumental in Lady Eboshi’s counter-attack, and attempt to kill the Forest Spirit Shishigami (a.k.a.

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Daidarabocchi, or Nightwalker). In this way, the director steers clear of any facile idealization of the forest as a nobler or purer reality. Indisposed toward Manichaean dualism in any guise, Miyazaki never handles good and evil as binary opposites. As a result, he neither demonizes his villains nor upholds the virtues of his goodies in a simplistic way. The forest, as Princess Mononoke’s most memorable character, is no exception. The reference to Chihiro’s prospective school in Spirited Away’s opening sequence suggests that oicial education holds little appeal for the young heroine. When the institution is again mentioned at the end of the movie, Chihiro appears to have begun to entertain a less negative conception of the place. Nonetheless, it is implied that this change of attitude is not inspired by the girl’s recognition of the institution’s intrinsic worth. Rather, it stems from her having developed a more tolerant approach to the world in general thanks to the daunting otherworldly adventures she has undertaken. Moreover, Chihiro’s casual dismissal of the challenge of a new school indicates that she still regards the prospect as barely attractive. One thing is certain: it is unlikely that the child will ever learn any lessons more valid than those garnered from the Other life of which she has partaken, or acquire any knowledge by more testing a route. Satsuki in My Neighbor Totoro attends the local school, but it is not on the girl’s oicial schooling that the action lays emphasis. What gains prominence instead is the playful disturbance of the routine caused by little Mei when, refusing to be left behind, she insists on attending her elder sister’s lessons. At this point, we witness the carnivalesque disruption of a community of well-trained pupils by the energy of a creature as yet uninhibited by the demands of disciplinary power. Fio in Porco Rosso and Sophie in Howl’s Moving Castle exemplify another educational model favored by Miyazaki: learning through work. William Morris’ characters in News from Nowhere obtain all manner of skills by trying their hand at a wide range of jobs, and, through these practical abilities, gain insights into their environment, the meaning of human relationships, and the value of life itself, which no traditional establishment could ever claim to provide. It is clear that Fio, like Morris’s personae, has reached her exceptional expertise as an aviation designer from the practical training she has received since childhood in her relatives’ workshops. Sophie, likewise, appears to have acquired through hands-on apprenticeship in her stepmother’s atelier her stellar competence as a milliner: one so talented as to be capable of imparting her artifacts with the qualities of the intended wearer. Reflecting a propensity widespread in Japanese culture, Miyazaki never draws a neat dividing-line between artists and

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artisans. In the director’s films, as in classic Japanese aesthetics, activities such as gardening, cooking, and weaving (amongst legion others) deserve recognition as arts on a par with painting, sculpture, or architecture. In Ponyo, the educational establishment plays a very marginal role. As it happens, the protagonist seems a lot more interested in frequenting the old people’s home next door to his elementary school than in attending his own classes. The one explicit reference to Sōsuke’s supposed place of learning we encounter lays emphasis on rules. As they journey to the school, with Ponyo in goldfish mode in the green bucket resting in Sōsuke’s lap, Lisa is quick to remind her son that his teacher “never likes showand-tell” (Miyazaki, H. 2013b, p. 229). This suggests that even in the context of primary education, the disciplinary dimension of training is accorded priority. Sōsuke is wise enough, in the circumstances, to listen to his own instincts, and chooses to hide his precious charge under a bush outside the school instead of gambling with the adult world: a reality which experience has shown him to be unpredictable, even if not downright dangerous. The message underlying these scenes is that children cannot afford to trust adults implicitly, and must find their own ways of protecting what they most value—even if this involves adopting strategies which contravene the rules of the adult world, or result in behavior which grown-ups find impenetrable. Miyazaki’s tendency to marginalize brick-and-mortar schools, and the predetermined knowledge they aim to impart, is still evident in his last feature film. In The Wind Rises, the protagonist’s school makes a brief appearance early in the film, but not as the context of mainstream learning. Rather, it functions as the setting in which Jiro’s vocation is sparked by the borrowing of an English aviation journal in which the legendary Gianbattista Caproni, the inventor destined to become the boy’s imaginary mentor, makes a noticeable appearance.

A A A Let us now consider the role played by the fairy tale—a genre to which Miyazaki’s works consistently allude—in the disciplining of the young. In spite of their often disturbing themes and imagery, fairy tales have traditionally served to consolidate the status quo by prescribing exemplary codes of conduct. As Jack Zipes observes, even though fairy tales have become enshrined in modern history as “universal, ageless, therapeutic, miraculous, and beautiful” (Zipes 1991, p. 138), they are in fact entangled with often restrictive ideological agendas.

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Fairy tales began to be accorded a central part in the disciplining of children in seventeenth-century France, a society in which both the established nobility and the burgeoning bourgeoisie had a vested interest in inculcating the virtue of self-control into their young members by curbing natural instincts. The restriction of children’s freedom by means of fairy tales runs parallel to the domestication of those narratives themselves through editing, edulcoration, and the inclusion of “morals” infused with menacing connotations. This process involved a gradual translation of old folktales rooted in the oral tradition into a putatively civilized literary genre. Charles Perrault’s Histoires ou contes du temps passé (1697) typify this trend. In this text, the more transgressive aspects the old peasant tales have been amended, or indeed elided altogether, the emphasis falling instead on the ideal of self-discipline. It becomes incumbent upon the young reader or listener to introject the principles taught by the storyteller, and become his or her own self-regulating watchdog. Joseph Campbell argues that fairy tales operate for both boys and girls as “initiation ceremonies,” or rites of passage held capable of “killing the infantile ego” (Campbell, p. 168). L. C. Seifert offers a related perspective on the genre, maintaining that fairy tales ensnare both sexes in the hegemonic imperative to secure “the harmonious existence of family and society at large” (Seifert, p. 109). Even more sinister is the deployment of fairy tales as an indirect means of justifying infantile abuse. This features as a common theme in the tradition, but is by and large disguised so as to look like an impartial expression of necessary discipline. According to Marina Warner, this disturbing trend finds a close correlative in legends intended to legitimate the ill-treatment and victimization of children or even, in the most opprobrious scenarios, infanticide. Otherworldly entities have indeed been invoked on many occasions to explain the disappearance of infants and small kids, and thus provide convenient explanations for deaths caused by human agencies as supernatural phenomena. “A changeling,” states Warner, “could be discreetly made to disappear, as an evil gift of the fairies, or even of the devil; to dispose of a human child on the other hand, however unwanted or damaged at birth, lay beyond the frontiers of acceptable conduct…. Infanticide, in cases where there was nothing untoward, could thus be concealed” (Warner 2000, p. 29). While fairy tales have been instrumental in assisting the socialization of the young, even by recourse to brutal tropes of the kind described above, there are also stories in that mold which highlight the adult world’s disciplining of children not to in order to validate it, but rather to challenge it. Their primary ploy, in this regard, is to champion the young’s ongoing

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allegiance to imagination and play. One of the most memorable instances of this approach is E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Nutcracker and the Mouse King (1816). Miyazaki has devoted a special exhibition, held at the Ghibli Museum in 2014–2015, to this famed (and controversial) tale. In the choreographing of the Ghibli Museum display, Miyazaki has been keen to bring out “the true story” at the heart of Hoffmann’s narrative, and hence expose the original tale’s challenging and enigmatic quality. As the museum’s website emphasizes, Nutcracker and the Mouse King “unfolds in the overlapping realms of ‘Reality’ and ‘Fantasy’” as domains “with ambiguous boundaries.” In the show, the director “introduces the story of The Nutcracker and presents his interpretation from various perspectives through hand-drawn illustrated panels.” These are juxtaposed with “a large model of a ballet theatre’s stage and a room presenting The Nutcracker’s lovely illustrations, drawn by its illustrator Alison Jay, inviting young children into the world of the picture book.” In addition, the exhibition challenges the visitor to explore the identity of Hoffmann’s titular character, and to find out his origins and role. Most importantly, for the purpose of the present argument, Miyazaki’s display is keen to underscore Hoffman’s desire to offer “brilliant treasures … to children blessed with the freedom of imagination” (“Announcement of a new exhibition: The Nutcracker and the Mouse King—A Fairy Tale Treasure”). Therefore, in bringing out the tale’s strange beauty, Miyazaki has aimed to show that fairy tales do not have to be tools for the regimentation of the young. He is aware, however, that even the best of them have not escaped the sanitizing interventions designed to render them useful precisely as such instruments. He also recognizes that at times, when purging has not seemed a viable option, fairy tales have been demonized as subversive and dangerous, or else derided as the issues of a frenzied brain. Hoffmann’s Nutcracker and the Mouse King has been the victim of both ploys, insofar as it has been subjected to normalizing edulcoration, on the one hand, and attacked as a scandalous affront to decorum, on the other. It is not surprising that Miyazaki should have felt drawn to Hoffmann’s world, and to Nutcracker and the Mouse King in particular. If we go past the laundered and simplified version of the story offered by Tchaikovsky’s great ballet The Nutcracker (1892), we discover a complex realm pervaded by a spell-binding blend of the supernatural and the everyday, the sublime and the absurd—in other words, an ambiguous reality akin to the director’s own worldview. Above all, there is every chance that Miyazaki would spontaneously sympathize with Hoffmann’s use of the fairy tale genre to expose the crimes perpetrated by bourgeois families in

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their efforts to turn their children into pliable, productive, and, most crucially, unimaginative beings. Miyazaki shares with Hoffmann a desire not only to foster children’s intuitive understanding and unique creativity, but also to protect the childlike elements which survive in all people, even though much of the time these are repressed to the limit of obliteration by the imperative to conform to the supposedly more reliable perception of the world associated with adulthood. As Zipes observes, “Hoffmann insists on keeping the child in us alive until we die. Without the imagination we can be instrumentalized and exploited” (Zipes 2007, p. xxv). Miyazaki embraces an analogous ethos, in both his films and his writings, with heroic tenacity. Zipes maintains that for Hoffmann, the question of vision is paramount. To corroborate this point, the critic comments specifically on the ending of Nutcracker and the Mouse King, where the narrator describes a land filled with “the most splendid and most wondrous of things, if you only have the right eyes to see them” (Hoffmann, p. 61). In focusing on “the perception of wonder,” these words throw into relief Hoffmann’s preoccupation with “how to envision and realize desire and not dampen curiosity as one matures within the confines of an orderly middle-class society” (p. xxvii). Like Hoffmann, Miyazaki knows full well that only those endowed with the “right eyes”—i.e., with a commodious and unprejudiced disposition—will be able to recognize pleasure and pain, wonder and fear, for what they are. This entails the capacity to transcend the stultifying boundaries of resentment or self-interest. As Ashitaka learns in Princess Mononoke, it is only by looking at things with eyes unclouded by hatred that one may begin to grasp the world in its true dimensions, and transcend the narrow niche to which one’s reality has been reduced by the demands of the so-called encultured grown-up community. In addition, the Japanese director and the German writer are united by their common commitment to the young’s rescue—in imagination, if not in practice—from the shackles imposed upon their instincts and wisdom by the imperatives of social regimentation. “If adults do not nourish the imagination of their children,” argues Zipes vis-à-vis Nutcracker and the Mouse King, “the children will lose sight of their potential, and their imagination will take its revenge later by abandoning them in a banal, lifeless world.” The material effect of a “life without the imagination” can be observed in the conduct and lifestyle of “those ‘deadened’ adults who want to regulate the lives of children.” Children must be offered opportunities to perceive “alternatives” to the type of existence which has “already been

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chartered and prescribed before they were born” (p. xxviii). This is precisely what Miyazaki’s works endeavor to do with both urgency and charm. It should be noted that Hoffmann’s vision is not the sole facet of German Romanticism with which Miyazaki’s Weltanschauung bears ainities. Even though there is no evidence of Ludwig Tieck representing a direct influence on the director’s work, the German author’s fantasy tales evince remarkable similarities with Miyazaki’s own approach to the fantastic. It is Tieck’s leaning towards the uncanny, in particular, that chimes with Miyazaki’s sensitivity, and analogous attraction to the more inconclusive, elusive, and hence unsettling aspects of fantasy’s kaleidoscopic domain. Miyazaki shares with Tieck most of the salient traits which Margaret E. Atkinson identifies as the lynchpins of the Romantic writer’s cachet in her introduction to one of his most famous fairy tale, Eckbert the Fair (1797). Atkinson’s assessment of the Romantic author’s preference for a “bewildering interweaving of natural and supernatural” is especially relevant to Miyazaki’s oeuvre. This proclivity, argues the critic, is “calculated to inspire in even the most matter-of-fact reader Tieck’s own uncomfortable conviction of the immanence of the strange and uncanny in everyday life. The world of the supernatural … may at first seem isolated from the world of normal reality; but in the course of time the uncanny power extends its sphere. Emissaries from the realm of the supernatural cross the border into reality; … the frontier separating the two spheres becomes tenuous and tends to disappear altogether. In the no-man’s-land that is left, the normal and the irrational are inextricably confused, and the result is a peculiarly unstable, insubstantial effect” (Atkinson, p. xi). This account would provide an apposite description of the atmosphere pervading Princess Mononoke in virtually its entirety, and bathing the darker moments of Porco Rosso, Spirited Away, and Howl’s Moving Castle. Even the generally brighter worlds one encounters in My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki’s Delivery Service, and Ponyo participate in the disquieting sense of instability pinpointed by Atkinson in scenes where common standards of reality and truth all but evaporate. Miyazaki’s imagination yields liminal worlds akin to Tieck’s. In the director’s works, as in those of the Romantic author, the supernatural and the ordinary may at first seem separate, yet end up intersecting, and destabilizing the frontier between the habitual and the bizarre. In My Neighbor Totoro, to dwell on a specific example, the otherworldly seems initially confined to the sooty attic of the old rural residence, the realm of the susuwatari—at least as long as darkness is allowed to reign supreme within the long unoccupied room. However, hints at the existence of mysterious

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entities in other parts of the house soon raise doubts about the supernatural’s effective containment to one floor of the abode. The viewer is encouraged to wonder whether magical beings might in fact constitute a ubiquitous presence. With these subtle allusions, Miyazaki evokes an atmosphere of deliberate uncertainty. If taken as an allegory for a broader state of affairs, this ruse can be seen as an invitation to contemplate the possibility that the inexplicable and the everyday coexist at all times within the folds of the regular world we inhabit moment by moment. In My Neighbor Totoro, the idea that the two dimensions are ultimately inseparable is conveyed by the nocturnal sequence in which Satsuki and Mei fly over the sleeping countryside courtesy of Totoro and his magical spintop, join the creature and his miniature friends in dance and play, and witness the spectacular growth of the seeds and nuts he has given them into a giant tree. Miyazaki implies that the sequence might chronicle a dream, an actual event, or an uncanny blend of both. If the precise nature of this cinematic gem were to become obvious, the whole story’s dramatic and aesthetic balance would be impaired. Both Tieck and Miyazaki depict the supernatural as an equivocal reality, presenting it as “friendly and helpful” one moment, and “sinister” the next. In both artists, moreover, this shift is triggered by a character’s brash or hubristic behavior. In Tieck, such a character typically “offends the supernatural power by disregarding its claims in favour of the demands of ordinary existence” (p. xii). In Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, a change of the kind found in Tieck’s work is initiated by Kushana’s impulsive decisions, all of which spring from a disrespect of the numinous, fueled by a blinding thirst for political ascendancy. Lady Eboshi’s actions in Princess Mononoke bear witness to a similar disposition, and lead to likewise destructive outcomes. The Witch of the Waste’s unethical use of her magical talents constitutes a different form of violation of the supernatural’s laws. What it leads to is neither power nor pleasure, but the woman’s vulnerability to the schemes of a sorceress even more powerful and unscrupulous that the Witch of the Waste herself: the popish Madame Suliman. Eckbert the Fair supplies a potent, though partly oblique, critique of the young’s victimization by a callous, vengeful, and ultimately sadistic adult world which Miyazaki would readily appreciate. As long as Tieck’s female protagonist, Berthe, complies with the demands of the adult world, she is granted a space. This is equally true of the “regular” human world epitomized by her abusive father, and of the supernatural world personified by the figure of the old woman (a witch-like character who also turns

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out to be her mother, and the one-time lover of her husband Eckbert’s father). The moment Berthe starts contravening the rules of the grownup world, everything starts falling apart. At the same time, the disciplinary structures to which she has been submitted from birth, largely unbeknownst to Berthe herself, do not relent until they have managed to destroy not only her, but also those close to her, no matter how long it takes. The metaphorical punishment suffered by the girl just after leaving the parental home is encapsulated in the scenes devoted to the account of her lonely pilgrimage through a menacing and inhospitable landscape. The retribution to which Berthe is subjected following her desertion of the old woman’s cottage is more multi-layered and protracted, in keeping with the nature of the “crime” for which she is expected to pay. It therefore entails both the pain of immediate hardship, and the long term repercussions of a gradual, yet relentless and inexorable, descent into despair, whose only possible outcomes are madness and death. Furthermore, as Atkinson stresses, Eckbert the Fair dramatizes the victimization of children by repressive adult systems—social, ethical, spiritual—by compounding its complex conception of the supernatural with the “religious idea” that “the children must atone for the sins of their fathers” (p. xiii). In Castle in the Sky, Miyazaki dramatizes this idea by means of a young protagonist, Sheeta, who labors under circumstances unleashed by events sealed in her family’s past, to which she is quite oblivious. In the course of the story, Sheeta develops into a mature young woman with a clear sense of purpose, and hitherto unsuspected strength of character. Nevertheless, it is her initial state of ignorance regarding her origins, and in particular her connection with the floating island pivotal to the action, that allows the iniquitous Muska to play with her destiny—and, by extension, the selfless Pazu’s own fate. It is only in the drama’s climactic moments that the significance of Sheeta’s connection with the Laputan royal line becomes obvious, as Muska’s nefarious plans are shown to depend on the girl’s cooperation in activating the floating island’s advanced technology. Pivotal to this momentous task is the special crystal inherited by Sheeta from a long and illustrious line. Pazu himself has access to his father’s diary and sketches, and is therefore aware of the valiant aeronaut’s fascination with Laputa. His desire to penetrate and, ideally, develop his departed parent’s technological aspirations bears witness to a determination to get his fate into his own hands. He cannot suspect, however, the exact nature of his father’s attraction to the floating island. Nor can he even begin to imagine the extraordinary

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complexity of the technology at its crystal core: a supercomputer in control of a weapons system with the power to subjugate the Earth and its inhabitants. In Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, the young’s subjection to past events beyond their ken is encapsulated by intimations that the eponymous heroine’s actions are somewhat preordained. Nausicaä’s fate is in fact inscribed, in symbolic and stylized guise, in an ancient prophecy revolving around a legendary blue-robed savior. The prophecy is presented in the form of a splendid montage, shown in the opening credits, which appears to have been inspired by the famous Bayeux Tapestry: a richly embroidered cloth dating back to the early Middle Ages. The divination chronicled in Miyazaki’s tapestry leads to happy ending—and one which could indeed be seen to anticipate the young protagonist’s climactic triumph. However, this does not cancel out the fact that the young princess’ destiny is sealed within a narrative written for her prior to her birth, and over which she cannot have any ultimate control. The portrayal of Jiro Horikoshi in The Wind Rises develops this idea by means of a protagonist who is just powerless to write his own life story. Jiro Horikoshi is only able to act out the role of the genius: one too myopic—in both the literal and the metaphorical sense—to entertain an adequate purview of history’s course. Chihiro in Spirited Away, by contrast, is a paradigmatic example of the type of individual who chooses to intervene in the plot laid out for her by her parents and, by implication, both old and prospective teachers, as well as the broader social web in which she is enclosed. The kid is hence able to take her history into her own hands. The film suggests that only extreme experiences may awaken a person’s potential for autonomous choice. No matter whether this has taken place in real life, in imagination’s realm, or in a misty no-man’s-land between the two, it is Chihiro’s exposure to a radical and obdurate Other that kindles the urge for independent action. A drastic departure from the apathetic and jaded kid seen at the beginning of the movie, the Chihiro emerging from the experiences undergone in the land of the spirits defies with commendable sanguinity the female stereotype fostered by the kind of materialistic family to which she belongs. She has seen too deep and too much to fall back into the role of the disaffected, spoilt kid we meet in the film’s opening sequence. In dramatizing its protagonist’s journey of self-discovery, Spirited Away also exemplifies the young’s distinctive responses to threatening and frightful situations. Children know how to refashion these scenarios to their advantage, by turning fear into a source of pleasure, or even a game

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in itself. Play, in this respect, holds a unique power to yoke fear and pleasure together as natural companions. In so doing, as Marina Warner points out, it is able to “make fun of intimidation, and turn its threats hollow.” Children, according to the critic, are abetted by an instinctive inclination “to play the bogeyman and scare themselves into fits.” The propensity to “take pleasure in fright … defies fear at the very same moment as conjuring it” (Warner 2000, pp. 168–169). Miyazaki corroborates this contention in commenting on the significance of the storm sequence in My Neighbor Totoro. “For kids,” states the director, “a storm is a kind of carnival event. A single day depicting that would be far more thrilling to a child than some diabolical character who’s out to rule the world” (Miyazaki, H. 2005a, p. 72). It is interesting that Miyazaki should use the term “thrilling” in preference to “frightening.” In so doing, he implicitly reminds us that adults often harbor warped notions about the mechanisms through kids will react to menacing situations, and assume automatically they will be scared, when their more likely responses will be excitement and elation. Likewise notable is the director’s reference to the stereotype of the wicked character hell-bent on world domination. His remark can be read as an implicit criticism of the type of unadventurous anime which churns out variations on this theme ad nauseam. Miyazaki’s comment also draws attention to the idea that the adult conception of what children are likely to find thrilling pays no respect to the young’s own sensibility. What most grown-ups seem unable to grasp is that the images and circumstances they deem bound to inspire fear may in fact be conducive, in a child’s mind, not only to trepidation, but also to euphoria: a sensation engendered by the challenge to turn dread into fun. What adults designate as the supreme embodiment of danger, therefore, is just a construct which may be relevant to their world, but plays no active role in the young’s own outlook. Hence, it might prove of scarce interest for children—or, even if it does elicit interest, it is possible that it will not be found especially intimidating unless it is painted in an unexpected light, or couched in idiosyncratic terms. A further aspect of Tieck’s supernatural fiction highlighted by Atkinson deserves consideration in this context, insofar as it bears significant ainities with Miyazaki’s own oeuvre (and world picture at large): his take on the natural environment. “Nature is presented as a tremendously vital and dynamic force closely allied to the supernatural and at times almost identical with it,” notes the critic. Virtually all of Miyazaki’s best known works could be said to bear witness to a germane vision by means of visuals in which the environment exudes a potent sense of the numinous even in

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scenes devoted to prosaic matters. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away, and Ponyo represent the most notable instances. Furthermore, in Tieck, nature “may hide its sinister aspect behind a charming or grandiose appearance, and may suddenly and unpredictably change from kindliness to malevolence…. It is clearly useless for man to rebel against such an overwhelming partnership of forces. He appears … as a puny, helpless creature in the midst of a hostile universe” (pp. xii–xiii). As argued in depth in the next chapter, Miyazaki is likewise keen to capture the environment’s duplicity, in the firm belief that nature is both a generous and ferocious force. All in all, Tieck and Miyazaki exhibit a shared attraction to ambiguity. This manifests itself in their juxtaposition of conflicting messages, and in their amalgamation of opposite emotions. Affording ample scope for disparate interpretations, the penchant for ambiguity evinced by the two artists points to an intuitive recognition that life does not allow for mutually exclusive options. In fact, it always harbors ironies and inconsistencies in its midst, and hence requires us to entertain different possibilities at all times. There is no certainty, but only interminable play in the poststructuralist sense of the term.

History and Historiography Miyazaki’s approach to time urges us to recognize that the actual experience of events by the people who have to negotiate their immediate repercussions differs, to an often significant degree, from the recollections of those events which people then carry with them into later years. Even more substantial is the divergence between the empirical experience of events, and their oicial recording by historians. Far from providing dispassionate chronicles of the past, both memory and historiography are inevitably selective, and inclined to fashion versions of the past which are seen as consonant with an individual’s or a society’s belief system. Miyazaki’s works are especially keen to highlight the distinction between actual events, and their reconstruction by historiographers, ideologues, and politicians. Contrasting historical perspectives are bound to yield disparate interpretations of the same basic events, none of which ever grasps—or indeed wishes to grasp—their full import. However, both children and adults are expected to ignore the partial nature of the particular interpretations to which they are exposed, and to accept them obediently as true accounts of the past—in other words, as facts.

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With variable degrees of transparency, all political regimes impose edited versions of the past on their subjects in order to legitimize dominant belief systems, to justify specific policies, or to lend credence to initiatives of a controversial nature. They do not give access to history per se, but rather to convenient textual distortions of history’s erratic flow. They thus draw on the past to influence the outcome of current debates. Miyazaki’s views on contemporary Japanese politics point to the insidiousness of this cultural phenomenon. The present government’s militaristic tendencies, in particular, are centered on a sense of history which allows for the endurance in present-day Japan of the aggressive and jingoistic agendas which blighted the country’s past to often disastrous effect. The version of history promulgated by the current regime pivots on a distorted vision of the past which attempts to blot out the sinister reality of Japan’s imperialist ambitions. Miyazaki’s views on the present government are clearly delineated in an article published by Studio Ghibli’s own magazine, Neppu, in July 2013. As Vadim Rizov explains, the director expresses in unequivocal terms his “disapproval of Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe’s plan to amend Japan’s Constitution, with an emphasis on amending Article 9, which states that the country shall never maintain military forces. The goal is to transform Japan’s Self-Defense Forces into an active military” (Rizov). Miyazaki termed the prime minister’s plan “outrageous,” reports Steve Pond, suggesting that its advocators were repressing history by glossing over Japan’s brutal actions during the last world war (cited in Pond). “I’m exasperated by the sheer lack of historical insight and principle of those at the top of government and political parties,” declares Miyazaki. “People who don’t think enough shouldn’t meddle with the constitution” (cited in Pond). According to Koichi Nakano, it is vital to appreciate that even though “Miyazaki has always been known for his liberal, pacifist tendencies,” it is still remarkable that he should have decided “to speak out so clearly against the policies of the incumbent prime minister.” To corroborate the soundness of his argument, the political theorist reminds us that “political statements by famous figures in show business are much less common in Japan than the U.S.” (cited in Spitzer). Miyazaki is of course aware that the militaristic aspirations evident in Shinzo Abe’s proposal are not rife among all strata of Japanese society. He still finds it somewhat surprising, however, to see that politicians—the very people who should, in principle, know better—remain willfully blind to the lessons of history, choosing to embrace a warped notion of the past instead of confronting its legacy and learning therefrom.

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In addition, the director has drawn attention to the virtual inseparability of militarism from its notorious twin: chauvinism. In a press conference held around the time of Ponyo’s release, Miyazaki states that Japan needs to free the new generations from the sinister legacy of “nationalism,” decrying that the latter blames all the evils alicting contemporary society on “multi-ethnicity.” This potentially positive social phenomenon is used as an expedient scapegoat to obscure the true roots of today’s troubles. Nationalism thus threatens to divulge a “negative” perception of Japan all over the globe. The director opines that today’s politicians ought to have learned from “the past war” the dangers entailed in this move, but appear sadly oblivious to history’s dark legacy (cited in Truitt and Child). Miyazaki’s works invite us to recognize that the past is not something to be escaped or controlled, but rather something with which we must come to terms on a day-to-day basis. Pivotal to this process of ongoing negotiation is the willingness to accept that facing the past with honesty and humility involves recognizing our limitations—namely, the fact that in the present, we can only access the past through its vestiges. These range from the traces of lived events surviving in the interstices of documents and reports, through the testimony of direct witnesses, to assorted archival materials buried in decades (or even centuries) of dust. Any explanation of specific historical events one may arrive at is fundamentally a construct based on representations of the past which may well claim to be objective, but are in fact narratives—that is to say, yet more constructs.

A A A Miyazaki is keen to lay bare the discrepancy between history and historiography: between the flow of events as they actually unfold, and their oicial recounting in texts. One of the main subtexts coursing through his output is the idea that history’s distortion by oicial historiography has served to justify iniquitous actions, and, most alarmingly, to legitimize military aggression. However, the director is also aware that in order to make his viewers sensitive to the inconsistency between lived events and their textual construction as facts, while also delivering an engaging story, cut-and-dried tirades would be scarcely appropriate. This method might be just about suitable for a polemic or a manifesto. However, it would be sanctimonious and pretentious if it were applied to a piece of family entertainment. Hence, Miyazaki feels that a subtler—and more pleasurable— approach must be devised. One of these consists of the integration, within a present-day adventure, of tactful allusions to bygone eras and their arti-

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facts. As Mick Broderick points out, it is vital to appreciate that this ploy constitutes a response to the intuition that “the post-industrial age … is tempered by a sense of loss, not so much of innocence, but of origin where the importance of space, place and context needs reinvigoration” (Broderick). Spirited Away exemplifies the director’s assimilation of references to the past into the present to great effect. It does so by drawing from the treasurehouse of Japanese culture in unexpected, and thus stimulating, ways. The film shows that all sorts of disparate sources may be brought into play at any time and in any amount. What matters is neither their exact provenance nor their number, but rather their diversity. The town into which Chihiro and her parents unsuspectingly drift in the film’s preliminary stages—its bath house in particular—is itself modeled on the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum located in Koganei, not far from Studio Ghibli. This open-air display accommodates a variety of edifices, mainly from the Meiji period (1868–1912). Its purpose is not only to provide information about the architectural styles of a bygone era, but also to invite interest in Japan’s tradition, and bring to light its significance for present-day citizens. According to John Lasseter, Miyazaki is very fond of the place. “It’s very important to him,” comments the Pixar CCO, explaining that the museum’s curators, in seeking to preserve vestiges of “traditional architecture,” have given priority “not [to] the temples necessarily, but the everyday houses, the everyday restaurants and shops and … architecture from all levels of society. [Miyazaki] goes there quite a bit” (Lasseter 2001). The Architectural Museum’s preservation of the more secular, everyday aspects of traditional Japanese architecture hold special appeal for Miyazaki, insofar as they tally with his natural tendency to value the ordinary and the unpretentious over and above the famous and the grandiose. The director himself has commented on his relationship with the place as follows: “I feel nostalgic here, especially when I stand here alone in the evening … and the sun is setting” (Miyazaki, H. 2001). Given the philosophical meaning attached by Miyazaki to the concept of nostalgia, it will be clear that the feeling he experiences when visiting the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum does not amount to wistful sentimentality. Miyazaki’s nostalgia, in the presence of the museum’s ancient buildings, derives from a keen apprehension of the loss which humans inevitably incur as a result of being born in a specific epoch. This results in their being cut off at birth from all the other possible lives into which they could have been born instead, and will thus remain forever

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untold, unfathomable, unheard. The museum’s exhibits, like animation’s fantasy realms, allow the viewer to participate, albeit in a second-hand fashion, in some of those lost possibilities. With its both explicit and subtextual allusions to Japan’s past, Spirited Away can be seen as an attempt to reinstate a sense of tradition in a world fashioned according to the imperative of homogeneity dictated by globalization. Sadly, the unstoppable forward march of the forces of uniformity is not merely stylistic but also spiritual. Its ultimate outcome, therefore, could be the withering of imagination itself. However, Spirited Away’s use of references to ancient cultures is not just a trip down memory lane. Rather, it also serves to intimate that the past can only be revisited selectively, and that any journey into history is therefore bound to be shot through with an element of arbitrariness. In fact, it is also likely to spring from the virtual traveler’s individual bias, insofar as one’s selection is bound to be influenced by personal criteria. These, in turn, are dictated by a variety of factors, including political leanings, aesthetic preferences, and ethical standards. By amalgamating the present and the past in a work of the imagination, it is possible to expose by implication, rather than by direct statement, the extent to which any reconstruction of history is destined to be partial, subjective, and prejudiced. Spirited Away fulfills this role with matchless finesse. It is also notable that Spirited Away echoes Miyazaki’s conviction that “traditional Japanese design is a cornucopia of different images” whose depth and distinctiveness has fallen into oblivion amongst recent generations. In interspersing the present-day adventure with allusions to times gone by, and “inserting traditional designs into a story to which modern people can relate,” one of his aims is to help present-day kids, who are “increasingly losing sense of their roots in the midst of so many shallow industrial products,” to discover the richness of their culture’s past. With not only Spirited Away, but also My Neighbor Totoro and Princess Mononoke, Miyazaki suggests that recognizing the incongruity between real history and its historiographical reconstruction should not lead us to turn away from the past altogether, and to discredit all attempts to look at its heritage as downright pointless. On the contrary, he believes that “our place is in the past and history. People who have no sense of history, or ethnic groups that have forgotten their past, are destined to disappear like the short-lived mayfly, or to become chickens that have to keep on laying eggs until they are eaten” (Miyazaki, H. 2014g, p. 199). Collective forgetfulness, in this scenario, is synonymous with a people’s loss of identity. On the other hand, endeavoring to recover the past by keeping it alive

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in memory, if not in its material vestiges, is seen as instrumental in the achievement of a stronger sense of identity. Spirited Away gives this contention an original metaphorical articulation. During her epiphanic visit to the remote land beyond the placid sea, the key lesson which Chihiro learns from Zeniba concerns precisely the importance of unburying one’s vaguest recollections from the soul’s darkest recesses. This is an effort which requires courage, and a selfless desire to help those we love. In striving to help Haku recover his lost identity, Chihiro discovers an unsuspected strength of character: a quality which can be seen to shine through her entire being in the film’s climactic flight sequence. The young girl we see in this scene may, upon superficial inspection, appear to be the same girl we saw at the beginning, lying on the back seat of her father’s car with a bored mien, and scarce interest in her surroundings. However, the moment we begin to pay attention to the expression on her face, to the light glinting in her still innocent, yet suddenly mature, eyes, we realize that Chihiro has grown into a dependable and spunky young woman even though her body is still that of a skinny kid. In stark contrast with her twin sister’s world, the rapacious Yubaba’s culture is one which pivots on lost identities: the enchantress’ business thrives because her clients are keen to forget who they are, as they immerse themselves in wave after wave of luxurious treatments with self-indulgent pride. At the same time, Yubaba does not hesitate to ensure her personnel’s submissiveness by depriving them of their identities through magic. This is exemplified by Haku, who has been made to forget that he is in fact the Kohaku River Spirit, and is powerless to recover his erstwhile identity until Chihiro manages to unlock from her own memory the recollection that is key to his awakening.

A A A Miyazaki’s reflections on specific events further illuminate his take on history. Given his personal background, World War II is a subject to which he often returns. Growing up during that war, and thus experiencing it through the eyes of a small child, Miyazaki was able to look at the conflict with the innate clarity and penetration of the young, and hence intuit the foolishness underlying the ideals which his country’s leaders were desperate to promulgate. “[I] had a strong feeling in my childhood,” he reflects, “that we had ‘fought a truly stupid war,’” he avows with unwavering conviction (cited in Rizov).

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Commenting on the framework in which The Wind Rises was conceived, the director has observed that many men of his generation harbor “complex feelings” vis-à-vis World War II, and that they tend to attach special significance to the Mitsubishi A6M Zero: the fighter aircraft which served a front-line part in the war, and was deployed in kamikaze strikes. This worked as a sort of symbol of these men’s “collective psyche.” In acknowledging this cultural trend, Miyazaki is eager to emphasize its spurious foundations. The tendency to fetishize the Zero, and war in general, is begot by a “serious inferiority complex,” he claims. It may be successful in overcompensating for some people’s “lack of self-esteem” by providing “something they can be proud of.” However, this does not cancel out the fact that “Japan went to war out of foolish arrogance, caused trouble throughout the entire East Asia, and ultimately brought destruction upon itself ” (Miyazaki, H. 2013c). Thus, the notorious plane’s idealization only serves to obfuscate the brute reality of war in the name of a misguided mythology of heroism and glory. The historical tendencies highlighted by Miyazaki in connection with World War II, and the notorious Zero in particular, are indigenous to Japan. Nonetheless, the director intimates that the distortion of history in the collective imaginary also lies at the root of a global phenomenon: the attraction to mecha, and related emblems of valor and might. This, he avers, stems from “an unconscious orientation toward all things powerful and strong.” The creators of giant robots, armored vehicles, and stateof-the-art weapons for use in manga and anime strive to fuel this “fascination among those who consume them.” Miyazaki frankly admits to having been sucked into this cultural fallacy as a child, and having given form to his own “desire for power by drawing airplanes with sleek and pointed noses and battleships with huge guns.” As he grew up, however, he became increasingly aware of the specious nature of the mythology he had bought into, realizing that the very combatants he had once idealized as valiant warriors were in fact “men who had desperately wanted to live and had been forced to die in vain” (Miyazaki, H. 2009g, p. 45). Few statements could encapsulate in pithier terms the ghastly reality which hides beneath the fabrications of historiography and its brood: for example, propagandist publications, factional picture books, and war movies. Miyazaki argues that many of the mecha one encounters, time and again, in contemporary animation only serve to foster an “infantile mentality,” and disseminate a distorted conception of his country’s “military strength” (p. 46). By giving public expression to Miyazaki’s unshakable

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pacifism, the anti-government Neppu article cited earlier attests to the director’s aversion to all militaristic fantasies of this ilk. Nevertheless, Miyazaki’s employment of the Zero’s creator, Jiro Horikoshi, as the protagonist of his last feature film has cast doubts on the director’s anti-war stance. Therefore, although this factor is not enough, in itself, to render The Wind Rises a militaristic work, the movie has spawned a heated controversy, with those arguing that Miyazaki’s swan song harbors a pro-war subtext in one camp, and those maintaining that it in fact communicates a pacifist message in the other. The film no doubt poses interpretative challenges, but this is not a result of what it says so much as of how it says it: to be more precise, of the formal subtlety through which it conveys its pivotal message. This crucial aspect of The Wind Rises renders its story ambiguous to the extent that it makes it amenable to alternate readings. Still, this does not mean that Miyazaki himself harbors an ambiguous conception of war—i.e., that he is unsure whether to condone or condemn militarism. Nothing could be further from the truth. Indeed, attentive analysis will show that The Wind Rises offers a harrowing indictment of militarism. However, Miyazaki has resorted to a structural, as opposed to content-driven, strategy in order to convey this position. Hence, he has chosen not to announce it in explicit, let alone raucous, notes, but rather weave it into the drama’s entire fabric in a discreet fashion. Integral to this approach is the incremental intimation that the outcome of a visionary artist’s ambitions may well be not beauty but horror. This idea is encapsulated in Caproni’s assertion that even though “humanity dreams of flight,” the “dream of aviation is cursed.” Jiro’s guru has learned this lesson first hand, since the planes he has had to design at the behest of the Fascist regime, like those expected of Jiro by Japan’s imperialist rulers, “are destined to become tools for slaughter and destruction” (Miyazaki, H. 2014d, p. 254). The Wind Rises focuses on the perversion of ideals by power-hungry politicians, dramatizing the tragedy of an imagination doomed to serve the insane interests of a monomaniacal nation. Thus, it exposes the unbridgeable gap between an innocent vision, blighted by its own dreams, and a regime driven by unrealistic fantasies of glory, and willing to take the most ruthless of routes to fulfill its aspirations. The film undertakes its mission with nothing less than devastating frankness. As a subtle portrayal of the inevitable imbrication of the beauty of flight and the horrors of war, Porco Rosso represents a close precursor of Miyazaki’s last feature. The film’s protagonist is “a former ace air pilot,”

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who turns down the opportunity to rise to the status of “‘national hero’ for an approaching war, opting instead to transform himself into a pig with a curse” (Miyazaki, H. 2013d, p. 9). To clarify Marco’s reasons for arriving at such a drastic decision, Miyazaki once again steers clear of manifest declarations, opting instead for elegant understatement. An ex-combatant who has already witnessed the horrors of war face to face, Marco is haunted day and night by an ineradicable feeling of selfloathing. Jiro, by contrast, is a visionary artist. Nonetheless, it is feasible that Miyazaki has perceived a latent connection between the two aviationrelated characters despite their apparent differences. This is hinted at by a minute sketch of Jiro’s mien, showcased in The Art of the Wind Rises, in which the young man’s nose bears the form of a porcine snout reminiscent of Porco Rosso’s protagonist. A further ainity between the 1992 and the 2013 movies lies with their references to Fascism. In The Wind Rises, these crop up in conjunction with the figure of Caproni, who makes frequent appearances in the movie’s fantasy sequences, whereas in Porco Rosso, they surround the protagonist himself since porco, i.e., “swine,” is the expletive associated by Italian Fascists with political dissidents. In The Wind Rises, Miyazaki expresses his views regarding World War II in an elliptical manner through the character of Castorp, without thus having to adopt an overbearing authorial voice. At a key juncture in the drama, the German traveler reminds Jiro that the Japanese seem to have a knack of repressing many unpalatable truths. “Make a war in China. Forget it. Make a puppet state in Manchuria. Forget it,” the urbane tourist croons on. The offstage words spoken by Jiro’s mentor, the aforementioned aviation designer Caproni, fan the flames of Castorp’s disturbing claims by adding two more allegations to the tourist’s list: “quit the League of Nations. Forget it. Make the world your enemy. Forget it” (Miyazaki, H. 2014d, p. 260). A further example of a historical event to which Miyazaki has made explicit reference, thereby illuminating his stance on history, is the 1991 Gulf War. “Watching [George H. W.] Bush,” states the director, “I can only think he is possessed by the ghost of John Wayne, telling him that ‘this is the way a real man should act.’ Saddam Hussein’s sense of righteousness is the same.” Miyazaki is nauseated by the predictable penchant for selfdramatization evinced by the despots at the center of the conflict. However, he is careful not to criticize foreign leaders without, at the same time, looking at Japan, and its own politicians’ shortcomings. What pains him most, in fact, is the realization that Japan’s support of the 1991 Gulf War was born only of a sycophantic yearning “to do business with and be ‘good neighbors’ to [its] allies” (Miyazaki, H. 2009j, p. 147).

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When the specter of the 2003 Iraq war loomed large on global politics, Miyazaki “made a slightly conscious effort to create a film that wouldn’t be very successful in the United States” (Miyazaki, H. 2014m, p. 390). It is not unusual for the director to focus on domestic markets. At Studio Ghibli, they only aim to “make their animations for a Japanese audience,” he maintains. Therefore, while their works’ encouraging reception in “other countries” is “definitely a bonus,” he harbors no grand ambitions in this regard, and would never be so bold as to expect to “eat his rice” anywhere other than “in Japan” (cited in Guillén). However, on the eve of the 2003 Iraq war, Miyazaki was going further. He was not merely unconcerned about the film’s reception abroad, and in the U.S. in particular: he was in fact seeking to alienate the American public to a certain extent. The film in question turned out to be the magnificent Howl’s Moving Castle. The irony is that the movie, as well as receiving the nomination for Best Animated Feature Film (2006), featured on several critics’ top ten lists for the year of its North American theatrical release, 2005 (“Metacritic: 2007 Film Critic Top Ten Lists”). This does not mean that Miyazaki was unsuccessful in his effort to create a film which ought, in principle, to have caused a certain unease among American audiences. His vexation about the invasion of Iraq, and resultant bloodshed, is in fact palpable in Howl’s Moving Castle. Madame Suliman’s sadistic fueling of discord attests to the director’s detestation of war at large, and does not echo any specific conflict in an overt way. It is undeniable, however, that the 2003 Iraq conflict influenced the movie’s thematics and mood, imparting its depiction of war with an unmistakable bitter taste. Miyazaki’s account of his initial reaction to the announcement that Spirited Away would be awarded the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film at the 2003 Academy Awards deserves consideration, in this respect. In response to Newsweek’s Devin Gordon’s question, “Were you surprised ‘Spirited’ won an Oscar?” the director replied, “Actually, your country had just started the war against Iraq, and I had a great deal of rage about that. So I felt some hesitation about the award. In fact, I had just started making Howl’s Moving Castle, so the film is profoundly affected by the war in Iraq” (Miyazaki, H. 2005b). Miyazaki’s feelings will have been exacerbated by his own country’s variable attitudes to the conflict. Quoting Peter Ennis, an expert in the field, Lindsay Smith gives an insightful account of Japan’s position in the Iraq war. “when animators began to work on Howl,” asserts the critic, “Japan oicially announced its support for the American invasion of Iraq.

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Later that same year, the United States Ambassador to Japan, Howard Baker, informed the Japanese prime minister that the United States (expecting the war to end shortly) was requesting that Japan begin training troops to send to postwar Iraq in an active show of support for the United States.” The public’s initial skepticism about the conflict’s legality, and resulting disquiet about Japan’s espousal of the American cause, grew into downright indignation over its prolonged and indefensible atrocities. As Smith observes, “the Japanese ‘unhappiness’ over these events of 2003 had, by 2010, with the removal of active combat troops in Iraq, turned into bitterness; military relations have remained strained, with members of the Japanese government asserting that Japan ‘gained nothing’ by involving itself with America in the Iraq War.” This can be seen as a fairly logical outcome, when one considers that “Japanese civilian support for the Iraq War” had been “small from the outset” (Smith, with reference to Ennis).

Time and Zen Masao Abe proposes that a major trait of Japan’s “philosophical thought” is its avoidance of “demonstrative arguments and precise verbal expression.” As a result, ideas tend to be conveyed in an “indirect, suggestive, and symbolic” style, and not with “descriptive” exactitude. “The thought process underlying the nondemonstrative approach does not simply rely on language but rather denies it,” continues Abe. The same propensity is evident in some of Japan’s most eminent art forms, such as “ink drawings that negate form and color, Noh theater with its negation of direct and personal expression, and … waka and haiku poetry” (Abe, pp. ix-x). As argued, Miyazaki sees language as intimately interconnected with temporality. His reflections on the state of childhood, in particular, indicate that the acquisition of adult discourse is instrumental in suppressing the child’s native capacities, intuition included. In this perspective, the eschewal of verbal articulation characteristic of Japanese thought could be regarded as symptomatic of a desire to preserve those faculties, as yet untarnished by the vagaries of language, even in the context of philosophical speculation. In Zen thinking, binary oppositions are irrelevant, as is the logic of either/or, neither/nor. Reminiscent of a quantum universe, this worldview holds that anything has the potential for being more than one thing at once. Motion and stillness, time and timelessness, and, ultimately, even life and death, live together in an unending continuum. If Zen’s worldview

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were a quantum macro-computer, it would not operate according to binary digits where each bit is only ever one thing or another. Rather, it would accommodate the possibility of each bit existing as a combination of disparate states. In quantum physics, a particle is deemed capable of holding disparate values simultaneously. While in one scenario it might function as one thing, in another, parallel and coexisting, scenario it might function as another, quite different, thing. By extension, it is feasible for many alternate realities to coexist as parallel possibilities. In recent decades, numerous anime plots have relied on parallel universes with varying degrees of effectiveness. Miyazaki does not employ this trope in a literal sense. On the contrary, he gives it a very original twist by constructing worlds in which the mundane and the otherworldly coexist, or even merge in mutual suffusion. This proposition could easily be exemplified with reference to several of his movies. Just to use a couple of illustrations, My Neighbor Totoro immediately springs to mind as a work given to alternating with extraordinary fluidity between ordinary existence, and fantastical occurrences which, in turn, could be interpreted both as actual, and as visions or dreams. At the same time, the film yields scope for the opposite scenario: the realistic part of the action chronicling Satsuki and Mei’s exploration of the rural environment might in fact be a vision or dream, while the sequences centered on Totoro, his miniature acolytes, and the Catbus might constitute the action’s true reality. Spirited Away is amenable to comparable interpretation, in that it never spells out with absolute certainty which of the two planes between which Chihiro travels in the course of the story constitutes the real world, and which the supernatural fantasy. After all, is a world predicated on the idols of comfort, wealth, and human supremacy real? Yubaba and the spirits who patronize her business represent imaginary beings in most viewers’ eyes, whereas Chihiro’s parents and the society they epitomize stand for reality. However, if we pause for moment, and ask ourselves whether this assessment could be substantiated with reference to any reliable yardstick, we will find that both worlds are constructed around imaginary values which dominate the lives of their inhabitants with the same degree of callousness. Even films to which Miyazaki has contributed in a non-directorial capacity attest to his knack of constructing worlds in which different reality planes are free to coexist, never negating or replacing one another irrevocably. A good example is provided by From Up on Poppy Hill, a film directed by his son Gorō, to which Miyazaki senior contributed the screenplay in collaboration with Keiko Niwa. In this movie, the action does not

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leave the world of ordinary human affairs in a tangible way, remaining grounded in the here-and-now, and its unpredictable vicissitudes. Yet, the level of sensitivity and insightfulness with which this here-and-now is handled imparts it with an unmistakable magic of its own. Therefore, even though the story does not drift into overt supernatural realms, it does communicate a vivid sense of the numinous. The most prosaic occurrences, such as preparing a traditional meal, or riding a bike at dusk through bustling streets, appear to glide from the quotidian to the magical with inconspicuous panache. Both the spatial and the temporal coordinates of many of Miyazaki’s movies appear to fluctuate between different levels of existence. Thus, they accommodate the possibility of events occupying diverse planes of reality at once, dismantling the notion that a situation or event can only be one things at any one time. In so doing, they also open themselves up to multiple, contrasting readings, none of which could be ever dismissed with finality as erroneous. “I never wanted to create a film where you can easily say ‘This is yes’ or ‘This is no,’” stresses the director. “Things are way more diicult and complex. History is as well” (Miyazaki, H. 2014c). As seen in the previous segment of this chapter, this proposition is substantiated by Miyazaki’s take on the relationship between lived events and recorded facts.

A A A Given its intricacy, history does not easily lend itself to unambiguous interpretation, any more than Miyazaki’s stories do. One reason for this is that its mission is supposed to be the exposition of the past for didactic purposes: that is to say, with a view to helping people garner lessons from its account of the past which might assist them in a notional future. Thus, history is concerned with the past and the future, not the present as such. However, as Tim Lott points out in his analysis of Zen thought, “life exists in the present, or nowhere at all, and if you cannot grasp that you are simply living a fantasy … Zen, more than anything else, is about reclaiming and expanding the present moment” (Lott). The Western approach to time seems to take it for granted that both the past and the future are infinite dimensions. Zen, on the other hand, defies this notion through its conception of the present as the only timescale which holds any meaning— and, even then, provisionally, given that according to Zen, nothing is ever certain. Václav Petr elaborates this idea, stating that according to Zen, “there

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is only today and … there never will be anything except today. In the socalled ‘awakening to the instant’ in Zen, we can see that past and future cannot be infinite but that the reverse is the truth” (Petr)—in other words, that both collapse in the measureless present instant. In the words of Alan Wilson Watts, “the past and future” are “fleeting illusions,” whereas “the present … is eternally real” (Watts, p. 199). Miyazaki’s oeuvre features many timeless scenes which capture the spirit of Zen’s eternal present. Invested with both symbolic force and lyrical elegance, such scenes appear to be suspended in a present which little by little acquires an aura of ineffability. It thereby ceases to be a present as such, and becomes instead a “moment in and out of time,” as T. S. Eliot puts it in “The Dry Salvages.” On the one hand, Miyazaki’s timeless scenes are steeped in time, insofar as the flow of the drama points to their connection with the present. Nevertheless, they also transcend, or bypass, time to the extent that they seem to belong to a universe so vast, so fluid, and so ancient as to render time irrelevant—at least in terms of its mundane measuring by the clock. There is, however, a difference between Miyazaki’s intuitions of timelessness and Eliot’s “moment in and out of time.” The latter remains sadly “unattended,” remembered only when it is too late to recapture it, and indeed do anything other than regret its passing (Eliot). Miyazaki’s timeless scenes, by contrast, are treasured both by the actors involved in their occurrence, and by the viewer willing to participate patiently in their numinous stillness. Were the spectator to surrender to the temptation to rush the story—a risk more likely to befall Western viewers than their Japanese counterparts due to the West’s chronic valorization of action and speed—the magic would evaporate like fairy dust at sunrise. Scenes of this kind are not designed to further the plot’s progression in any obvious way. Rather, they invite audiences to take a breather, absorb the film’s atmosphere, and ponder their bearing on the overall action at a subliminal level. In an interview with Roger Ebert, Miyazaki associates such moments with the concept of “ma.” Commonly rendered as “emptiness” in English, ma constitutes a staple of traditional Japanese aesthetics. As the director points out, in cinema, ma can be employed as an alternative to “non-stop action with no breathing space at all.” This technique is only able to produce a sense of “busyness.” Sprinkling the drama with some hushed and uneventful scenes, conversely, allows “the tension building in the film” to “grow into a wider dimension.” After all, “if you just have constant tension at 80 degrees all the time,” argues Miyazaki, “you just get numb” (Miyazaki, H. 2002b).

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Spirited Away provides a good illustration of Miyazaki’s ainity with Zen-like timelessness with the exquisitely slow—and silent—train sequence in which Chihiro travels to Zeniba’s cottage. The sequence offers a classic illustration of Miyazaki’s ability to deliver gloriously paced animation. At the same time, it attests to the director’s knack of evoking a precise mood through entirely wordless action. Suspended in its timeless ma, the train appears to glide through a spectral no-hour, as though adrift off limbo’s shores. Another paradigmatic example of Miyazaki’s timeless moments is offered by the closing moments of The Wind Rises. In this sequence, the forty-two-year-old Jiro Horikoshi returns to the imaginary land where he first met his mentor, Gianbattista Caproni, as a kid. Once the promise of a radiant future, the landscape is now littered with the remnants of aircraft destroyed during the war. At this point, Jiro finally realizes that all of the “beautiful planes” he has designed have “ended up being tools of war” (“Jiro Horikoshi: Forty-Two Years Old,” pp. 221–222). Jiro’s dream evaporates as a vision of hopeless vanity, collapsing into a poignant instant in which only the present exists. Neither the future nor the past appears to hold any substantial meaning. The future aspired to by the ambitious child has dissolved into a landscape of harrowing desolation, whereas the past is pregnant only with memories of the horrors of warfare, and the mournful legacy of loss. In the movie’s closing sequence, Jiro’s departed spouse, Nahoko, urges the inventor to go on living. Though touched by this encouraging words, Jiro remains suspended in his timeless moment, as, looking at the wreckage before his eyes, utters a simple line of distressing intensity: “not a single one returned” (p. 276). No less memorable, as an example of Miyazaki’s treatment of timelessness, is the scene in My Neighbor Totoro where Satsuki and Mei wait for their father’s bus in the rain. As the darkness of the rural road spreads its unfamiliar folds around them, the titular creature joins their vigil in silence. Since the leaf poised on Totoro’s round head hardly provides the expected protection against the rain, Satsuki offers him the spare umbrella she has taken along for her dad. Pleased though he is with this unexpected cover, Totoro appears to derive even greater pleasure from the plopping sounds produced by the raindrops as they land upon its surface. One final instance of precious timelessness deserves mention. This comes in Princess Mononoke with the scene where Shishigami visits Ashitaka as he lies, unconscious in his slow recovery, in the clearing in the ancient forest: a space in which every blade of grass, every droplet of water, and every grain of earth, emanate an awe-inspiring sense of ani-

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mateness. Few scenes in Miyazaki’s entire opus capture the essence of the director’s world picture with such succinctness and pathos.

A A A In assessing Miyazaki’s connection with Zen thought beyond the specific topic of time, it is also worth noting that the director seems to have accepted with a “curiously Zen” equanimity, as Xan Brooks points out, the idea that traditional hand-drawn animation is a dying art (Brooks). This is a resignation which sounds less stoical and austere than goodhumored and insouciant. “If it is a dying craft,” warbles the forever playful Miyazaki, “we can’t do anything about it. Civilisation moves on. Where are all the fresco painters now? Where are the landscape artists? What are they doing now? The world is changing. I have been very fortunate to be able to do the same job for 40 years. That’s rare in any era” (cited in Brooks). Above all else, Miyazaki’s philosophy echoes Zen to the extent that it pursues, just like traditional Zen thinking, a state of mind graced with candid curiosity, playfulness, and kindness. As Manu Bazzano intimates in Zen Poems, the art issuing from the Zen worldview “ventures out through uncharted territory with courage, humor, and compassion, and in so doing it forces us to reconsider our conditioned view of reality. It invites us to gaze with serenity and equanimity into the abyss, without having to resort to metaphysics, religion, science, or even poetics” (Bazzano, p. 10). It is by returning reality to “its natural fluidity” that this creative attitude “questions the very ground on which we stand, undermining our fragile sense of solidity” (p. 12). It is therefore capable of helping us learn how to appreciate the value of serendipity and uncertainty. Issuing as it does from a keen desire to examine the world with eyes unclouded, and thus leave no experience unexamined, Miyazaki’s creativity abides by this very philosophy as its guiding principle.

For Further Thought (2): Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria To find no contradiction in the union of old and new; to contemplate the ANCIENT of days and all his works with feelings as fresh, as if all had then sprang forth at the first creative fiat; char-

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Hayao Miyazaki’s World Picture acterizes the mind that feels the riddle of the world, and may help to unravel it. To carry on the feelings of childhood into the powers of manhood; to combine the child’s sense of wonder and novelty with appearances, which every day for perhaps forty years had rendered familiar; “With sun and moon and stars throughout the year, And man and woman”; [Milton’s Sonnet 22] this is the character and privilege of genius, and one of the marks which distinguish genius from talents. And therefore is it the prime merit of genius and its most unequivocal mode of manifestation, so to represent familiar objects as to awaken in the minds of others a kindred feeling concerning them and that freshness of sensation which is the constant accompaniment of mental, no less than of bodily, convalescence. Who has not a thousand times seen snow fall on water? Who has not watched it with a new feeling, from the time that he has read Burns’ comparison of sensual pleasure “To snow that falls upon a river A moment white—then gone forever!” [Variant of Robert Burns’ Tam O’Shanter 61–2] —Coleridge 1817b

.3,

Space Earth and Sky, Woods and Fields, Lakes and Rivers, the Mountain and the Sea, are excellent schoolmasters, and teach some of us more than we can ever learn from books. —John Lubbock (1894) It has always seemed strange to me … the things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second. —John Steinbeck (2013)

Space as Nature Miyazaki’s entire universe is pervaded by an attitude of reverence towards all aspects of the natural environment which do not have humanity’s stamp imprinted all over them. Instead of striving to domesticate them by recourse to anthropomorphic tropes, or saccharine depictions of nature as a pastel-hued idyll, the director allows those phenomena to retain their distinctive beauty, autonomy, and mystery. It is his appreciation, and preservation, of these qualities which allows Miyazaki’s nonhuman presences to inspire a feeling of wonderment in the viewer, and to elevate Studio Ghibli’s films to the status of art. Indeed, as Tadao Satō points out, Miyazaki and his colleagues have been “the first” to have produced a type of “animation worthy of being appreciated as artwork, as paintings”: an achievement of which not even Disney, in Satō’s opinion, was capable (Satō, p. 45). Miyazaki indicates that this is not a goal which either he or his colleagues ever aimed to pursue “in a rational way.” Rather, 69

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it is a corollary of the “humility toward things other than human beings” with which they have approached their fictional worlds (Miyazaki, H. 2014a, pp. 45–46). Miyazaki is eager to emphasize nature’s defiance of humanity’s classifying and controlling efforts. The environment’s untamable profusion is in itself suicient to challenge even the most fanatical taxonomist. However, nature’s abundance is not the only reason for humanity’s ultimate failure to contain the whole of the environment into convenient boxes of its own making. Another, and no less decisive, reason consists of humanity’s own tendency to come up with conflicting definitions of even one and the same natural entity. We are hardly likely to attain to a truly comprehensive system of classification if we cannot even agree among themselves what interpretations we should impose on this or that life form. At the heart of the matter lies our species’ incapacity to think about any other species except on its own terms. We cannot aspire to arrive at any objective evaluations as long as we are only able to assess the Other with reference to what is advantageous for us, what pleases or displeases us. “The impression we have of a landscape,” reflects Miyazaki, “changes depending on the emotions of the person viewing the landscape. Nature that is generous is, at the same time, nature that is ferocious” (Miyazaki, H. 2009c, p. 335). These words resonate with traces of William Blake’s contention that “the tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity … and some scarce see nature at all” (Blake, BrainyQuote). In their multifarious depictions of nature, the worlds portrayed by Miyazaki in his films bear many ainities with Shintō, Japan’s indigenous religion. An exploration of this doctrine’s most salient features is therefore desirable in evaluating the director’s stance on the nature, and, specifically, its significance as the ultimate form of space. In the Judaeo-Christian creed, deities are conceived of as external to both time and space. In Shintō, by contrast, spiritual agencies, known as kami, are held to fill every facet of the world—from its most majestic aspects, such as seas and mountains, to rivers, waterfalls, trees, rocks and stones, as well as humans and other animals. Like us, everything around us constitutes a living being. Miyazaki’s art is likewise underpinned by the consistent evocation of the latent aliveness of even apparently inanimate forms. In this respect, the legacy of Shintō is everywhere evident in Miyazaki’s cinema. At times, it makes itself felt in an explicit fashion: for example, in the depiction of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind’s jungle, of My Neighbor Totoro’s rural-daemonic locale, of Princess Mononoke’s

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enchanted forest, of Ponyo’s underwater mysteries, and of Spirited Away’s otherworldly town and its bath house. In a question and answer session with the press coinciding with the American premier of Spirited Away on September 10, 2002, the director expressed his empathy with the traditional practices underpinning Japan’s indigenous cult. “I have a very warm appreciation for the various, very humble rural Shintō rituals that continue to this day throughout rural Japan” stated Miyazaki. “Especially one ritual that takes place on the solstice when the villagers call forth all of the local Gods and invite them to bathe in their baths” (Miyazaki, H. 2002d). In the case of Spirited Away and its bath house, Shintō’s principles and practices are the manifest source of inspiration behind Miyazaki’s portrayal of the film’s environment as a numinous reality. However, even when the connection is not quite as obvious, the director’s approach to nature evinces an implicit debt to Shintō’s philosophy. This contention is borne out by films as varied as Castle in the Sky, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Porco Rosso, and The Wind Rises. All of these works suggest, each in its own unique fashion, that “rocks, mountains, rivers, and oceans are no less alive than plants, from the frailest of saplings to the mightiest of trees, or animals, from the most diaphanous of insects to the most imposing of mammals. Filling nature’s interstices with their invisible but palpable auras, countless spirits mediate among those species by infusing their own special powers into their relentless transformations, or just observing their interactions in graceful silence with knowing eyes” (Cavallaro 2015, p. 107). The short film Mon Mon the Water Spider, a fifteen-minute animation created for the Ghibli Museum, offers a charming distillation of Miyazaki’s Shintō-oriented proclivities. The world it depicts is less spectacular than those encountered in any of the director’s prismatic feature films. Yet, Mon Mon’s microcosm succeeds in conveying Miyazaki’s world picture with admirable incisiveness. Key to the short film’s success is its creator’s ability to see himself as part of his environment. This is a direct corollary of his conception of nature as a realm in which all species are intimately interconnected, and worthy of equal consideration as facets of a vast membrane of being and becoming. Hence, Miyazaki harbors an innate tendency to empathize with even the most inconspicuous of creatures. Over the years, this proclivity has often led him to speculate “what the world seems like” to a tiny insect like Mon Mon. Miyazaki appears to feel particularly drawn to the idea of a world in which “gravity would have almost no meaning,” and even the “shiny water surface,” a layer of little

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significance to most human eyes, would be perceived as “a borderline with a strange, different world.” Miyazaki’s knack of looking at the world through the eyes of a diminutive insect is a marvelous asset unto itself. What is even more remarkable, however, is his ability to retain a regular human perspective at the same time. This astounding ability is attested to by Miyazaki’s proposal for Mon Mon the Water Spider, where he observes: “the larva of a dragonfly … would seem to him to be a bigger, more vicious, and faster predator than Tyrannosaurus” (Miyazaki, H. 2014r, p. 355). So capacious is the director’s imagination that he is capable of enacting two roles at once: that of the tiny spider in whose eyes the larva of a dragonfly bears titanic dimensions, and that of a human beholding the terrifying bulk of a prehistoric colossus. Miyazaki is capable of perceiving his surroundings in this inventive manner because his personality has preserved a childlike core: a firm and genuine essence which will never be obliterated by either age or experience. In his daily intercourse with nature, Miyazaki experiences all sorts of unexpected encounters, and thus discovers creatures, phenomena, and other concealed facets of the environment whose existence he could never have suspected. Nothing could be farther from his temperament than the assumption of a masterful attitude grounded in the assumption that he has all the information one could ever wish for at his fingertips. Therefore, even things which most grown-ups would tend to dismiss as frivolous or dull may stimulate his curiosity, and set his prolific imagination in motion. The eagerness with which Miyazaki wonders “how, when grasshoppers fall into the water, they are able to hop out and avoid sinking” brings to mind little Mei in the scene from My Neighbor Totoro where she first comes across a cloud of tadpoles (Miyazaki, H. 2014s, p. 357). Both short animations like Mon Mon the Water Spider and full-length movies like My Neighbor Totoro are underpinned by a profound respect for the material properties of the natural environment, and indeed space at large. This vital aspect of Miyazaki’s perspective bears strong ainities with Shintō’s own philosophy. In Shintō’s worldview, a powerful life force flows through the cosmos in its entirety in a process of endless becoming. It is their participation in this force that renders all things fundamentally alive. A corollary of this belief is the idea that it is spurious to erect strict boundaries between material and spiritual principles. As embodiments of the same incorporeal energy, all material entities are to some extent spiritual. Japanese tradition echoes this position with its emphasis on the materiality of art in all of its manifestations, from the most elevated to the most prosaic. If all art is material, all sorts of practical activities are

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art—including calligraphy, gardening, cuisine, paper-folding, and flower arrangement. Across these, and many other, ventures lies a firm belief in the partnership of the small and the beautiful. Japanese craftsmen and artists have evinced a deferential attitude towards their materials for time immemorial, and Miyazaki is no exception. In fact, his oeuvre is a paean to the concrete dimension of life, and to the creative collusion of mental and sensual pleasures. In this regard, the director’s world picture bears connections not solely with Shintō, but also with the lessons of Zen. As argued in Chapter 1, Miyazaki has little patience for purely abstract notions, expecting theory and practice to coalesce, instead of remaining separated by an unbridgeable gap (as is the case in the philosophical template inspired by the Cartesian dualism of mind and body, for instance). Thus, while Miyazaki draws inspiration from the myriad immaterial ideas spawned by an endlessly fertile imagination, he is guided by an overall pragmatic temperament.

A A A In a dialogue with Tetsuo Yamaori, Miyazaki opines that the Shintō pantheon’s innumerable kami are neither able nor disposed to “save our souls.” For one thing, they “are not really 100 percent gods,” but rather “consist of more than half-human elements” (Miyazaki, H. 2014q, p. 253). Above all else, kami are quite devoid of the wrathful and vindictive temper which characterizes the gods of monotheistic religions: the divinities to whom human beings seem inclined to turn whenever they “feel threatened.” This tendency is borne out by the custom, among troops deployed in the first Gulf War (1991), to carry a fragment of the Old Testament bearing “the words of Moses.” The god meant to abet the fighters in this particular case was beyond doubt “the god of anger in the Jewish faith.” Tradition grants this deity the capacity to guard those who perceive themselves as his worthy brood. This is the same god who “punishes humans for their sins.” It is intriguing, in Miyazaki’s opinion, that “not the New but the Old Testament” should have been invoked in such circumstances— in other words, not “the words of Jesus talking about love”—but those of an intimidating prophet. A comparably popular monotheistic cult, Islam is governed by similar rules, as demonstrated by the mentality underpinning the alarming concept of “jihad” (pp. 245–246). Its belief in the idea that non-human entities are endowed with a spiritual essence makes Shintō an animistic religion. Moreover, the kami are believed to “come in all varieties, from elemental spirits to the ghosts

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of ancestors to strange and wonderful animals. They are so numerous that they are commonly referred to as the ‘Eight Million Kami.’ Some are kindly and helpful, while others are mischievous or selfish. Shintō kannushi use many ritual tools in their magic, including haraigushi, a wand covered in paper streamers used to purify an area, and ofuda, paper prayer strips used for good luck or to deal with malicious spirits” (“The Shintō Tradition,” p. 41). As Percival Lowell observes, Shintō’s belief in the pervasiveness of spiritual energy entails not only that “everything, from gods to granite, has its god-spirit,” but also, no less tantalizingly, that “spirit never dies, it only circulates. When a man or animal or plant dies its body duly decays, but its spirit either lives on alone or returns to those two great reservoirs of spirit…. From them a continual circulation of spirit is kept up through the universe” (Lowell, p. 28). At the same time, Shintō pays homage to the shamanic tradition, where animals play a crucial part as inspiring guides. This is borne out by its ceremonial use of animal masks (or talamasca, an ancient term also used to describe a shaman or a witch), which are meant to bring out a person’s spiritual essence, enable the fusion of the human and animal dimensions, or allow the person to become the animal symbolized by the mask. Many of Shintō’s practices—e.g., divination, healing, and ritual dance—echo shamanism’s own customs. It is no coincidence that its priests and priestesses, in particular, are often compared to shamans. A further point of contrast between Shintō and Bible-based religions lies with their differing conceptions of power. Shintō’s belief in the immanence and ubiquity of spiritual energy involves that any entity, in principle, may wield influence on the world’s balance. Judaism and Christianity, by contrast, maintain that peace and harmony can only be achieved by a transcendental locus of authority. This is an aspect of these religions which they share with others monotheistic systems, Islam included. Considering how many wars, massacres, and genocides have occurred in the name of religions of the monotheistic and anti-animistic ilk, one wonders how honorable their godheads truly are as the guarantors of either peace or harmony. Even though Miyazaki does not explicitly pose this question, his comments on the idiocy of war, in both his movies and his writings, invite reflection on the nature of the forces at whose behest conflicts originate.

A A A As intimated, a deeply ingrained belief in the inherent aliveness of all things pervades Miyazaki’s variegated atlas in myriad forms. Likewise

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pivotal to the director’s world picture—and hence to his works—is the proposition that nature is both munificent and brutal. “The idea that nature is always gentle,” he avers, “is a total lie”: a ridiculous myth bred by hubris, and the belief that humans are able to “predict” nature’s workings with flawless precision (Miyazaki, H. 2009l, p. 169). The tendency to see nature as “something pleasant and beautiful for us” is a corollary of humanity’s assumption of a masterful stance toward nature, which posits the environment as no more than an inert setting for human endeavors. However, nature’s true identity harbors both “cruel and brutal” agencies in its midst (Miyazaki, H. 2014a, p. 43). This notion echoes Shintō’s emphasis on the coexistence of opposites, a vital feature of Japan’s religion referred to in the extract from “The Shintō Tradition” cited earlier. Miyazaki’s art captures this element in many ways: for instance, in the depiction of environmental details, in the characterization of both human and non-human characters, and in the simulation of motion. Though the director subscribes to the notion that “nature is precious,” and that it is incumbent upon our species to “protect” it, he also believes that deep down in “our historic memory,” lies the hazy recollection of a time “when the forest was overwhelmingly powerful.” It is for this reason that he regards the idea of “a forest on the attack,” for example, is quite plausible (Miyazaki, H. 2009d). The Toxic Jungle in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind supplies a tantalizingly ambiguous interpretation of such a place. The ancient forest in Princess Mononoke offers an even more explicit rendition of a forest on the attack. The epitome of numinous stillness one moment, it is capable of morphing into the stage of violent activity the next, teeming with creatures whose might as nurturing and revitalizing forces is matched by no less exceptional levels of ruthlessness. If we ignore nature’s manifold reality, we turn it into a one-dimensional, monochromatic, world. In doing so, we are likely to become insensitive to the multidimensionality of life itself, and thus incapable of recognizing its own “irrationality, cruelty, and brutality.” Without a recognition of these crucial facets of life, any attempt to grapple with its elusive essence will amount to no more than a “shallow and insipid exercise” (Miyazaki, H. 2014a, p. 43). To minimize the fact that “wild animals have within them a streak of cruelty,” and “trivialize the wild by making the wild merely sweet, brave, and pure,” is not only bound to produce bland distortions, but also to perpetuate the myth of humanity’s mastery over nature by means of a patronizing dismissal of the environment’s indomitable power to intimidate, destroy, and awe us all into quivering submission (Miyazaki, H. 2014a, p. 55).

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Miyazaki is able to embrace nature in all its aspects because he has nothing to fear from it. He recognizes that his creativity as an artist springs, to a significant extent, from his appreciation of nature’s own inventiveness. His creative reservoir is obviously finite in both space and time, whereas nature’s is limitless in all senses. Nevertheless, the two can work in tandem, at least over the brief span of a single man’s life, because Miyazaki is what Blake would call a “man of imagination,” and “to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself ” (Blake 1799). At the same time, Miyazaki stresses that it is quite presumptuous for human beings to pose as nature’s saviors—and further maintain that nature’s only hope lies with humans. This claim constitutes a gross refusal to recognize that nature possesses self-regenerative capabilities of which humans could not even dream. The director knows full well that what is at stake today is nothing less than the planet’s survival, and both his political conscience and his philosophy’s spiritual substratum prompt him to do something about environmental depletion. However, his concern with the Earth’s current welfare cannot confine itself to a series of concessions to environmentalist activism. In fact, environmentalism can become a crusade led by fanatical people with dogmatic fervor, and prove as dangerous as any other campaign of this ilk, if nature is not first and foremost respected as an autonomous force. Those who flaunt their status as nature’s knights in shining armor can only conceive of their environment as something they own. Miyazaki, by contrast, is “much more attracted to the idea of preserving forests and keeping rivers clean, not for the sake of humans, but because they themselves are alive” (Miyazaki, H. 2014n, p. 367). Moreover, Miyazaki echoes Al Gore in his emphasis on our tendency to pay scarce attention to the present, and hence to what each of us can do, at least in small ways, to help the environment on a daily basis. “When people flirt with despair about the future,” states Gore, “they are less likely to take the actions necessary to safeguard it” (Gore) by looking with honesty at what they could do now. Miyazaki himself believes that “we should each start doing what we can,” even if this does not appear to be particularly significant, or likely to affect things in the long term. For example, Studio Ghibli was erected “without cutting down the trees that were there” (Miyazaki, H. 2014j, p. 276). A further measure commended by the director is the greenification of “all the roofs of the big buildings in Tokyo,” which would decrease the city’s “average temperature,” and therefore contribute to the limitation of global warming (p. 277). In his commentary on the making of My Neighbor Totoro, Miyazaki develops the idea of a forest on the attack further, stating that nature har-

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bors unfathomable regions which elude scrutiny by means of “our five senses.” These find a metaphorical correlative in the impenetrable elements of our own characters, hard as we strive to turn away from their baling presence in an effort to believe we understand ourselves with flawless impartiality. Miyazaki himself is more than willing to acknowledge the mysterious dimension of his personality, as borne out by his preparedness to admit that “the deep forest is connected in some way to the darkness deep in [his] heart.” The suppression of the forest’s primordial darkness would be tantamount to a sad attenuation of his own being, insofar as it would cause “the darkness inside [his] heart” to vanish, and his “existence” to “grow shallow” (Miyazaki, H. 2009o, pp. 359–360). It is worth noting, on this point, that traditional Japanese culture does not view light and darkness in the classic Western way, by associating the former with truth (and, by extension, good), and the latter with deception (and hence evil). As Miyazaki himself points out in the same piece, the “Japanese don’t think that way,” as attested to by the fact that their “gods are in the darkness” (p. 359).

A A A As seen in Chapter 1, the chief reason for which humanity separates itself from nature is that it wishes to study and classify it, thereby presuming to find a way of asserting its standing as a privileged species. However, this controlling drive boomerangs, as separation by and by breeds a sense of alienation, or not-at-homeness, in the very world to which we should belong. These sensations, in turn, are conducive to a crippling fear of nature as a dark, unfathomable, Other. It is from this fear that the myth of mastery emanates, as humanity takes it upon itself to dominate the environment in a vain effort to contain its disquieting otherness. A relevant philosophical position is offered by Théodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. Adorno and Horkheimer’s theorization of humanity’s domination of nature proceeds from their critique of instrumental reason (i.e., reason concerned solely with determining the means to an end). The scientific and technological developments which marked the enlightenment involved the domestication and organization of nature to humanity’s unquestioned advantage. By and by, this trend became an obstacle to human selfpreservation. Indeed, destroying nature meant destroying humanity itself, insofar as the environment’s despoliation became inextricable from the repression of the inner nature of human animals—namely, the life of

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instincts and drives as yet unstifled by the demands of so-called progress (Adorno and Horkheimer). Although the enlightenment’s champions were by no means willing to acknowledge that this was the case, the fact that human mastery over nature had the power to boomerang showed that scientific and technological advancement was not synonymous with the advancement of civilization as such, and the triumph of modernity over the age of myth, as the champions of the enlightenment claimed. Both the speciousness of the enlightenment’s allegations, and the devastating effects of the domination of nature promulgated by its credo, are becoming more and more apparent today. Time and again, both philosophers and artists have endeavored to placate the apprehension of nature’s threatening otherness—an offshoot of their self-separation from it—by imparting nature’s denizens with faces and personalities they can understand. In other words, they have sought to reconfigure all species as empty simulacra of the human form. Regrettably, this propensity has resulted in a progressive emptying of the natural realm of any real presence with the capacity to fascinate and enthuse, and corresponding replacement of nature’s actual population with little armies of human-like clones whose faces we can easily interpret, and whose thoughts we can read without hesitation. “Something is far more likely to become an object of our longing when we don’t know what it is thinking,” argues Miyazaki. Yet, Western animators of the Hollywood variety curtail the pleasure inherent in coming face to face with the inscrutable by choosing instead to “anthropomorphize” the non- human creatures they represent. What they gain, in exchange for the pleasure they so studiously forsake, is the comfort of the familiar. As to what is preferable, the uncertainty inherent in an unreadable expression or the security procured by a familiar form, this depends on the worldview one embraces. Miyazaki gives precedence to the latter because he does not cherish comfortable answers to the mysteries of existence, but honors the unknown as the province to which nature owes its glory and its terror. Miyazaki’s respect for nature in all its forms entails that he recognizes each and every species’ right to its distinctiveness—even if this renders it so very different, so Other, as to defy human comprehension. It is not surprising, therefore, that the director should show no propensity to impose the stamp of humanity on the natural domain. His eschewal of anthropomorphism epitomizes this important aspect of the director’s worldview. Western animation has by and large worked on the assumption that it is

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impossible for a viewer to empathize with a character unless the latter bears some resemblance to a human, albeit in a distorted, exaggerated, or caricatured style. Miyazaki himself does not feel instinctively drawn to figures of this kind. The animals and spirits central to Princess Mononoke typify this crucial facet of his character. These personae challenge the anthropomorphic mentality with their sheer presence, exuding an enigmatic sense of power which transcends the paltry limits of human understanding. Even the figure of Marco Pagot in Porco Rosso, a character whose somatic features could be easily expected to evoke the human form, is not modeled with the anthropomorphic matrix in mind. Hence, Marco’s physique is not that of a cartoonish pig invested with human qualities. Rather, he is a human being with a pig’s head. The design’s emphasis on the nature of Marco’s non-human head as an adjunct is meant to keep it quite distinct from the human trunk and limbs to which it is attached. In other words, the pig is not assimilated by the man. Nor is porcinity, as a result, sublimated into a symbol of a specific human disposition. The pig and the man are irreducible to each other throughout the story, no matter how close we get to the hub of Marco’s tortured soul. The pictorial juxtaposition—as opposed to integration—of porcinity and humanity is exactly what makes Porco Rosso’s protagonist so disquieting a presence even in the most hilarious of slapstick scenes. If Porco Rosso defies anthropomorphism, it evinces an even more critical stance towards neoteny, or paedomorphism. This consists of the use of infantile traits meant to impart a character with a cuter and more innocent appearance, and thus promote caring impulses in adult viewers. Marco has nothing in common with characters like Disney’s Three Little Pigs in Silly Symphonies (1933), the titular piglet in Chris Noonan’s Babe (1995), or Disney’s interpretation of the character of Piglet in Winnie the Pooh (2011). He cannot be grasped with reference to an unambiguous human template, but remains intractably Other. This is the case even in the brief glimpses of Marco’s erstwhile humanity offered by Miyazaki to remind us that the porcine mien emanates from the aviator’s selfperception, and the image he thereby projects, more than from actual physiognomic properties. At the same time, the idea that Marco’s hybrid configuration could ever inspire protective instincts in the viewer is just risible. If anything, Miyazaki seems to have deliberately aimed to make the character’s appearance somewhat offputting. This effect has not been accomplished by instilling Marco’s physique with repulsive connotations in a conventional

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way, but rather by intimating that the pig-like face is akin to a mask donned by Marco to insulate himself from the human world: a barrier he has erected between himself and his fellow mortals out of unrelieved guilt, in order to demonstrate that he no longer deserves to participate in their daily affairs. Thus, Porco Rosso’s (anti)hero is rendered disturbing by his sheer alterity. His perturbing difference—and attendant repellence—is that of the grotesque figures displayed upon the floats that are paraded through many towns at festival or carnival time.

A A A Kitarō Nishida’s views on the natural environment bear tangential ainities with Miyazaki’s vision which are worthy of consideration in this context. “Nature conceived of as an objective reality totally independent of our subjectivity is an abstract concept,” argues the philosopher, “not true reality. The noumenal aspect of nature”—i.e., the essence of nature, or nature as it is, by contrast with nature as it appears to us—“is the fact of direct experience in which subject and object have not yet separated. For example, what we regard as true grass and trees are grass and trees with living color and forms—they are intuitive facts…. The idea of nature … as construed by scientists … is the most abstract and the most removed from the true state of reality.” In the scientific conception of nature, “nature is simply moved from without according to the laws of necessity, and it cannot function spontaneously from within” (Nishida 1992, pp. 68–69). While scientists strive for disembodied abstractions, “the real nature that we actually experience is never an abstract concept…. Animals are animals, plants are plants, and metals are metals; each is a concrete fact with its own special characteristics and significance…. Nature therefore possesses a kind of self, too. The various forms, variations, and motions a plant or animal expresses are not mere unions or mechanical movements of insignificant matter; because each has an inseparable relationship to the whole, each should be regarded as a developmental expression of one unifying self ” In each species, diverse physical components and dynamic properties coalesce thanks to nature’s “unifying power” (p. 70). This principle could never be conceivable as “an abstract concept artificially created by our thought.” Rather, it is “a fact that appears in our intuition…. Artists are people who most excel in this kind of intuition. They discern at a glance the truth of a thing and grasp its unifying reality. What they then express is not a superficial fact but an unchanging noumenal reality hidden deep within things” (p. 71).

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The key idea at the core of Nishida’s contention is intuition. For Miyazaki, as for the philosopher, a genuine relationship with nature is predicated on an intuitive perception of its forms, and, beyond them, of the all-pervasive life force which courses through the universe in its entirety. Miyazaki’s works suggest that children are the ones best equipped to experience the world intuitively, but adults who choose not to approach nature from a purely scientific perspective may still enjoy the type of direct experience theorized by Nishida. Nishida’s use of the term “appears” is also worthy of notice: it intimates that nature’s inexhaustible energy cannot be identified by examining its creatures under a microscope. Rather, it is a reality that we are most likely to experience as something of an unexpected emergence, almost as an epiphany. It seems safe to assume that Miyazaki would be ready to concur with this proposition. Miyazaki does not single out artists as explicitly as Nishida does as the people most versed in the kind of intuitive understanding one needs in order to be able to relate to nature in a constructive manner, instead of dissecting it or classifying it from a scientific angle. However, he does indicate in both his films and his writings that honest art must be underpinned by a healthy dose of intuition. Thus, he does not posit artists as favored repositories of a refined type of intuition, but does conceive of intuition as a prerequisite for the creation of art. Furthermore, while Nishida’s picture of the artist might seem colored by Romantic overtones, it portrays Miyazaki himself with indubitable accuracy. It is his possession of an intuition so refined as to approximate the child’s native intuition that enables Miyazaki to sense, and comment on, the continuity of all life forms with no trace of sanctimonious posturing. “Whenever I look at the mass of midges that have bred in the ditch near my house,” states the director, “I don’t just think of them as something filthy to be gotten rid of. I don’t think that such measures should be determined on the basis of whether they are pure or polluted. We humans, after all, created the reason for pollution. The midges disappear in one fell swoop with a single downpour of rain”—namely, a phenomenon determined by nature and its rhythms, and not by humans and their predatory urges (Miyazaki, H. 2009k, p. 163).

Space as Social Context In engaging with the concept of space as a social context, Miyazaki’s works touch on political and economic issues which draw attention to the

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dominance of greed in today’s world. As seen in Chapter 1, the director’s critique of the ascendancy of greed as a supreme cultural value—and no longer an unfortunate human proclivity to be ashamed of—bears ainities with E. F. Schumacher’s analysis of modern economies undertaken in the seminal text Small Is Beautiful (1973). As noted, Schumacher maintains that in advanced capitalist dispensations, the concept of work is not compatible with pleasure but has in fact come to be perceived as an inevitable inconvenience. Employers deplore its costliness, and therefore seek to minimize the processes and bodies it entails. Employees, on the other hand, see work as synonymous with the curtailment of rest and recreation. Hence, both employers and employees aim to reduce the efforts required by this bothersome activity to the bare minimum. Historically, the establishment of methods of production dominated by a rigorous division of labor has turned out to be one of the most profitable strategies ever conceived as a means of maximizing productivity. Its effects are notoriously deleterious: in attenuating the worker’s physical and mental capacities, this pattern of production engenders a class of nearly dehumanized, robotic humans. Insofar as its sole goal is the production of sundry commodities at the fastest rate possible, the division of labor renders the contribution made by the worker to the production process so paltry and unfulfilling as to preclude any trace of personal achievement, not to mention enjoyment. Moreover, the performance of the same numbing duty on a quotidian basis does not require any refined abilities; nor does it allow for the kind of self-enhancing diversification commended by William Morris in News from Nowhere (1890). As Schumacher also emphasizes, the modern world has treated nature’s resources as though they were endlessly renewable when this is clearly not the case. In other words, humanity exploits “the irreplaceable capital which man has not made, but simply found, and without which he can do nothing” (Schumacher, p. 3). As “an act of violence against nature,” the exploitative appropriation of non-renewable materials is bound to “lead to violence between men” (p. 45). Indeed, when countries depend on “world-wide systems of trade” of the kind entailed by fossil fuels, they are much more “likely to be at each other’s throats” than would be the case if they were to make a “modest use of resources,” and rely, as far as possible, on “local resources for local needs” (p. 43). Miyazaki’s depiction of the kind of Japan he would like to see emerging from the country’s current state of social and economic stagnation stands out in sharp contrast with the crudely utilitarian model portrayed by Schumacher, insofar as it ushers in the possibility of an ethical economy

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willing to live within its own means, and gear production towards the achievement of collective welfare rather than the imbalanced accumulation of wealth. As seen in Chapter 1, Miyazaki’s ideal Japan is indeed a country which would foster the sharing of wealth, a solid grasp of the production chain linking agricultural or industrial output with consumers, and a commitment to the use of resources amenable to regeneration, as opposed to non-sustainable energy supplies. The director’s commendation of a community which strives to operate within its own means alludes to the necessity of relying, as far as possible, on local resources. At the same time, his emphasis on shared prosperity stresses the desirability of satisfying the population’s needs without aspiring to grand schemes, meant to parade the country’s prestige on the international scene. Nuclear power has been glorified by many governments as the solution to the depletion of fossil fuels, caused by their squandering of nature’s resources as though they were expendable and somehow replaceable. In reality, argues Schumacher, “nuclear energy” may only “‘solve’ the fuel problem by creating an environmental and ecological problem of … monstrous magnitude” (p. 7). Miyazaki’s stance on nuclear power has already been hinted at in Chapter 1, in relation to the director’s image of an ideal Japan as a fully de-nuclearized country. It is also noteworthy that following the cataclysmic events which hit Japan on March 11, 2011, Miyazaki and his colleagues made their views on nuclear power crystal clear by canceling their “contract with the national body which runs the nuclear power station.” In addition, he personally “wrote a ‘j’accuse’ against the government,” whereby making it his “sworn enemy: they were astonished to witness the rebellion of a ‘living national treasure’ like me, considered tame and apolitical by now” (Miyazaki, H. 2014b; my translation). This statement, while spelling out Miyazaki’s position in incontrovertible terms, also points to one of the primary strategies through which political powers construct mythologies designed to shore up their credentials, while also keeping at bay potentially troublesome voices. In effect, by labeling the world-famous director a “national treasure,” and thus containing him within the social fabric, the Japanese government has attempted to suppress his political voice, and enforce his compliance with its policies on all matters. Miyazaki’s attack on the Japanese government intimates that the lucky few who still have the means to slow down environmental degradation, and related climatic disarray, are those who, having grown used to the advantages carried by their wealth and their status, or never having known anything other than privilege from birth, are the least likely to tamper

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with today’s lifestyle. All they care about is the possible impact of any changes on their pampered lifestyles in the immediate future, not its longterm consequences for the planet at large. This disposition, in turn, makes present governments disinclined to implement the radical policies needed to slow down the Earth’s depletion. This, of course, is a brutal political reality alicting not only Japan, but many nations the world over. Miyazaki has also conveyed his views on humanity’s handling of the Earth’s resources in a speech delivered in 1988 at the Nagoya Cinema Festival. In this context, the director recalls a Russian tale he heard as a child whose protagonists are a red cock, a dog, a cat, and a pig. When the red cock finds a grain of wheat and suggests to the other animals that they sow it together, the others refuse, so the red cock does the job all by himself. The same thing happens when the cock asks the other animals to help him first weed the soil, so as to abet the wheat’s growth, then harvest it, and finally grind it. As the red cock is about to eat the bread he has baked by relying solely on his own efforts, the dog, the cat, and the pig all of a sudden show an interest in their mate’s activities, and decide to partake of the freshly baked loaf. The red cock, which is quite understandable in the circumstances, is quite reluctant to share the product of his own sweat with his greedy acquaintances. In Miyazaki’s eyes, this simple story yields a potent metaphor for the “relationship between production and possession,” or the “relationship between labor and capital.” At the same time, the tale can be read as an allusion to a widespread human proclivity. This is the tendency to forget that behind the things we consume day after day, with little or no thought, lies the labor of factory workers and farmers—and that behind these people’s own toil, lies the Earth itself. As Miyazaki is keen to stress, the agents responsible for life on our planet are indeed “plants,” and, by extension, “fossil fuel.” Whatever we make, and this includes anime movies, we should never make it “without thinking about such things” (Miyazaki, H. 1995). Looking at these remarks, what springs to mind is a thought I owe to my best friend: how easy it is to forget that beneath the layers of concrete, metal and tarmac of which urban spaces consist, rests the Earth. This is the very same soil from which the vegetation we encounter upon leaving the city’s boundaries springs, but to us, habituated to the look of the built environment, it is by no means obvious that the city and the countryside share a common root. Even more remote is the awareness that this same soil is also the animate bedrock in which our own bodies originate. The portion of the Nagoya Festival speech from which Miyazaki’s

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observations about production and consumption are drawn is entitled “A person who makes and a person who eats.” The reason for this can be extrapolated without diiculty from the content of the Russian tale. However, that title serves a further, figurative, function. Apart from illuminating Miyazaki’s environmentalist position, the distinction between making and eating provides a correlative for the difference between the kind of artist who values his or her activity per se, without giving much consideration to the material rewards it might bring, and the one who prioritizes these economic outcomes to the creative process itself. In a sense, only the former deserved designation as an “honest” artist, while the latter is better described by the word “utilitarian.”

A A A Commenting on the current status of work in his particular sector, Miyazaki gives overt precedence to ethical soundness and spiritual wellbeing over callous acquisitiveness. Neither at the macrocosmic level of the nation nor at the microcosmic level of the individual worker should the hoarding of capital become an end in itself. Implicit in the director’s stance on this matter is Marx’s warning that the moment the amassing of riches becomes an end in itself, there is a danger of this goal becoming utterly life-consuming. In order to increase his wealth on a steady basis, the capitalist envisaged by Marx must embrace a routine centered on the principle of “self-renunciation.” As the capitalist grows more and more powerless to enjoy the pleasures which his wealth should, in principle, afford him, the capital itself begins to live on his behalf like some ghastly incubus. Money will partake of all those pleasures in his stead, confining him to the squalid space wherein he relentlessly pursues his—by definition unsatisfiable—aim. Addressing a hypothetical capitalist, Marx declares: “all the things which you cannot do, your money can do. It can eat and, drink, go to the dance hall and the theatre; it can travel, it can appropriate art, learning, the treasures of the past, political power” (Marx). Miyazaki advises would-be animators not to focus on the acquisition of skills which they deem capable of delivering quick financial returns, but aim instead to “study a variety of things that interest [them] while [they] have time, before [they] enter the professional world, in order to solidify such fundamentals as [their] own viewpoint and way of thinking.” The director’s emphasis on eclecticism echoes Morris’ advocacy of a social model in which each individual enjoys the opportunity to experiment with a variety of tasks, and so acquire disparate skills. If aspiring animators fail

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to explore a wide range of ideas and perspectives in the formative stages of their education, their very “life” will be “treated as just another disposable product.” The preparedness to work hard, and with no automatic guarantee that one will leave a mark on the development of the art, is a prerequisite of the ability to function in the world of animation. This should not, however, discourage prospective animators. Quite the contrary, Miyazaki maintains that should “continue to hold what [they] regard as important close to [their] heart and nurture it.” The sole alternative would be to become “a pencil-pusher—the type of animator whose sense of self-worth is determined by the numerical amount of his earning” (Miyazaki, H. 2009a, p. 23). In this context, animators are enjoined to equate their productivity with ceaseless work. Many artists, Miyazaki himself included, will declare that it is in the moments of rest, the times when the mind is allowed to lie fallow, and the hand to doodle at leisure, that some of the most exciting ideas take shape. However, today’s animators are as prey as we all are to the imperative to be busy and, more importantly still, feel busy, and be seen to be busy. Social media fuel this agenda to an exponential extent, obscuring the fact that filling swathes of the ether with news about oneself, complemented by a plethora of self-gratifying selfies, is no guarantee of fulfillment. Nor, by extension, is unrelenting industry. We make lists and live in the false belief that if we exhaust all of the tasks on such lists, we will have achieved something important, and will therefore feel more complete inside. As it happens, this outcome never obtains. No moment of total satisfaction is ever reached. There will always be more things to do, to enhance, and to optimize. The moment we center our prospects of fulfillment on the notion of achievement, we buy into the cult of productivity (while also pandering to the myth of teleology to boot). At this point, we become complicit in the proliferation of our culture’s “mind-forg’d manacles” (Blake 1794). It is hard to deny that today, even when animators strive to remain true to their principles, they are often treated as though each individual worker were no more than “a cog in the wheel of the unprecedented mass production of anime and the flood of animated television programs…. The job of animator has the same importance as almost any other work station in the assembly-line process.” The only goal which has retained any significance in this world is “profit.” In complying with the furtherance of this objective, the animator may achieve a modicum of “self-satisfaction,” but at the cost of submitting to “the trivialization of his creative spirit” (Miyazaki, H. 2009b, pp. 25–26). As the director points out in his assessment of Porco Rosso’s cultural milieu, no society can escape the tyranny of

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the economic and political priorities to which its vision is subordinated. As a result, no “innovative era,” however “hopeful in its social outlook” this may be when its foundations are first laid, remains groundbreaking for long: “its innovations are appropriated into capital investment, national agendas and other interests and, as a result, they’re corrupted” (Miyazaki, H. 2013d, p. 121). Over the past few decades, the subordination of all aspects of the art of animation to financial gain has been de facto ratified by its absorption into a multimedia circuit of economic activity geared solely to the priorities of rapid consumption—a business leviathan with many sprawling limbs. “Television stations, advertising agencies, publishers, toy manufacturers, animators, manga artists, and those working in film,” explains Miyazaki, are now “fully incorporated into a single entertainment industry.” No sooner has the serialization of a manga begun than the manga’s publishers contact various studios in search of people interested in adapting the series as an anime. Toy manufacturers, meanwhile, are eager to seize upon a popular manga/anime character to produce figures which children are bound to love. This is tantamount to turning young readers/viewers into avid consumers even before they have begun to develop other aspects of their personalities—including those creative and imaginative facets of the self without which no real humanity can subsist. “Unless our work fits well with the scheme of this commercialized reality, we cannot do anything,” concludes the director with regretful resignation, “no matter how driven we are or how lofty our desire to create quality animation” (Miyazaki, H. 2009e, p. 47). The economic trend outlined above pivots on the stimulation of consumer desire for products meant to provide instant gratification. Needless to say, the key players in the game tend to focus on the production of goods which require little or no intellectual engagement on the user’s part, knowing that these are the ones which will be consumed most rapidly— and that the faster users consume them, the sooner they will be likely to seek out more commodities of the same ilk. The production of demand for such products is prioritized to the principle of quality. The sole criteria governing the operation are the existence of a market rife with eager consumers, and of goods able to appease their hunger. This is by no means always the case. There are many anime, videogames, toys, and manga, for example, which do engage the users’ brains as well as their senses These can only be enjoyed in a total and fulfilling manner when they become objects of thought and reflection, instead of being treated merely as the triggers of vapid entertainment. Nevertheless, as

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Miyazaki reminds us, there comes a point when the nature of the demand at the base of a certain economic process is no longer considered, let alone questioned, and the producers of popular articles begin to “feel satisfied in satisfying demand just because it exists” (Miyazaki, H. 2014l, p. 274).

A A A Miyazaki’s aversion to work undertaken with profit as the sole or main aim in mind is corroborated by his comments on the serialization of the manga version of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. This extensive work, to which the director applied himself intermittently between 1982 and 1994, began running in Animage (a magazine released by Tokuma Shoten) in February 1982, when Miyazaki was employed by the animation studio Telecom. The director’s observations intimate that the aesthetic quality of cover images asking for attention in a barefaced fashion, so as to draw potential readers to a manga and bump up sales, is bound to be poisoned by the glorification of profit. When the serialization of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind by Animage began, Miyazaki had no choice but to deliver pictures of that very kind, and this fact remains to this day the cause of profound embarrassment for him. Commenting on the cover art for the Animage special published on September 25, 1982, for instance, Miyazaki has stated: “I don’t enjoy pictures that scream, ‘I am a cover, yes,’ or ‘Please buy this book’” (Miyazaki, H. 2007, p. 12). Miyazaki’s observations about the cover art executed for the July 1982 issue of Animage reinforce this idea. Vis-à-vis profit-oriented images, his dominant feeling is one of “submissive shame” (p. 6). The director is also unhappy, for related reasons, about pictures in which the protagonist looks as though she were modeling, and had adopted a certain posture and expression in anticipation of having her photograph taken. This cheapens the character’s ethical substance—one of the story’s chief driving forces—by lowering her to the level of a pin-up. Moreover, this pictorial construction of Nausicaä is in stark contrast with her creator’s intimate perception of her personality: “the Nausicaä inside me,” he states with regard to an illustration created for the Animage issue of June 1985, “would never pose like this” (p. 70). Analogous comments accompany the cover art for the Animage issue of March 1993. There is also a further reason for which Miyazaki, with hindsight, hates the thought of having ever had to undertake this type of work. This is that it is quite incompatible with one of the principal sentiments underpinning his work ethos: namely, contempt for anyone prepared to “earn

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money on the side in addition to their main occupation” (p. 6). In a society which prioritizes profit, the amount of work one must undertake in order to achieve a certain level of revenue is accorded incontestable precedence. Multiple job-holding is a reality for many workers, today no less than in the 1980s—assuming they can find employment at all given the alarming levels of unemployment alicting many advanced economies.

A A A A grotesque perversion of Morris’ utopian vision, the globalized society we inhabit today is predicated on callous individualism. This ideology is heir to the least attractive facets of Renaissance humanism—those which provided convenient excuses for colonization, among other evils of the modern world. It also bears the legacy of Cartesian rationalism, with its paradoxically illogical conception of the self as the basis of logical thought. At the same time, it harks back to the tradition of empiricism, with its emphasis on the individual’s hands-on experience of reality as the only reliable yardstick for its knowledge and appraisal. Nowadays, the centralization of the self as one of the social fabric’s major lynchpins precludes the possibility of comprehensive, multi-dimensional thought beyond the boundaries of the individual’s preoccupation with what he or she is likely to gain from a certain action or choice. It is hardly surprising that such a society should prioritize self-interest to the exclusion of any real concern for the cultivation of communal aims. Greed pervades the cultural framework, rendering all ethical considerations virtually obsolete. Relatedly, everything comes to be assessed with reference to its economic significance. This entails that not only people’s professional activities, but also their educational experiences, their ethical values, and even their life choices, are only measured in terms of their financial worth. Writing on the intentions underlying the creation of Kiki’s Delivery Service, Miyazaki has addressed these issues in relation to the struggle for independence experienced by today’s young women. In a world which is given to prize economic matters at the expense of the spiritual dimension, self-suiciency is often regarded as coterminous with the achievement of “economic independence.” In fact, the latter is not in itself suicient to guarantee the attainment of autonomy, insofar as a person can only be deemed self-determining in a well-rounded fashion when he or she accomplishes “spiritual independence.” Far from constituting a smooth and amusing voyage, the quest for this grail is beset by the ever-present specters of “isolation and disillusionment” (Miyazaki, H. 2006b).

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In Kiki’s Delivery Service, Miyazaki is keen to celebrate young girls’ struggle for independence. This objective permeates the entire film, but is most palpable in the finale. The protagonist, having at last conquered her initial lack of confidence and companionship, can now be seen flying above the Stockholm-inspired city of Corico, enjoying a potent feeling of “connection to the people below” (p. 6). However, we should not read this feel-good ending as an indicator of the director’s belief that a positive conclusion to a young woman’s struggle for autonomy can be taken for granted. On the contrary, he implies that even though a satisfying resolution may be accomplished within the boundaries of a film laced with fantasy and teenage romance, alongside an original take on magic, reality itself does not guarantee any such outcomes. The very fact that Kiki’s Delivery Service harbors fantastic, romantic, and magical elements, is meant to make us suspicious of the likelihood of rosy endings crowning young people’s efforts in real life.

A A A The ascendancy of greed as a political and economic drive constitutes a major concern in Miyazaki’s corpus from his first feature film to the last. The Castle of Cagliostro exposes greed as the cement holding together the malefic artificial octopus engendered by the intermarriage of disparate regimes, the global economy, the law and its enforcers, and the most sophisticated exponents of the world of organized crime. Count Cagliostro’s counterfeiting operation—so sophisticated that it appears to cover all known currencies, including the paltriest ones (such as the Italian lira, still in circulation at the time the film was made). To strengthen the impression that the power lodged in this nefarious scheme has been running the “global economy for centuries” through “conspiracies and assassinations,” Miyazaki surrounds Count Cagliostro himself with an aura of immortality. Thus, despite his worldly appetites, otherworldly nuances tinge the villain’s corpulent frame and leering mien in an uncanny, indefinable fashion. Many major economic upheavals in modern history, including the 1929 Depression, are said to have been triggered by the Count’s traic of counterfeit money. There can be little doubt that the governments of all known countries condone, or even support, the enterprise as instrumental in the preservation of their authority. This strand of the story foreshadows with prophetic accuracy the extent to which today’s leading governments are dependent on iniquitous bankers, and therefore connive with their crimes, in the achievement and maintenance of their own power bases.

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In The Castle of Cagliostro, the idea that everybody is willing to play the Count’s game is reinforced by the revelation that even the Interpol are keen to cover up the miscreant’s deeds, and quick to accuse the honest Inspector Zenigata of slander and malicious propaganda when he supplies eloquent proof of the Count’s culpability. To seal this unjust verdict, the chairman of the organization intervenes in person to declare the case closed. Furthermore, to throw into relief the global nature of the support enjoyed by the Count in the perpetration of his crimes, the movie emphasizes that an illustrious Archbishop from the Vatican has been summoned to administer Cagliostro and Clarisse’s wedding vows. As if by magic, all countries seem willing to forget the differences which on so many occasions would lead to unrest and war when it comes to backing the culture of greed and its champions—as if by magic, except that in this instance, Miyazaki does not give vent to his flair for pictorial legerdemain: rather, he uses the fairy-tale-cum-action mold to deliver a political message of consummate realism. Further to expose the evil at the heart of Count Cagliostro’s regime, Miyazaki contrasts the criminal’s blood-soaked treasures with the “real treasure,” as the pure Princess Clarisse describes it, disclosed at end: a cluster of ancient ruins of exquisite beauty suggesting the existence of a Roman town on the very spot where the eponymous castle stood prior to its climactic collapse. Offering a veritable breath of fresh air by comparison with the miasma exhaling from her intended consort’s secret vaults, Clarisse declares that she wants the newly discovered treasure to be shared by all mankind. The ancient town also bears witness to Miyazaki’s love of locations in which the natural and the artificial coalesce with seamless mutuality, by marking a solemn marriage of nature and architecture. On the nature theme, it is also noteworthy that the former gardener of the royal grounds, who knew the princess when she was growing up, portrays Clarisse as having been a nature lover from an early age. With the scene in which the old man makes his appearance, Miyazaki finds a way of reminding the audience, without any need for inapposite digressions, where life’s real value lies. Taking a leap in both time and space, we find that it is through the world of Spirited Away that Miyazaki delivers his most trenchant denunciation of greed ever. Before proceeding to clarify this contention, it is worth noting that the director has stated that the metamorphosis of Chihiro’s parents into pigs—a symbol of greed in many traditions—is not intended to be taken simply as a trope. In his view, the two characters typify a whole category of people active in the real world. “They really

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were like pigs. There were lots of people like that during Japan’s economic bubble years, and after,” says Miyazaki. “They’re still around today. There are brand-name pigs, and rare-item snob pigs.” So caught up are the heroine’s folks into the culture of greed they incarnate as not even to carry any memory of their supernatural experience once they have returned to the world of ravenous and mindless consumption they came from in the first place: “the father’s probably still groaning that it’s a recession and his feeding trough’s not big enough,” concludes the director with sardonic disenchantment (Miyazaki, H. 2014h, p. 217). Greed is thrown into relief right from the start through the parents’ language and actions. The father speaks like a businessman, and it may well be because of his job that the family are moving to a new town. The mother is concerned with materialistic details to do with the new house, and glossing over with tiresome platitudes the subject of Chihiro having to attend an unfamiliar school—which could be quite an intimidating prospect for a girl her age—as though it were too intangible, non-consumable, an issue to deserve much consideration. When roaming through what they take to be a theme park, Chihiro’s father alludes to the subjects of land management and property maintenance. His assessment of the situation is that numerous sites of this kind date back to Japan’s boom era, and stopped doing business when the economy collapsed. What he does not say, because nature is barely a concern in his scheme of things, is that the environmental consequence of this economic phenomenon is the countryside’s brutalization through the sudden appearance of artificial landscapes. The sustained critique of greed-dominated cultures yielded by Spirited Away revolves around the bath house and its motley patrons: creatures whose supernatural connotations it might not be polite (or safe) to question, but nonetheless smack of upmarket private club clients hell-bent on total gratification. As noted in The Animé Art of Hayao Miyazaki, “the film’s animistic deities are turned into emphatically fleshy, decadent quasiaristocrats anxious only to be pampered and fed the choicest of dishes…. Incorporeal as they may be, the spirits are suiciently bound up with the carnal domain as to be able to instantly recognize the smell of a human and to register it as grossly unpleasant. While this ploy may dwarf those beings’ presumed nobility, their irreverent portrayal also has the effect of throwing into relief the logic of rampant consumption to which postindustrial societies are enslaved in a defamiliarizing fashion, by being associated not with the corporeal dimension—as one could expect—but with the spiritual one.”

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Like most of the people who live in societies dominated by the logic of conspicuous consumption, the self-indulgent clientele of Yu-Baaba’s flashy bath house are deeply lonely. Thus, “beneath the comedy, the opulent animation and the sense of adventure, potent undercurrents of isolation and rootlessness flow unchecked.” While Chihiro herself is stranded among weird creatures who, in turn, regard her as weird in the extreme, Yu-Baaba’s whole outfit is permeated by an insidious feeling of alienation. This suggests that the denizens of societies in which greed reigns supreme are not only prone to loneliness. In fact, the severing of any constructive bonds with their fellow mortals (or immortals, as the case may be) is also conducive to the erosion of personal identity. “The character of Kaonashi (“No Face”) encapsulates all of these feelings: his facelessness obviously alludes to the loss of identity—a predicament which he struggles to assuage through spectacular displays of intemperate appetite and the desperate, deeply moving, yearning to establish some kind of connection with Sen as his last hope of transcending his crippling solitude.” Loneliness is here presented, through a paradoxical twist of logic, both as an offshoot of greed, and as its trigger. The resolution of Kaonashi’s predicament, offered in the film’s quasi pastoral dénouement, celebrates the fruitful collusion of personal good will and the voice of tradition—a tradition, that is, as yet untainted by the rapaciousness endemic in Yu-Baaba’s health spa autocracy. Indeed, it is not solely “through Sen but also through the only other character in the film not to be driven purely by selfishness and greed that Kaonashi will eventually discover companionship and a sense of belonging—namely, Zeniba, Yu-Baaba’s twin sister,” a creature who has no doubt known the world for many years but has not allowed so-called progress to pollute her principles (Cavallaro 2006, p. 139). Unlike her rapacious sister, Zeniba shuns material wealth and accumulation. Her small rural cottage, whose contents mirror the character of the natural environment surrounding it, serves as a perfect emblem of her disposition and temperament. The activities undertaken therein—such as spinning, flower arrangement, baking— hark back to an older and purer world than the one personified by YuBaaba’s extravagant establishment. The interrelation of loneliness and greed is also foregrounded through Haku’s portrayal. Human greed is at the root of the character’s entire ordeal, insofar as humans are responsible for filling in and paving over the river over which he presides as a nature spirit in order to create scope for the erection of an apartment block, thus disregarding nature’s rhythms and needs in favor of crassly lucrative ends. At the same time, it is Haku’s

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devastating sense of isolation that draws him to Sen’s presence in the stale enclave of Yu-Baaba’s bath house as a breath of fresh air, and perhaps the harbinger of salvation. The coupling of greed and loneliness remains a constant to the end of Spirited Away. Despite its lavish fantasy dimension, the movie is no utopia. Thus, while it suggests that Chihiro is likely to have learned a great deal from her experiences in the mysterious town, it also presents her at the end as no less isolated than she was at the beginning. The opening scene indicates that her parents have no real understanding of either her personality or her desires, that her only close friend has been left behind in her old town, and that she feels quite alienated from the new children’s community she is about to enter. Above all, the heroine comes across as apathetic and chronically bored, as though she did not perceive any prospects of exciting interaction with her fellow humans. At the end, as Miyazaki observes, the early sense of isolation surrounding Chihiro is renewed: “just when Chihiro has finally been accepted by the people she has met in the other world, she has to leave it…. Even I, the one making the film, felt sad” (p. 224). A less honest director would feasibly have imposed his personal desires onto the finale, and given it a happy turn just for the sake of feeling gratified by it. However, Miyazaki is to conscientious an artist to put his own preferences ahead of the work itself. Hence, he has let the story decide of its own accord what is and what is not congruous with its internal reality. Having depicted a world in which loneliness is bound to be rife as long as people’s actions are driven purely by greed, and allowed the drama to develop in accordance with this proposition, he creates scope for the film to determine the nature of the ending without interfering with its rhythms.

A A A Quite a different critique of greed is offered by The Wind Rises, where this poisonous drive pivots on Japan’s dreams of military domination, and attendant acquisition of planes from Germany. As it happens, the furtherance of those vapid aspirations involves cutbacks so extreme in domestic expenditure as to result in many common people being forced to subsist below the poverty threshold. With his last feature, Miyazaki draws attention to the inextricability of greed from war: a motif to which several of his earlier works allude with varying degrees of emphasis, but do not tackle in an explicit fashion. Nevertheless, the director’s censure of the greed which pervades the world’s economies today is closely bound up through-

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out his oeuvre with his exposure of history as a stream besmirched with blood. Historiography itself, as intimated in the preceding chapter, has glorified or effaced this sinister reality by dancing to the dominant ideology’s tune. Looking at history’s pathetic cycles, Miyazaki cannot fail to see that greed has been the prime cause of all the fiercest wars in which humanity has ever engaged, both as material rapaciousness, and as an avid desire to advance a nation’s idealized image of itself. It is not uncommon for lofty ideals to provide pretexts for conflicts which have in fact had purely economic objectives at their base. Military operations of tragic proportions launched for the sake of oil, yet camouflaged as crusades conducted in the service of civilization and democracy, are flagrant examples of this phenomenon. The director’s comments on the inanity of Japan’s actions in World War II, the Gulf war of 1990–1991, and the Iraq war of 2003, commented upon in Chapter 2, suggest that material cravings and predatory ideologies have tended to be long-standing bedfellows throughout human history. Religions have proved most versatile in gilding over the ugly reality of greed by justifying the most insane of conflicts as inevitable concomitants of the advancement of just causes. In the face of the economic and environmental crises with which the entire globe must grapple today, it may be tempting for people to turn to faith as source of solace. Miyazaki does not believe, however, that religions can offer “a solution” (Miyazaki, H. 2009d, p. 424). It was his skeptical stance on religion that urged the director to avoid dishing out pious messages in the one of his movies which lent itself to this purpose: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Even though the eponymous heroine has often been construed as a messianic presence endowed with the aura of a selfsacrificing savior, Miyazaki had no intention of making her “a Joan of Arc,” and was keen to “get rid of any religious undertones” (Miyazaki, H. 2009c, p. 333). Both Miyazaki’s writings and his films suggest that religions, while offering temporary comfort, and even justifications for the world’s alictions, allow their adherents to exonerate themselves from the obligation to think: a duty which the director, in fact, regards as the prerequisite of a person’s fulfillment of his or her potential as a human being. Miyazaki’s world picture surmises that thought, far from constituting a heavy burden for people to elude through cunning, or else shoulder with stoical forbearance, is a right which humanity should embrace with both courage and zeal. It is through thinking, not through the robotic rehearsal of a credo,

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that people may grasp the fallacy of their addiction to materialism and its delusions. Religions may be keen to condemn humanity’s enslavement to “various worldly desires,” but it is thought, more than prayer or ritual, that holds the power to make us conscious of this state of affairs, and foster our resolution to devise ways of combating it. Nature may hold part of the answer to our predicament insofar as it is still home to things which defy the crude reality of materialism. Were we to search for these entities with unclouded eyes, to paraphrase Ashitaka in Princess Mononoke, “we might reach somewhere as an ordinary stone or water drops.” Unfortunately, however, any solace drawn from the venture would have to remain private and silent, not accommodated into the grooves of some organized doctrine, animism included. Indeed, “the moment we put these kinds of thoughts into words,” states Miyazaki, “everything becomes a disreputable religion” (Miyazaki, H. 1994, italics added).

A A A As noted in Chapter 1, Miyazaki is committed to the perpetuation of anime as an eminently collaborative enterprise, dependent upon, and capable of fostering, both a robust team spirit and a team-building disposition. As the director maintains, in this regard, “animation … requires group effort…. The final product can never be from one person alone. It must belong to everyone, as well as to each individual. For us, the ultimate dream is to create works this way and have as many people as possible view them” (Miyazaki, H. 2009a, p. 20). Miyazaki is here implying that spectators themselves contribute to the construction of a work, and that therefore, as Studio Ghibli’s audiences grow over time, the studio’s messages are bound to become more and more multifaceted. The director is also keen to emphasize that “a system must adjust to the people involved” so as to avoid degenerating into an inflexible scheme. Even if an animation studio’s founding members hit upon a hugely successful formula, they should never become so protective of their achievements, and so doctrinaire in their beliefs, as to lose competent prospective employees, just because the latter do not happen to fit in with the established organization (Miyazaki, H. 2009h, p. 61). So as to allow new voices to emerge, Studio Ghibli holds regular “project study meetings,” in the course of which the participants are invited to pick and peruse the same “scenario.” These events aim to involve all of the studio’s members “regardless of job title.” All those present, accordingly, “are free to say whatever they want” (Miyazaki, H. 2009f, p. 105).

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In the context of Studio Ghibli, work is meant to enable people to maximize their potential and their creativeness, not only as laborers, but also as human animals. It must not, therefore, be experienced as a coercion even under the most taxing circumstances. Work is regarded as an opportunity for each individual to contribute his or her personal vision to the team’s joined venture; to inspire others while, at the same time, be inspired by them; to exchange ideas with guileless curiosity and verve; and to accept criticism as constructive encouragement rather than censure or scorn. As a result, Studio Ghibli’s quotidian operations tend to show constant and vibrant interaction among all of its members. The destiny of isolation diagnosed by Ivan Illich as the obvious outcome of divisive specialization, here examined in the context of Chapter 1, is forestalled by Miyazaki’s cooperative model. At the same time, his approach to work constitutes a means of opposing the grim ascendancy of deskilling: the concomitant of the alienating division of labor fostered by capitalist economies. The director’s work ethos coincides with Morris’ in its belief that all members of a creative team have something to contribute to the final product, even if their occupations are such as to be deemed menial by the standards of so-called “high art.” The coherence and harmony to which the final product ought to aspire depend on these workers’ contributions, no less than on those of the artists (Miyazaki included) who have masterminded the project. This approach to work is epitomized by the director’s perception of himself as “the manager of an animation cinema factory,” rather than an artist, let alone a genius. His position, he feels, is akin to that of “the boss of a team of craftsmen” (Miyazaki, H. 2004). Furthermore, he is the first to acknowledge, with characteristic modesty, that “there are a lot of people who are talented” in ways he is “not”—though it is also true that “the kind of talent that [he] desire[s] does not exist” (Miyazaki, H. 2014t). All aspects of labor, for Miyazaki, are equally dignified and worthy of respect. Moreover, all workers have the same right to derive pleasure from what they do on a daily basis, regardless of how exalted or marginal their jobs might be, since work is something to be enjoyed, and not the antithesis of leisure. The modus operandi underlying Miyazaki’s studio echoes the economic model which Schumacher dubs “Buddhist.” In this paradigm, work is meant “to give man a chance to utilise and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his egocentredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence.” In this perspective, “to strive for leisure as an alter-

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native to work would be considered a complete misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process” (Schumacher, pp. 39– 40). It would be diicult to conceive of more apt a description of Miyazaki’s own views on the value of work as much more than just a means of accruing money. As mentioned earlier vis-à-vis the director’s ainities with Nishida, Miyazaki is averse to solipsism. Hence, he would not hesitate to subscribe to Schumacher’s contention that work should be embraced as a means of transcending self-centeredness: a prison to which the modern world de facto condemns us, by relying on competitiveness as one of its key mythologies. The extent to which Studio Ghibli’s approach to work eschews egocentrism is borne out by the fact that nobody’s vision, as hinted, is ever considered more valid than anybody else’s. In the context of an animation studio, specialist skills are, of course, necessary in order to perform satisfactorily as an animator, color designer, sound editor, or producer (among many other possible roles). However, satisfaction is conceived of as immanent in the act of making, not as a judgement coming from somewhere outside the work. The individual is granted the ability to know, according to personal standards, whether a product is taking a desirable form in the course of the production process. Likewise, he or she is granted the right to pass judgement on the final product’s effectiveness at the end of that process. It is up to the individual worker, therefore, to feel satisfied with his or her work. No one has the right to tell the worker that he or she should feel satisfied just because he or she has helped meet a deadline, and thereby facilitated the studio’s economic gain. In its “Buddhist” disposition, Miyazaki’s approach to work also harks back to Zen philosophy. As Daisetz T. Suzuki explains, the “principle” at the heart of the traditional Zen monastery was indeed that of “complete democracy.” Its corollaries were the monks’ willingness “to employ themselves in all the practical ways of life” (Suzuki, D. T., p. 4), and ability to enjoy their activities in a guileless and childlike fashion. This attitude to work leaves no room for the hierarchical superciliousness marring work relations in many contemporary societies. The work ethos pivotal to Studio Ghibli’s approach to production is also embodied in several of Miyazaki’s movies, as a significant aspect of the philosophy they seek to convey. The miners and sky pirates in Castle in the Sky, and the lepers in Princess Mononoke illustrate this idea through their collaborative spirit, and keenness to embrace their labor as a vehicle

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for the expression and perfection of their natural abilities. Porco Rosso stages Miyazaki’s work ethics at some length in the sequences devoted to the repair of the protagonist’s plane. All of the workers are shown to savor their input regardless of how humble their tasks may seem. Even the women who do not participate in a direct way in the restoration project appear to take pleasure and pride from the preparation and dispensing of meals for the building team, in the knowledge that they are contributing their natural skills to the venture, and performing their time-honored art to the best of their ability. These characters’ actions validate Morris’ proposition that a product, no matter what this is, is bound to be beautiful as long as it issues from real work rather than repetitive toil. Being created by a team of committed artisans, rather than cogs in a dehumanizing assembly-line machine, the steaming plates of traditional Italian food doled out by Porco Rosso’s women can be regarded as products of creative labor, and hence works of art in the purest sense of the term. Morris’ position gains further support in Miyazaki’s account of the Takei Sanshōdō, an old stationery store taken apart and reconstituted at the Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum. “Looking at Takei Sanshōdō,” muses the director, “one thing you immediately realize is that it was built by craftsmen. The glass doors, the walls, the merchandise racks—everything was handmade by craftsmen. You immensely sense a profound difference from current construction methods, where structures are assembled using labor-saving industrial components” (Miyazaki, H. 2009m, p. 241). Miyazaki would be wary of replicating the utopian atmosphere of a text like Morris’ News from Nowhere. Yet, one can sense something of the nineteenth-century author’s spirit in the director’s prediction that with the escalation of the global problems we witness today, human beings will have to do some drastic rethinking, and address the fundamentals of their existence. These include not only “what it means to be alive,” or “to own things,” but also—as Morris would claim—“what it means to make things” (Miyazaki, H. 2014i, p. 242; italics added).

A A A A condensed allegory of the iniquities of capitalism is supplied by the short film Mr. Dough and the Egg Princess. Lasting approximately twelve-minutes, the animation was produced for exclusive screening at the Saturn Theater (Ghibli Museum). The short film suggests that capitalism is not a curse to which all people (literal and metaphorical) are fated to succumb. Its protagonists indeed manage to disengage themselves

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from the regime’s inhumane demands with exhilarating irreverence. However, they are fugitives, people on the margins of society whose freedom comes at a high price: eternal flight. In the film, the emphasis is placed on the sheer sense of exhilaration accompanying the Egg Princess and Mr. Dough’s new-found freedom—a mood which the bright sunshine bathing the action underscores with incisiveness. Yet, their status as outsiders in a world inhabited only by enslaved laborers (and, behind the scenes, by their callous exploiters) entails that their adventure is beset with dangers. When darkness descends, elation and vivacity may well give way to fear, as the night takes on the semblance of chasing foes determined to hound down the escapees at all costs. (The haunting atmosphere pervading William Godwin’s Caleb Williams [1794], an attack on social injustice of epic resonance, comes to mind.) The use of Vivaldi’s “La Folia” (1705) as the musical accompaniment for the protagonists’ flight enhances the cheerful ambience surrounding the action. At the same time, however, it draws attention to the absurd imperative to rush, presented as ubiquitous in the world of Mr. Dough and the Egg Princess, as the lynchpin of all capitalist societies committed to the maximization of productivity at the expense of any other human endeavor. It is noteworthy, in this matter, that the folia form originates in “an ancient dance from Portugal, where young girls [engage] in the ‘folly’ of a wild dance of abandonment. The Folia dance traditionally gets faster and wilder toward the end” (“Antonio Vivaldi ‘La Folia’”). The heroine is a tiny egg-like girl, in thrall to the boar-like witch Baba Yaga: a creature who recalls both Spirited Away’s Yubaba and Howl’s Witch of the Waste, but is equipped with fearsome talons all her own. The short film’s plot is outlined in The Late Works of Hayao Miyazaki as follows: “one night, a piece of kneaded dough lying in Baba Yaga’s kitchen comes to life, soon to reveal protean adaptability. The Egg Princess makes friends with this unexpected creature, and flees her tormentor’s cottage with him.” Even though the tale evokes a mesmerizing fantasy mood, it also places considerable emphasis on “the economic reality of its fairytale world: a protocapitalist system akin to the one represented in Princess Mononoke by means of Lady Eboshi’s society. Baba Yaga’s prodigious and unappeasable appetite (reminiscent of No-Face’s likewise monstrous passion for food in Spirited Away) is deployed as the epitome of all greeddominated cultures.” The topical relevance of Mr. Dough and the Egg Princess is reinforced by its depiction of the rural landscape through which the titular characters careen following their escape from the evil witch’s cottage: “the images of the hares laboring in the wheat fields, ceasing only

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briefly to mop their brows, and taking their goods to the great castle. The ugliness of the hares’ exploitation contrasts starkly with the pastoral beauty of the countryside, at times redolent of scenes from Takahata’s Only Yesterday” (Cavallaro 2015, pp. 29–30).

A A A Miyazaki’s staunch commitment to the collaborative ethos is confirmed by the fact that he does not take advantage of his status as an internationally acclaimed director as a pretext for lording it over his colleagues in a despotic manner. His special capacities as an eicient organizing presence, and his iconic standing as Studio Ghibli’s soul, are no doubt recognized by his associates. However, Miyazaki himself has never attempted to forestall the emergence of fresh talents. In other words, he is no Cronus eating each of his children at birth lest any one of them should overthrow him. On the contrary, he has always done his best to encourage his younger coworkers to give full expression to their creativity, even when this has meant allowing styles different from his own to leave their mark on a production he has helmed. This proposition is exemplified by the production of Ponyo, in the course of which Miyazaki encouraged the artist Noboru Yoshida to determine the film’s overall colors, even though his preferred palette was a lot more exuberant than Miyazaki’s customary one. The director invited his young collaborator to give full vent to his imagination, and even intensify the characteristic vividness and wildness of his drawings, so as to impart the movie with a distinctive vision of his own. Since at least the mid–1990s, when Miyazaki was rumored to retire in the wake of Princess Mononoke’s completion, speculations about the director’s likely successors have abounded. At the time, Miyazaki had his eyes set on Yoshifumi Kondō as a promising successor. Tragically, the world of animation lost this wonderful artist, who had made his directorial debut with the Studio Ghibli masterwork Whisper of the Heart in 1995, when an aneurysm struck him at the age of 48. In recent years, two names have emerged as possible Miyazaki successors: his own son Gorō, and Hiromasa Yonebayashi. Gorō Miyazaki is not by training an animation director, his occupation being that of landscaper. However, he has shown considerable, and growing, talent in that role with Tales from Earthsea (2006) and From Up on Poppy Hill (2011). Yonebayashi has helmed The Secret World of Arrietty (2011), and When Marnie Was There (2014). Both Gorō Miyazaki and Hiromasa Yonebayashi

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stand out as promising heirs to Miyazaki’s throne. Nonetheless, as Tomohiro Osaki points out, “despite much media speculation, nobody has been named Miyazaki’s successor at the helm of Studio Ghibli” as things stand (Osaki). Given Studio Ghibli’s promotion of a collective approach to work, redolent of Morris’ model, what matters most at this stage is the maintenance of a working environment in which a variety of artists are allowed to play their parts—as long, that is, as they are prepared to work hard: a key aspect of the studio’s philosophy. Miyazaki himself implied this much in the course of the press conference where he oicially announced his retirement, held in Tokyo on September 6, 2013. On this occasion, the director commented on the future of his studio as follows: “about Ghibli from here on out, I’m praying lots of our young employees will be saying to Suzuki, ‘Finally the weight over us has been lifted! Let’s do this!’ … Things from now on will depend on various people’s ambitions, hopes and talents” (from video in Osaki). Miyazaki has contributed, in diverse capacities, to all of the films directed by his potential heirs which have been released to date, with the exception of When Marnie Was There. As a result of the seasoned director’s resolve to foster the growth of new voices, his younger colleagues have enjoyed considerable autonomy in the execution of their works. However, Studio Ghibli’s collaborative spirit entails total equality and reciprocity. Therefore, while Miyazaki has respected the emerging directors’ creative freedom, and let them make their thematic and aesthetic choices unhindered, his younger associates, in turn, have honored the unique talent and experience of the artist behind their studio’s best know achievements. As a consequence, Miyazaki has had a chance to influence, to varying degrees, the new films’ shape and style. In the case of Yoshifumi Kondō’s splendid achievement, Whisper of the Heart, Miyazaki was responsible for the creation of the screenplay and storyboards, as well as for directing the flight-centered fantasy sequences. The latter bring to mind Miyazaki’s treatment of flight not only in fantasy movies such as Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle, but also in The Wind Rises, a work grounded in historical reality. Whisper of the Heart shares with Miyazaki’s last feature film a mainly realistic tone, ruptured by sporadic fantasy sequences in an unexpected and tantalizing way. On the one hand, these provide temporary suspensions from the pressures of the real. On the other hand, they engender the very opposite effect. Indeed, by a sheer stroke of genius, Miyazaki makes them directly relevant to reality, by turning them into allegories for the aims pursued by the two films’ respective protagonists.

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Furthermore, Miyazaki was keen to imbue Whisper of the Heart with an honest love for the urban setting. His aim, in so doing, was to rehabilitate an environment which adults have come to perceive, and describe to their children in an automatic fashion, as ugly and hostile to human welfare—without ever pausing to ask themselves whether such surroundings are as undilutedly unattractive as they have come to believe, or whether, in fact, it might be possible to draw some aesthetic and emotional solace from their features. What these people foreclose, through their negative attitude, is the possibility of communing with their habitat in ways which may prove beneficial to both themselves, and the disgraced urbanscape alike. In endeavoring to instill the screenplay and storyboards of Kondō’s movie with a sense of “affection” towards the urban environment, Miyazaki wished to show children that not all grown-ups see the city as an object of contempt. “In making Whisper of the Heart,” he has stated, “I wanted to take another look at our surroundings with fresh eyes.” This objective was prompted by the awareness that nowadays, children are made to feel, practically from the very “moment they are born,” that “the world is a harsh place to live in.” The obligation incumbent upon every adult who truly cares about children is to show them that even though their progeny has been flung into thorny times, “there are good things and there are wonderful ways of experiencing and looking at the world” (Miyazaki, H. 2014u, pp. 174–175). Miyazaki’s determination to preserve a modicum of optimism in the midst of an otherwise pessimistic worldview will be returned to in this study’s final chapter. While Gorō Miyazaki’s maiden voyage into anime is a loose adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea series, the concept from which it draws inspiration is Miyazaki senior’s all-watercolor graphic novel The Journey of Shuna (Shuna no Tabi), published by Animage in 1983. Hence, the film echoes closely many of the themes pivotal to the older director’s signature. These include environmental depletion, social injustice, economic exploitation, and the plight of young people left to fend for themselves in an inimical adult world. It is also noteworthy that Tales from Earthsea often employs The Journey of Shuna’s distinctive palette, most notably in its juxtaposition of grey-blue tones and soft terracotta shades, and subtle blends of desert sand, fallow, and lion brown. Gorō Miyazaki has gratefully acknowledged the graphic novel’s influence, admitting that his father’s 1983 publication played a critical role in helping him marshal the inchoate welter of images and motifs in his possession in the initial stages of production. “The first year, I endlessly

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repeated the process of reading through the books,” explains Gorō Miyazaki, “collecting related information, and writing plots based on this, which I then threw out.” To help the young director transcend this unproductive situation, Toshio Suzuki advised him to “draw a picture” that would encapsulate his “image for this work.” Miyazaki junior responded with instant enthusiasm to his elder’s advice, and his efforts soon resulted in “the picture of the boy facing the dragon that was the basis for the initial poster.” It was “round about that time” that Suzuki made a critical contribution to the genesis of the movie’s distinctive identity: “Director Hayao Miyazaki says that if you’re going to do Earthsea, you should just do ‘Shuna’s Journey.’” Working with “the picture of the boy and the dragon,” and the concept at the heart of The Journey of Shuna as his guiding principles, Gorō Miyazaki was able to organize his materials. “The massive accumulation that would never take shape until now,” states the young director, “suddenly took form in a particular direction. Then, all at once, I had a one page plot: a boy leaves his country on a journey, he meets a great mage, and a girl, through which he is changed. This plot was the basis for the current story…. At that point, I finally got a grip on the direction ‘Tales from Earthsea’ was going to take, and had a conviction that ‘This will make a film’” (Miyazaki, G. 2006). However, Gorō Miyazaki’s own sensibility informs the movie throughout, investing its entire diegesis with a somberness not to be found in his father’s work as such an uncontrasted dominant. The young director depicts a society torn by slavery, child abuse, patricide, and corruption: social, ethical, and psychological issues which hardly provide the subject matter of jokes. To incorporate them into the skein of the drama just for the sake of paying lip service to Studio Ghibli’s renowned preference for mixtures of light and darkness would have meant to play down what are in fact atrocious crimes against humanity, and life itself. Some critics have argued that with Tales from Earthsea, Gorō Miyazaki has not yet attained to full directorial maturity. Whether or not one agrees with this contention, one thing is clear: his subsequent achievement, From Up on Poppy Hill, bears witness to the young director’s talent with both vibrancy and assurance. The special atmosphere conjured up by the movie throughout its vivacious unfolding is a corollary of its director’s approach to the portrayal of the setting. Gorō Miyazaki’s depiction of 1963 Yokohama eschews photorealism, opting instead for a keenly stylized naturalism redolent of Japanese ink painting and lacquer art at their finest. As the director explains in a telephone conversation with Mekado

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Murphy, cited in the critic’s article on From Up on Poppy Hill, the drama is grounded in an actual moment in history, and alludes to the specific cultural concerns and ambitions which define that period’s prevalent mood. Nevertheless, the director did not feel obliged to deliver a factual account of any identifiable events by posing as something of a documentarist with a supposedly unbiased camera in his hand (Murphy). Gorō Miyazaki’s aesthetic decision results in the evocation of an alternate reality pregnant with magical undertones despite the story’s overall realism. Thus, as Kenneth Turan points out, even though “the fantastical element present in the senior Miyazaki’s films” are absent from From Up on Poppy Hill, “the father’s ability to transport us to other worlds is very much echoed in the son’s work.” The picture of an “other world” offered by the young Miyazaki in his second movie is not staged in fantastical dreamscapes of the kind one enters when watching his father’s works. Nor does it pivot on extraordinary events triggered by the human world’s unexpected merger with the supernatural. Nevertheless, as Turan comments, its beauty is by no means inferior to that of the most stunning Studio Ghibli creations. “The bustling Japanese city of Yokohama in 1963,” notes the critic, “may not sound like an enviable destination, but in the hands of [Gorō] Miyazaki and his team few places on Earth have looked as stunning as this hilly city whose port is filled with a gorgeous variety of ships and boats” (Turan). Both Tales from Earthsea and From Up on Poppy Hill offer distinctive interpretations of the concept of space a social context. So does The Secret World of Arrietty, the first movie with Yonebayashi at the rudder. Even though Miyazaki authored the screenplay in collaboration with Keiko Niwa, The Secret World of Arrietty is in many ways a fruit of its director’s personal vision. The most salient aspect of The Secret World of Arrietty is its ability to both capture and represent the world from the perspective of diminutive creatures known as “Borrowers.” Yonebayashi and his collaborators deserve credit for accomplishing this challenging cinematic feat. Furthermore, Yonebayashi has imparted the drama with a distinctive signature by turning the Mary Norton story on which it is based into a gritty allegory of racial persecution. Thus, while going to great lengths to depict both the natural world and domestic interiors with lyrical elegance, The Secret World of Arrietty does not demur from underlying the gratuitous and wanton nature of the animosity levelled against a demonized species by a callous human. Bigoted and unintelligent as persecutors are wont to be, the detestable Hara is simply unable to perceive the Borrowers

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as anything other than an alien race whose very existence is something of an offence against the natural order of things. Her sole objective, therefore, is a holocaust intended to destroy each and every member of the already dwindling borrowing race. To reach her target, Hara initiates an uncompromising extermination plan combining her own resourceful malice with purposely appointed professional aid. To throw into relief the harshness of the fate awaiting the little people despite their innate peacefulness, Yonebayashi shows that even those humans who tend to view the Borrowers with kindly and supportive intent, doubt the species’ survival. The protagonist, Shawn, is willing to forge a mutually enriching relationship with the diminutive creatures living under the old mansion’s floorboards, and entering its rooms only to borrow tiny amounts of assorted stuff which humans are not likely to miss (such as a scrap of tissue paper, a sugar cube). However, he shows no qualms in telling Arrietty that the likes of her and her parents are doomed to imminent extinction. All in all, there is little doubt that in its portrayal of the Borrowers’ interaction with what they call “human beans,” Yonebayashi’s film deals with the subject of otherness with remarkable impartiality. This achievement is nothing less than admirable, coming as it does from an as yet green director. At the same time, however, it is undeniable that Miyazaki’s world picture has advanced its achievement. Indeed, the older artist has had a tendency to wonder what the world might look like from the point of view of non-human beings significantly smaller than humans from an early age. This instinctive propensity is borne out by the following reflection: “when I look down at a clear stream or a pond, … I marvel at leeches wiggling about or transparent little shrimp drifting like spaceships…. And I’ve always wondered what the world looks like to these tiny creatures…. Air bubbles must seem far more elastic to them than they do to us, and in their environment, things must feel almost as weightless as they would to us in outer space” (Miyazaki, H. 2014s, p. 357). As noted earlier vis-à-vis the short film Mon Mon the Water Spider, Miyazaki harbors a natural proclivity to wonder about the world’s appearance from the perspective of diminutive entities. A corollary of both of his reverence for nature in all its forms, and of his inexhaustible curiosity, this is bound to have filtered into the script of Yoshifumi’s directorial debut. Moreover, The Secret World of Arrietty bears witness to Miyazaki’s influence in its handling of details, and related approach to cinematography. Yonebayashi has emphasized that the screenplay’s “very visual” quality, which he views as a corollary of Miyazaki’s distinctive sensibility,

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played a pivotal role in the construction of the film’s mise-en-scénè. The script’s intrinsic visuality made it possible for the director and his colleagues to imagine the atmosphere suitable for specific scenes on the basis of just a handful of details, and impart the action with an overall sense of coherence and consistency. At the same time, the script enabled the production team to focus on the Borrowers’ perception of their environment, but also portray both interiors and exteriors in a manner which a full-size human viewer could deem realistic. Several key moments in The Secret World of Arrietty owe their dramatic effectiveness to the sheer fact that the screenplay was itself “jampacked” with evocative visual cues (Yonebayashi, p. 18). An adaptation of Joan G. Robinson’s novel of the same title (1967), Yonebayashi’s latest film, When Marnie Was There, deserves comparable recognition as a work bearing witness to its director’s ability to instill his own personal vision into both the drama and the visuals. If Yonebayashi is at all affected by the common syndrome defined by Harold Bloom as “the anxiety of influence,” his When Marnie Was There shown no signs of such an aliction. Bloom argues that poets are inhibited, in their search for a personal voice, and for an independent approach to the creative process, by the ambiguous connection they inevitably feel with previous authors whose works have left durable imprints on their own budding vision (Bloom). As Mark Schilling remarks in his review of the film for The Japan Times, with “his new animation ‘Omoide no Marnie (When Marnie Was There),’” the young director “has made the first Ghibli film without Miyazaki or Takahata’s names anywhere on the credits.” The work’s aesthetic and dramatic autonomy is demonstrated by its status as “a hybrid that combines familiar Ghibli elements—from meticulously observed details to gorgeously realized landscapes—with a script by Yonebayashi that departs from the concerns and motifs Miyazaki made his signatures.” This demonstrates, in the critic’s opinion, that Yonebayashi “has not tried to make a Miyazaki film by proxy, and ‘Marnie’ is all the better for it. If this film is indicative of Ghibli’s future direction, Miyazaki can rest easy in retirement” (Schilling).

A A A An important component of the concept of space as social context is its duality as the stage of a psychological conflict between the contradictory urges to belong and to explore. Yi-Fu Tuan’s propositions regarding

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the relationship between space and identity are of special relevance, on this point. “Rootedness … sets the self into a mold too soon,” argues the eminent geographer, whereas “mobility carried to excess … makes it diicult, if not impossible, for a strong sense of self to jell. A self that is coherent and firm, yet capable of growth, would seem to call for an alternation of stillness and motion, stability and change” (Tuan 2004, p. 4). The rites of passage dramatized in Castle in the Sky, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke, and Spirited Away attest to the astuteness of Tuan’s line of reasoning. In different ways, all of their protagonists must achieve a fine balance between the contrasting states of kinesis and stasis, so as to discover who they truly are and, in the process, develop the ability to interact with both their environments, and their fellow animals. Simultaneously, Miyazaki’s perspective echoes Tuan’s suggestion that as a “material environment” sui generis, “geographical place” is at once “natural” and “artifactual,” insofar as the director’s locales come across as both realistic portions of the natural world, and constructed animated images at one and the same time. According to Tuan, “artworks such as a painting, photograph, poem, story, movie, dance, or musical composition can also be a place”—a place by which people can be “nurtured” in much the same way as they are “nurtured by the towns and cities and landscapes we live in or visit” (p. 3). Miyazaki’s films—and not only the ones listed above—provide varied environments within which his characters, both human and supernatural, can develop and learn new lessons. To this extent, they offer eloquent confirmation for Tuan’s contention that a cinematic work can be regarded as a place in its own right, and that the nurturing capabilities inherent in such a place are no less great than those associated with the physical locations we occupy in real life. Tuan emphasizes that the influence exerted by space on people’s minds and bodies is ever-changing, and hence unpredictable. This entails that the identities developed by human beings in their ongoing collusion with diverse locations are themselves bound to be fluid. Miyazaki’s movies validate this facet of Tuan’s argument by rejecting the staid notion of the film set as a predetermined reality, and opting instead for kaleidoscopic worlds amenable to incessant development. This is borne out by the fact that his works do not inundate the eye from the start with lavish settings and props in an effort to convey an immediate sense of spatial opulence. On the contrary, they tend to conjure it up from one scene to the next through a measured and gradual accretion of often minute details. By extension, the identities evolving within these fictional spaces remain always open to transformation, redefinition, and displacement.

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The “self,” states Tuan, “is not fixed” (p. 4). Miyazaki subscribes to this assertion in both word and image by means of personae endowed with fluid personalities. A corollary of this fluidity is that on one level, his characters are rooted in a regular human community, while on another, they seem afloat in an alternate reality peopled by both ordinary and not-soordinary beings, without quite belonging in either camp. As a consequence of this internal split, which Tuan would describe as a “bipolar tug” (p. 7), many of Miyazaki’s personae are simultaneously sensitive to “the call of open space” and “the call of home” (p. 8). Place, as Tuan observes, stands for both “security” and “freedom”: two of the things which most human beings desire above all else. Regrettably, reality defies the fulfillment of this twofold longing. We are unlikely to achieve both security and freedom at once, insofar as the former requires the preparedness to remain anchored to one specific place, whereas the latter is predicated on the relinquishment of one’s roots (Tuan 2008, p. 3). Miyazaki’s films bear witness to the unlikely achievement of security and freedom as a compatible pair. His characters have a need for the idea—if not always the reality—of home as a reliable point of reference. However, home does not, either as an idea or as a reality, provide either a cozy nest into which those personae may settle, or a symbolic signifier of security. Rather, it acts as a springboard for tantalizing voyages into the Unknown. Not that Miyazaki’s characters complain about such opportunities to discover who they really are; in fact, they often embrace them with gusto, and, when they do not appear enthusiastic about their prospects, they nonetheless evince considerable forbearance in the face of the challenges which fate suddenly puts on their course. This means that they get a chance of experiencing an unprecedented sense of “freedom,” as Tuan would put it, but only at the price of losing their “security.” Their dual positioning enables them to preserve a fine equilibrium between dynamism and rest, adventure and peace, thus preventing their identities from either atrophying or dissolving. As a result, their relationship with space enables Miyazaki’s characters to attain both consistency and strength, and remain open to learning as a never-ending experience.

The Space of the Ghibli Museum Miyazaki’s worldview finds material embodiment in the Ghibli Museum (Mitaka, Tokyo) and its cinema, the Saturn Theater. As suggested in Chapter 4, Miyazaki may be regarded as a visionary artist in many

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respects. However, his unspoken ainity with Zen makes him impatient of abstract ideas totally divorced from the material world. (This aspect of the director’s world picture is examined in Chapter 1.) Therefore, his visionary proclivities do not make him a vapid dreamer of purely insubstantial realities. To give physical form to his vision of an ideal space, Miyazaki has designed a whole museum: one whose modest proportions belie great variety and breadth. As stated in the “Information” section of the Ghibli Museum’s oicial website, “photography and video recording are not allowed inside the Museum.” Miyazaki’s world picture reverberates throughout this decision. It is his firm belief that no second-hand visual record of an event can ever do justice to the richness of the original experience and its multisensory implications. “The Ghibli Museum is a portal to a storybook world,” declares Miyazaki. Accordingly, he places each of its visitors in the position of “the main character in a story.” All guests are encouraged to savor the venue’s rooms with their entire sensorium, and treasure their impressions as individual and inimitable memories (“Information”). Guarded by a five-meter-tall replica of the Robot Soldier from Castle in the Sky, placed on its rooftop garden, the space of the Ghibli Museum supplies precious insights into the worldview of its designer through a veritable symphony of shapes and sensory experiences. Miyazaki has visualized the venue down to each of its tiniest components with the same meticulous care he is known to devote to a movie. Even relatively marginal items such as lamps and windows, the less prominent ones included, have been crafted wholly by hand in choice stained glass of myriad shades, decorated with both characters seen in the studio’s most cherished films, and ornate vegetable motifs redolent of Art Nouveau. What deserves special credit is the degree of attention given to the positioning of these glass decorations, meant to ensure that their vibrant hues cast their reflections on the stone flooring when sunlight filters through the windows. Another example of Miyazaki’s studious focus on small, yet determining, aspects of the Ghibli Museum’s overall space is supplied by the use of “shining marbles of colored glass” as the recurring decorative motif in “the ironwork of the stairs and handrails” of the Central Hall. Miyazaki’s attraction to glass as an ornamental material of great versatility is itself worthy of attention, in examining the extent to which the museum’s design captures salient facets of the director’s outlook. Indeed, the play with light and color afforded by this substance could be regarded as the architectural correlative of some of the cinematic effects for which Miyazaki is best known: namely, those involving optical phenomena—and related chro-

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matic events—which exploit the reflective and refractive qualities of countless substances to remarkable effect. The traditional hand-pump well on the gazebo situated between the museum and its cafè offers a further illustration of Miyazaki’s attention to detail. The well does not serve a purely pragmatic function, i.e., the supply fresh water. It also holds aesthetic significance in the context of its setting as a whole, being designed to delight the eye by means of “specially handcrafted ornaments and designs, including the metal hatch cover that looks like a smiling face,” used to decorate its surroundings. His loving care for minutiae is a feature of Miyazaki’s perspective with which all assiduous viewers of his works will be familiar. To see this same proclivity replicated in three-dimensional, palpable guise in a physical space of the director’s own conception is akin to what seeing his very films come to life would feel like, assuming such an event were at all conceivable outside the boundaries of some wacky dream. One further instance of the importance of details in the everyday running of the Ghibli Museum is provided by its tickets. These “are made of pieces of the actual 35mm film prints that were used in theaters.” By holding one’s tickets against the light, a scene from one of the studio’s movies will become visible. In consonance with Miyazaki’s unfaltering commitment to the treatment of children as human beings with autonomous rights, and hence worthy of at least the same degree of respect as that deserved by an adult, “the Ghibli Museum treats every child as an independent guest.” As a result, all young visitors obtain tickets of this kind to use (and perhaps treasure) at their discretion. A “special platform at the reception counter” makes it possible for even very young visitors to receive their precious tickets in their own hands. One of Miyazaki’s principal goals in the conception of the Ghibli Museum was the creation of a “space where children could feel a sense of relief, be excited and feel like throwing off their inhibitions.” His own abiding child self must have told him that such a space could not amount to a collection of models of Studio Ghibli’s “popular characters.” Nor did he deem it desirable to “tempt people with rows of video monitors” showing snippets from the studio’s movies, since this would have amounted to a concession to the demon of greed. The space he viewed as most attractive for young visitors was one “where there might be something in the shadows,” rather that a “space brightly lit throughout, where you could too easily see everything” (Miyazaki, H. 2014k, p. 263). This modus operandi pays homage to children’s native curiosity. The same approach finds expression in the room offering a faithful

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mock-up of an animator’s “work environment,” designed to give kids “a taste of what the studio environment is like and even be inspired to create animation in the future.” Aware that “children always want to touch everything and move it about,” that “anything they can turn, they turn, and if there’s a box they’ll always try to open it,” he has conceived of displays which will satisfy these urges without breaking. “For boxes,” he explains, “we deliberately put various surprise ‘treasures’ inside. But only the kids who open the boxes can see them. We’ve tried to implement the same concept … throughout the museum” (p. 264). Children must feel free to interact with every aspect of the collection. The greatest opportunity for physical fun is not doubt offered by the replica of the Cat Bus from My Neighbor Totoro, designed for the delight of primary school kids (age 12 or under) only. Also notable is the museum’s reading room, designed to encourage young visitors to “see, touch, and feel strange and mysterious things through books” (“Welcome”). No less vitally, the ban on photography releases children from the tyranny of “their parents’ cameras.” It is lamentable, according to Miyazaki, that parents should take snapshots of their offspring “wherever they go,” thus rendering the experience “just a meaningless ceremony,” based on the parents’ “delusion that this is a sign of their affection for their kids” (Miyazaki, H. 2014l, p. 270). The Ghibli Museum shorts, exhibited at the Saturn Theater for the sole benefit of the museum’s visitors, offer important insights into the director’s philosophy, insofar as they suggest an alternative mode of production to the one sanctioned by the “era of mass production and mass consumption” in which we live today. Their ultimate aim is “to provide children with a different type of encounter with the visual arts,” which in not “influenced by commercialism.” In the production of animations intended for exclusive exhibition in the Saturn Theater, the director feels able to flout the limitations entailed by regular theatrical releases. Hence, he is table to play with both technical and stylistic possibilities which would prove quite impracticable in the production of a feature-length movie. “To depict bubbles and the rippling of water,” he explains in relation to Mon Mon the Water Spider, “takes a lot of cels, and the amount used is reflected in the cost. Making short films is definitely not commercial” (Miyazaki, H. 2006a). The twelve-minute short film House Hunting is a further example of the kind of luxury which Miyazaki and his associates can afford to lavish on a short project by contrast with a feature-length movie. In this short film created for the Ghibli Museum, “onomatopoeic sounds, … sound effects and incidental ‘music’ were performed vocally” by two well-known performers: TV personality Tamori and pianist, singer and composer

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Akiko Yano. In the opinion of Isao Takahata, this strategy “touches on Japan’s traditional culture,” since kyōgen (traditional comic theater) already tended to convey its messages “vocally in onomatopoeia.” It is customary, for instance, for “words to depict the sound of a sliding Japanese door opening, or the sound of a stone falling into a lake and hitting the bottom” (Takahata 2014). The costliness of the enterprise, in the specific case of House Hunting, results not so much from the technique per se as from the employment of established artists. Miyazaki’s goal is never to pander to the commercial desire for animations likely to be welcome as “wholesome” and “conscientious” simply because they comply with dominant values. Implicit in the director’s comments is the idea that films of this kind are underpinned by a moralistic agenda of questionable nobility, since their aim it to contribute to the disciplining of children carried out by the educational apparatus. Such works are deemed “happy and healthy” because, in conforming with mainstream opinions about the ideal conduct of a properly regimented child, they promulgate specific patters of behavior as guarantors of inner and outer wellbeing. What Miyazaki want to make is “something different—real films that are bold and liberated from the constraints of the ordinary TV and theatrical feature markets” (Miyazaki, H. 2014l, p. 269). At the same time, the director is determined, through his short animations no less that through his feature films, to respect children’s innate capacities, intuition in particular. House Hunting, for instance, seeks to speak to children in their own language, by invoking rules which grownups would probably consider preposterous, but young spectators are capable of recognizing without effort, as a result of having adopted similar rules in their own games as reasonable ways of organizing their environment. For example, when the short film’s protagonist, Fuki, spends the night in an empty dwelling, she sets up a boundary between her own space, and the space reserved for the insects who already reside in the abode, just by tracing “a line between herself and them.” Absurd by the criteria of the ordinary world as conceived of by grown-ups, such a settlement can be acknowledged by kids without diiculty (Miyazaki, H. 2006a). The technical properties of the shorts exhibited at the Saturn Theater confirm Miyazaki’s resolve to address young spectators in their own terms. As the director stresses, “the visual footage” shown in Ghibli Museum’s auditorium is neither “digital” not in “video format.” On the contrary, he makes deliberate use of “film,” in the belief that “children can intuitively understand how film is projected,” and are likely to develop an interest in it, if they are allowed to sense its physical functioning. As long as they are

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expected to be drawn only to “the images themselves,” and be left oblivious to cinema’s material operation, it is unlikely that they will ever feel “inspired to become creators and will miss something important” (Miyazaki, H. 2014l, p. 269). The desire to show kids things normally hidden from their eyes—often on the false assumption they are too young to understand—is further demonstrated by the creation of a visible “projectionist’s room” within the Saturn Theater. Shaped “like a tiny train car,” this is “transparent,” which means one is allowed to “see how film moves through a projector” (“Welcome”). What Miyazaki appears to be suggesting is that children who are kept in the dark about the inner workings of things, and simply presented with commodities they can lap up as passive consumers, will feel little motivation to make anything themselves. Hence, Miyazaki’s words are not only pertinent to cinema or, more specifically, animation: they actually apply to creativity in general. Without an understanding of the process entailed in creating an artifact, and a capacity to value the importance of this process as an experience unto itself apart from the intended product, there can be no proper grasp of creativity, let alone an attraction to the exploration of its mysteries and peculiar pleasures. This idea tallies with Morris’ work ethos. As the leader of the Arts and Crafts movement emphasizes, to be able recognize that work is more than just brain-numbing drudgery, one must handle real materials, and be given opportunities to understand how things are made, instead of being required to focus only on what is made—and, possibly, for the benefit of whom, or in whose interest. Evidence for Miyazaki’s commitment to the ongoing creation of short animations designed specifically for the Ghibli Museum’s Saturn Theater is provided by an interview released shortly after the director’s oicial announcement of his intention to retire from feature filmmaking. Asked how he would spend his time following retirement, Miyazaki has stated: “as long as I can drive my 2 Cv I will continue going regularly to Studio Ghibli every day” (Miyazaki, H. 2014b; my translation). It is within this context, and without the constraints posed by the production of projects meant for theatrical release, that the director will be able to make the sorts of animations he really wants to make. Their being destined for exclusive release within the Ghibli Museum’s auditorium means that they will remain exempt from the commercial strictures which affect feature-length productions. It is also noteworthy, in assessing its significance as a space sui generis, that the Ghibli Museum features an attractive eatery, the Straw Hat Café (so named after the iconic hat worn by Mei in My Neighbor Totoro). While the refreshments here on offer may seem “simple” and somewhat “limited”

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in range, they are all chosen in accordance with Miyazaki’s environmental conscience. Thus, they issue mainly from “organic farms,” and are guaranteed to be “fresh and nutritious.” Furthermore, echoing not only Miyazaki’s, but also Morris,’ work ethos, the food is invariably prepared “with loving care and patience.” The description of one of the staple items on the café’s menu, its shortcake, corroborates this assertion with mouthwatering persuasiveness. Indeed, it is said to be “just as grandmother might have made it—laden with organically grown and sun-kissed strawberries, using real cream and flour and soft, unrefined brown sugar” (“Welcome”). The Straw Hat Café’s daily procedure is based on the Morrisian principle that a product cannot be satisfying, on either the functional or the aesthetic planes, unless its creation has been undertaken in a painstaking and unhurried spirit. In addition, Miyazaki declares that it is crucial to “preserve the spirit of the person” behind an item like the shortcake in order to prevent it from becoming a predictable product. Once again, the director’s philosophy harks back to Morris, and his contention that all activities, even the most routine and the most inconspicuous, are admirable as long as they are passionately and intelligently pursued. It is not surprising, therefore, that Miyazaki should regard the Straw Hat Café as “one of the important exhibits in the museum,” and not merely an ancillary amenity (Miyazaki, H. 2014l, p. 268). Being situated in the lush setting of Inokashira Park, the Ghibli Museum is surrounded by abundant vegetation. The building itself has been so conceived as to merge with its verdant setting. This aspect of the museum captures Miyazaki’s reverence of nature in all its forms, and particularly of trees as creatures whose sentience he has learned to appreciate and honor. At the same time, the Ghibli Museum’s tendency to blend with its environment reflects a vital characteristic of Japanese architecture: namely, its fluid interaction with its natural surroundings. Inside and outside are regarded as complementary, rather than opposite, facets of a seamless continuum. This is demonstrated to by the importance attached by native architecture to the engawa (veranda) as a transitional area. Moreover, in the traditional Japanese home, exterior walls consisting of movable sliding panels, which shows that they are designed to constitute flexible boundaries. At night or in the wet season, wood panels are employed. These are replaced by screens of mounted paper in warmer weather. While “European structures were built as barriers against the forces of nature,” Japanese buildings are a natural “response” to the country’s “weather, its geography and its harmony with all of those elements” (“Elements of a Traditional Japanese Interior”). As Atsushi Ueda points out, “a main advan-

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tage” of Japan’s mobile “partitions is that they can all be easily removed to convert a whole floor of the house into a single large room … a farmhouse can be turned into a banquet hall on a ceremonial occasion” (Ueda, p. 62). Viewed in the broader context of the country’s architectural history, this attitude to space has involved that “in contrast to the western or Chinese house to which rooms of similar size were added on in succession, the Japanese house retains its single room and inflates it when necessary, rather like blowing up a balloon” (p. 64). This idea is confirmed by the spatial orchestration of the Ghibli Museum as a whole, whose various components appear to sprout out of the Central Hall, and its “maze of spiral stairways, bridged passages, and overhanging terraces” (“Welcome”). Japan’s conception of nature and architecture as interdependent dimensions carries notable psychological connotations. Commenting specifically on space dividers, Hayao Kawai maintains that these are emblematic of a deep-seated indigenous proclivity: “one of the characteristics of the Japanese people,” claims the Jungian psychologist, “is the absence of a clear distinction between exterior and interior world, conscious and unconscious…. In short for [the] Japanese the wall between this world and the other world is … a surprisingly thin one. That the membrane between inner and outer or this and that world is paper-thin like a fusuma (sliding room-divider) or shōji (a paper door-window) reflects the nature of the Japanese ego” (Kawai, p. 103). The philosophy of space ingrained in traditional Japanese architecture is still a major source of inspiration for some of Japan’s most eminent architects, including Tadao Ando and Kengo Kuma, whose works release a potent sense of energy through the fluid interaction of stone, wood, water and air. “I do not believe architecture should speak too much,” airms Ando. “It should remain silent and let Nature in the guise of sunlight and wind speak” (cited in Lim, p. 19). Given Miyazaki’s approach to the natural world, and the latter’s embodiment in the space of the Ghibli Museum, it is highly likely that he would welcome Ando’s assertion with cordiality.

For Further Thought (3): William Morris’ News from Nowhere He sat silently thinking a little while, and then said: “When the conflict was once really begun, it was seen how little of any value there was in the old world of slavery and inequality.

3. Space Don’t you see what it means? In the times which you are thinking of, and of which you seem to know so much, there was no hope; nothing but the dull jog of the mill-horse under compulsion of collar and whip; but in that fighting-time that followed, all was hope: ‘the rebels’ at least felt themselves strong enough to build up the world again from its dry bones,—and they did it, too!” said the old man, his eyes glittering under his beetling brows. He went on: “And their opponents at least and at last learned something about the reality of life, and its sorrows, which they—their class, I mean—had once known nothing of. In short, the two combatants, the workman and the gentleman, between them—” “Between them,” said I, quickly, “they destroyed commercialism!” “Yes, yes, yes,” said he; “that is it…. The spirit of the new days, of our days, was to be delight in the life of the world; intense and overweening love of the very skin and surface of the earth on which man dwells, such as a lover has in the fair flesh of the woman he loves; this, I say, was to be the new spirit of the time…. More akin to our way of looking at life was the spirit of the Middle Ages, to whom heaven and the life of the next world was such a reality, that it became to them a part of the life upon the earth; which accordingly they loved and adorned, in spite of the ascetic doctrines of their formal creed, which bade them contemn it.” —Morris 1993, pp. 157–158

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Vision Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others. —Jonathan Swift (2004) To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour. —William Blake (1803)

The Mind’s Eye Animation relays the inner creatures of the imagination to the outer world by translating a personal realm—what the artist “sees” in his or her mind’s eye—into a world capable of stretching beyond the private walls of the self. In bringing the internal dimension into contact with the outside world, animation yields images which are both real and unreal at one and the same time. They are real to the extent that they are embodied in physical cels, or in pixels (which are as corporeal, albeit less palpable, as cels themselves). They are unreal because they will always retain the status of projections of the inner eye’s chimerae: apparitions which can only operate in the spellbound realm of cinematic illusion. In Miyazaki’s perspective, reality is mutable, fragmentary, and intrinsically subjective. Each and every person is bound to experience it as a product of the contingent perceptions unfolding in his or her mind’s eye. The idea that reality is fashioned by the subject’s creative seeing echoes German Idealism, and the writings of Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762–1814) in particular. The latter enthrones the imagination as instrumental in each individual’s construction of his or her reality. This thesis constitutes a momentous rehabilitation of the imagination, following its downgrading as a whimsical capacity of peripheral value found only in lunatics, lovers, 118

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and poets—to paraphrase Theseus’ famous words in Act V of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream (1605). Fichte’s key move was to do away with the unfathomable “thing-in-itself ” (ding an sich), which had posed such an impasse for his predecessor Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), and indeed many philosophers before him who had been likewise hampered by a belief in the existence of an objective reality. Fichte advocates the necessity of disregarding external objects as such, and focusing instead on the I which apprehends such objects. The I is not a substance, but creative activity. It exists because it is able to posit itself as I, and this ability depends on its awareness of itself. However, in order to be aware of itself, the I must limit itself, and it can only do this by positing something other than itself: i.e., a non-I. This is the basis of the I’s ideation of reality. There is a sense in which the not-I limits the I in that it partially negates it by exposing it to the existence of something beyond itself. However, this is a positive constraint for Fichte, because it constitutes the basis of human freedom. Far from being an obstacle to human autonomy in an ultimate sense, it constitutes an impediment which must be continually overcome, and thus prompts its realization. In this regard, Fichte’s stance on ethics anticipates Existentialism. This aspect of the German thinker’s work offers a further point of contact with Miyazaki’s worldview, where Existentialist philosophy, as argued in Chapter 1, plays an important role. In English Romantic philosophy, as in German Idealism, the mind is regarded as an active agency, capable of shaping its surroundings through its endless creativity. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) and William Wordsworth (1770–1850), in particular, eschew the idea, promulgated by Empiricism, that the mind is a tabula rasa on which external experiences and sense impressions imprint themselves, and are then stored and recalled through a mechanical process of association. On the contrary, the Romantics propose that perception is a bilateral rather than a unilateral operation: sensory stimuli trigger responses which entail, as Wordsworth puts it in Book XIII of The Prelude (1850), “A balance, an ennobling interchange / Of action from within and from without / The excellence, pure function, and best power / Both of the objects seen, and eye that sees” (Wordsworth 1888, ll. 375–378). Coleridge posits the primary Imagination as a faculty endowed with a synthesizing, or “esemplastic,” capacity whereby it is able to produce a novel reality by molding discrete parts into organic wholes. The perceiver, accordingly, is not a passive recipient of impressions but an active and creative agent. In Chapter XIII of his Biographia Literararia, Coleridge

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puts forward his famous theorization of the mind’s creative powers as follows: “the IMAGINATION then, I consider either as primary, or secondary. The primary IMAGINATION I hold to be the living Power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM. The secondary Imagination I consider as an echo of the former, co-existing with the conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to recreate; or where this process is rendered impossible, yet still at all events it struggles to idealise and unify. It is essentially vital, even as all objects (as objects) are essentially fixed and dead.” The Imagination is a “vital” and transformative force whose activities emulate, within the confines of the individual’s “finite mind,” nature’s “eternal act of creation.” All truly creative and inventive acts deserving of being called art are underpinned by this active force. “FANCY, on the contrary, has no other counters to play with,” argues Coleridge, “but fixities and definites. The Fancy is indeed no other than a mode of Memory emancipated from the order of time and space; while it is blended with, and modified by that empirical phenomenon of the will, which we express by the word CHOICE. But equally with the ordinary memory the Fancy must receive all its materials ready made from the law of association.” Thus, “fancy” can only be employed to perform “passive”” and “mechanical” jobs based on the mere accumulation of information about what is seen (Coleridge 1817a). Miyazaki’s conception of sight as an inventive capacity, and of the imagination itself as capable of bringing new realities into existence, echoes both Wordsworth’s and Coleridge’s approaches to perception. Moreover, the Romantic conception of the imagination as an allembracing force finds a parallel in Miyazaki’s pantheistic leanings. Indeed, pantheism also emanates from a glorification of the imagination as the boundless and ubiquitous force through which nature itself perpetuates, and adapts, its operations. Nature undertakes these creative tasks according to rhythms of its own, which often defy human understanding, and make logic’s fabrications all but risible. It is noteworthy, however, that even though Miyazaki’s vision is in many ways congruent with Coleridge’s argument, the director is less disparaging than the Romantic poet and critic of so-called fancy. In fact, fancy finds a respected place in Miyazaki’s work in the form of wacky subplots and ludic flourishes. To cite but a couple of representative examples, the chase sequences in The Castle of Cagliostro, and the scenes centered on Ma Dola and her companions in

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Castle in the Sky attest to a passion for creative exploits in which a fanciful mood predominates. In assessing the inner eye’s faculties, it is important to consider that vision is also the ability to perceive form: to organize distinct visual signs into intelligible configurations. Miyazaki’s works emphasize that the meanings ascribed to such formations by their viewers through personal interpretation are no less valid than those underlying their construction. In actual fact, viewers are granted the freedom to contribute to a work’s creation as active presences. The fruits of their own inner visions offer a galaxy of possible realities which deserve recognition and respect as imaginative works of autonomous stature. Miyazaki’s vision is underpinned by a special gift: the ability to pay equal amounts of attention to a design’s individual elements, which are ideated down to their tiniest detail, and to the overall coherence of the composition. This skill, in turn, is sustained by a natural propensity to sense the all- embracing form which holds the discrete constituents together within an integrated configuration. In this regard, Miyazaki’s world picture harks back to developments in Gestalt psychology, a school of thought which maintains that the human brain has a spontaneous tendency to perceive things as wholes rather than distinct parts. Objects and images acquire meaning in the perceiver’s eye to the extent that they can be grasped as organized structures. Miyazaki’s holistic conception of meaning courses through his entire opus. At the same time, his works stimulate the human gravitation towards coherent form in their spectators. This is not surprising when we take into consideration the director’s keenness to leave ample room for personal interpretation. Miyazaki is aware that any work is bound to contain gaps which slip under the author’s radar, no matter how tightly structured the work might be. It is in these unintentional lacunae that the work’s recipients are at liberty to exercise their imaginations unfettered—and even allow them to run riot in the manner of young Ponyo, should they be so inclined. Miyazaki’s gaps are deliberate, as he sees their existence as instrumental in encouraging the viewer to contribute to the work’s creation in the most dynamic and wide-ranging way conceivable. Therefore, his stories are peppered with calculated inconsistencies, moments of indeterminacy, impenetrable questions, silences, and equivocal statements. These represent as many invitations to the spectator to mold the story into a coherent configuration by plugging its gaps. The wonderful irony disclosed by this effort is that it is not conducive to a reassuring sense of plenitude, as one might expect. Quite the opposite, its

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throws into relief the work’s inexhaustible richness and effervescence. The viewer thus experiences not completion, as the outcome of his or her gapfilling exercise, but rather a sense of limitless profusion: an awareness that the work will always lend itself to many different interpretations, given that different spectators will inevitably plug its gaps in disparate ways. In other words, the work’s overall potential is bound to exceed the entire volume of individual interpretations prompted by its lacunae.

A A A In the philosophical perspective delineated above, the imagination is the faculty which enables an individual’s sensory perception of the world to transmute into a potentially limitless variety of other possible worlds. In Miyazaki’s thought, the translation of the raw materials gleaned by the senses into novel realities constitutes the foundation of the art of animation itself. In this respect, animation deserves recognition as a form of magic. Animation is comparable to magic because it has the capacity to turn the basic resources at its disposal into something quite different (and often unexpected). Animation’s magic represents a philosophy, or a discourse, not just ingenious legerdemain. The worlds inaugurated by magic and animation alike are holistic lands of endless connectivity in which all things intermingle. In bringing inert matter to life by translating static drawings into dynamic forms, the art of animation can be seen as heir to a long and multibranching history of artifacts and techniques aiming to cross the boundary between death and life. These can be found both in mystical and mythological traditions of various kinds, and in the interrelated realms of science and technology. As Marina Warner points out, such objects and procedures have developed in tandem to changing perceptions of spirit and self, imagination and cognition. Traceable through history from pre-classical times to the present day, they range from religious eigies, death masks, embalmed saints and waxworks, to early experiments with electricity, the camera obscura, the magic lantern, and the séance—to cite but a handful of examples (Warner 2006). Not only is animation able to infuse life into lifeless matter: it also has the capacity to envision the invisible, invest the inchoate with tangible form, and place illusion, albeit temporarily, on the level of reality. In so doing, it reveals itself capable of generating something out of nothing, by giving birth to unforeseen forms out of unpretentious raw materials. These powers attest to the art’s ainity with magic. Magic is here understood as

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a discourse, not just the literal enactment of prestidigitation. Connectivity—as the view that everything is interconnected with everything else— is the lynchpin of the worldview sustaining magic as a discourse. The same principle, as argued in Chapter 3, underpins Miyazaki’s conception of nature as a web of interrelated beings. In the director’s vision, magic is not just as an ensemble of images and motifs, but also as a way of thinking, and of couching thought in language. Its animating force is the imagination, which Miyazaki upholds as a multifaceted and eclectic power. Echoing Colin McGinn’s words, his films show that “imagination is a faculty that runs through the most diverse mental phenomena…. We need imagination to have mental images, to dream, to believe, to represent possibilities, and to mean” (McGinn, p. 5). By enthroning the imagination as his principal resource, Miyazaki uses magic to observe the world from novel perspectives. Central to this mission is his recognition of the untapped realms which stretch in all directions beneath the surface of the visible. To partake of magic, in Miyazaki’s perspective, means to embrace, and commit oneself to, the invisible. In granting his characters the capacity to bring about magical phenomena—a power they often have unbeknownst to them—the director suggests that all imaginative human beings, and not just born wizards and witches, are drawn to the invisible as their ultimate treasurehouse. Rainer Marie Rilke beautifully encapsulates this idea: “we are bees of the invisible. We madly gather the honey of the visible to store it in the great golden hive of the invisible” (Rilke, p. 48). Moreover, the kinship of magic and the realm of the invisible is emphasized by the poet and philosopher Friedrich Schlegel, who claims that “poetry is the finest branch of magic” insofar as it constitutes an “invisible spirit” (Schlegel, p. 80). Miyazaki deploys magic to intimate that visible reality is riddled with deep wells of invisibility—with ghosts from the past, including our own, which we cannot grasp, and yet cannot avoid for the very reason that we are powerless to grasp them. As Maurice Blanchot points out, “what haunts us is something inaccessible from which we cannot extricate ourselves. It is that which cannot be found and therefore cannot be avoided” (Blanchot, p. 11). Miyazaki shows that this phenomenon, though pervasive, is not undefiable. In Howl’s Moving Castle, for instance, Sophie rebels against it by plunging into Howl’s past, and opening herself to its specters, thereby fathoming their secrets and putting an end to the loved one’s suffering. However, the director is also careful to emphasize that challenging the logic of haunting requires rare resolve, and a still less common generosity. (Sophie’s courageous actions will be revisited later in this chapter.)

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When the quests on which Miyazaki’s characters embark in order to appease restless ghosts are successful, this is because they do not attempt to conquer those creatures. Rather, they respect spectrality’s difference, and its right to hold sway in the universe beyond the visible. All they wish for is its understanding. Their impartial approach to the denizens of the invisible is rewarded. Through their natural kindness, they are able to liberate the specters’ own hidden generosity. Having done so, they do not exploit their privilege, but take just the bit of the Beyond they need—no less, no more. In this manner, Miyazaki reminds us that it is crucial to respect the magical domain’s irreducible alterity, and resist the temptation to domesticate it by integrating it forcibly into the everyday world. This would lead to a colonization of magic bound to rob it of its inscrutability: an attribute essential to both its function and its attraction. (A further facet of the phenomenon of spectrality, namely, its imbrication with photography, will be assessed in this chapter’s closing segment.) Miyazaki’s approach to the discourse of magic also bears interesting ainities with Vilém Flusser’s take on the subject. According to the philosopher, “the universe of traditional images, as yet unclouded by texts, is a world of magical circumstances; a world of eternal recurrence in which everything lends meaning to everything else and everything signifies everything else: a world full of meanings, full of ‘gods.’” The world posited by Flusser chimes with the pantheist and animist aspects of Miyazaki’s art, which are itself heir to the lessons of Shintō. Flusser’s description of “creativity” is likewise pertinent to Miyazaki’s vision, in that it encapsulates his treatment of magic not only as a collection of tricks and hexes, but also as an imaginative contribution to the making of reality. Creativity, for Flusser, is “the production of previously non-existent information” by means of inventive efforts to “restructure … preceding items.” This is what both Howl and Sophie seek to achieve by reinventing empirical reality through the original handling of its images and materials (Flusser). Another important facet of the discourse of magic of great relevance to Miyazaki consists of magic’s ongoing collusion with technology. It could be argued that animated images themselves bear witness to this interplay. On the one hand, they are the tangible products of particular technologies. On the other, they have the power to create realities that defy both logic and gravity by conjuring up the illusion of movement out of inert drawings. According to Eddo Stern, the interplay of magic and technology is a phenomenon with a long and rich history. “Ever since the Middle Ages,”

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argues the critic, “the discourse of magic emanating primarily from the pagan remnants of the Roman Empire and that of the new scientific reason have battled for sovereignty over the human soul’s epistemological allegiance. The science and magic of farming calendars, home remedies, astronomical maps and alchemical concoctions are only a few examples of preoccupations that originated in the context of magical belief systems and were gradually transitioned to fall under a scientific rubric during the Middle Ages” (Stern, p. 259). Nowadays, “technology operates to realize what was previously in the hypothetical realm of magic. There is definitely some connection in the way both magic and technology create a sense of wonder as they seem to expand upon the notions of what is or has been feasible in the realm or the real.” Stern cites A. C. Clarke’s oft-cited aphorism—“any suiciently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”—in support of his hypothesis (p. 260). Warner backs this hypothesis, stating that “modernity did not by any means put an end to the quest for spirit and the desire to explain its mystery” (Warner 2006, p. 10). Technological developments further validate this proposition: “as the vast army of modern inventions began to change our experience of the world—from the telescope and the microscope onwards—their advent interacted with imagery from antiquity and theology which had dominated thought about the stuff of the spirit.” The “patterns of data and thought” which are still imprinted on the human mind, therefore, are pervaded by “the figures of the inner world, unavailable to the senses” (p. 12).

A A A As seen, Miyazaki is impatient of theory devoid of practice. He would therefore be unlikely to attach much value to the magic of animation independently of its practical manifestations on a day-to-day basis. The latter rest on a set of principles which, without having ever ossified into dogmas, have come to represent the cornerstones of Miyazaki’s approach to his art. These include his prioritization of the creative process underpinning the art of animation to the notion of the animated picture as a consumable and lucrative product; his steadfast commitment to the hand- drawn method, which endures despite his awareness of this art’s imminent demise in the age of computer-generated visuals; and a bold rejection of the tenets and ideology of classic realism through the cultivation of twodimensionality and linearity. The director’s whole enterprise has consistently given precedence to

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the process underpinning an animated work, and hence relegated the product itself to a relatively secondary position. It is for this reason that he deems it far more desirable “to start working on the key animation while continuing to create continuity sketches”—i.e., drawings placed within frames, and accompanied by an outline of their content and stage directions—than to lay out “a fixed schedule” at the beginning of a creative project. The production timetable is kept open over the entire duration of the venture, so as to give all members of the animating team the freedom to go on tweaking and fine-tuning their own drawings, and reassessing how images executed by different coworkers interact with one another. “In the process,” declares the director, “you really develop a much better understanding of the characters you’re trying to animate” (Miyazaki, H. 2009f, p. 104). The opportunities for complicating a situation, or fleshing out character, which are entailed by this prioritization of the concept of process over that of finished product are numerous and multi-forking. The strategy outlined above indicates that in Miyazaki’s perspective, the creative process should not be governed by inflexible templates, stipulating the precise coordinates within which a drama or adventure should unfold. The director has no desire to impose himself onto the plot, and values his characters themselves as autonomous beings with ethical standards and belief systems of their own. Hence, he lets them take on lives of their own, and to determine what sorts of backgrounds the animators should depict for them. Relatedly, Miyazaki is inclined to allow the story to tell itself, and its twists to develop of their own free will. “Once you have decided to make your film,” states Miyazaki, “you’re not really making the film—it will be making you” (Miyazaki, H. 2009f, p. 110). Potential stories will always find a way of reaching us, if only we will let them, instead of striving to mold them according to preset targets, and ingrained preconceptions. Of course, the director is bound to set something in motion by taking the initiative to create a particular artifact, and further encourage this—as yet rather inchoate—product to develop in a certain direction, by imprinting it with the germs of a particular ethos or style. Nevertheless, the creative process itself remains open: it has no predetermined boundaries or destinations. Therefore, the effectiveness of its outcome is conditional on Miyazaki’s willingness to let it follow its course in accordance with its own spontaneous rhythms—and whatever serendipity might bring along as time goes by. The director’s handling of endings exemplifies this idea to great effect. As Michael Guillén explains, “at Studio Ghibli, they want their characters to end up being happy,” but are also aware that a joyful resolution cannot

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be imposed onto the narrative from above, since such an ending would be quite “unpersuasive” (Guillén). As a result, the film’s ending must be seen as an indeterminate resting point to which the animating troupe merely aspires, not as a clear objective dictating the action’s momentum and progress from the start. In a world ruled by logic, the storyteller is believed to be in charge of the tale’s entire development. However, neither Studio Ghibli in particular, or the art of animation at large, trust logic as their ruler. Hence, though Miyazaki believes that “whether it’s by effort or by accident, they have to find the best ending,” he suspects that ultimately, “the best ending finds them in some mysterious way” (cited in Guillén). When one begins to work on a project, “it doesn’t matter if the story isn’t yet complete. The story will follow. Later still the characters take shape.” Only time will tell whether the story is “serious or comedic,” and what sorts of “setting,” “climate,” content,” and “period” it may feature (Miyazaki, H. 2009b, p. 28). It is preferable not to “follow a ready-made story,” because this is bound to curb the imagination, and to place confines around the limitless number of possibilities which the mind is capable of conceiving when allowed to give free rein to its creative verve. “To create a world means to discard other inconsistent or clashing worlds” (p. 28): that is to say, it involves sifting through an immense paradigm of ideas, images, and words, and, beyond these, a welter of half-formed sensations, flickering phantoms, splotches of color, fleeting sounds, and barely formed syllables. The object of this exercise is the articulation of an intelligible visual narrative which accepts with equanimity the necessity of selection, despite its obvious strictures, yet endeavors to capture as much as possible of the “scattered material within you” (p. 29). This process teaches all artists the value of modesty: however much you may manage to include in your story-world, you must always be aware that “you’re choosing one possibility out of an infinite number of candidates”(Miyazaki, H. 2009f, p. 110). However, the mind remains free to wander down hypothetical paths which remain unpursued in the creation of the work: it is this freedom which invests the creative process with vitality and dynamism, and allows it to allude, in the creation of just one world, to the myriad other worlds this might have been instead. Miyazaki’s approach to the making of animation reminds us that any story is in virtue of what it is not. The director’s universe makes room for even the weirdest creatures and the most preposterous events because it does not reject anything as contrary to reason. In this parallel reality, where anything is, in principle,

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possible, even the effort to draw a neat line between the real and the unreal is nothing other than a sad waste of time. The source of inspiration behind this position is the child’s characteristic take on reality: a mobile and resourceful state of mind in which all manner of things are acceptable at one and the same time, even conflicting ones. This attitude is rendered possible by the child’s disengagement from the imperative to understand, to make sense of things on human terms, and ideally to control them to one’s advantage. Things just are, and are allowed to carry on being, neither disliked nor unopposed for reasons dictated by the stodgy logic of the adult world. Miyazaki emphasizes with utter candidness the undesirability of approaching reality with the obligation to comprehend everything as one’s chief priority in this assertion: “there’s no need to understand everything. When I’m asked what a totoro is, I don’t know myself ” (Miyazaki, H. 2009o, p. 364). The stories dramatized in Miyazaki’s films engage with situations to which we can all relate as well-known. Nevertheless, they always come across as suiciently strange to engender a feeling of disorientation. The director does not expect us to recognize his worlds as either familiar or alien. It is for us to decide which route we would rather follow. We are thus encouraged to appreciate that we retain at all times the entitlement to choose how to respond to our surroundings. As long as we do not feel constrained by age, status and wealth as the factors determining our responses, then continuing to perceive things with a child’s unclouded vision ought to remain quite plausible.

A A A Insofar as it constitutes a pivotal aspect of his oeuvre, Miyazaki’s approach to color deserves attention as a subject in its own right. The director is opposed to the wholesale employment of bright colors, which is a tendency one often witnesses in mainstream animation. Indeed, many animators appear to work on the premise that it is enough for a film to be an animated work for their visuals to require the adoption of uniformly intense palettes. “The reason animation films suffer creatively,” argues Miyazaki, “has to do with the fact that they all use the same colors…. Limiting color only narrows the animation film’s potential” (Miyazaki, H. 2006b, p. 14). Although each of the director’s works is characterized by a distinctive color scheme meant to contribute to its particular mood, his overall proclivity is to move towards softer, more muted, and more mellow palettes. The result is subtle and aesthetically pleasing, which contradicts the idea that all subdued palettes are de facto gloomy.

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Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind employs relatively muted palettes, compared with conventional animation, even though it has to use brilliant hues in order to convey the sense of radiance so crucial to film’s overall ambience, and match the hopeful disposition which distinguishes the heroine’s temperament despite her introspective and reflective traits (p. 17). Castle in the Sky goes even further in the avoidance of chromatic brilliance by prioritizing a range of “earthy colors” appropriate to film’s “art” (p. 19). My Neighbor Totoro evinces “bright” and “cheerful” hues in several scenes, but its overall sensibility favors “warm” shades, capable of evoking the feel of “natural textures” (p. 17). Kiki’s Delivery Service is described by Miyazaki as a kind of watershed in the evolution of his approach to color. This movie experimented with unprecedented chromatic option, by “reducing the colors significantly in the most crucial scenes.” This choice proceeded from the director’s conviction that “action scenes without garish colors are very engaging” (p. 14), and that the notion that dynamism and brightness should always go together is only a product of unexamined aesthetic assumptions. The color charts shown in The Art of Kiki’s Delivery Service bear witness to Miyazaki’s increasing move away from the pure, and somewhat flashy, shades privileged by typical animation. These charts demonstrate that a surprising variety of possibilities emerge as soon as artists begin to experiment with subtle blends, and the atmospheric potentialities of neutral colors inspired by nature. Most of the exquisite hues found in Kiki’s Delivery Service recur, with judicious shifts of emphasis, in all of Miyazaki’s subsequent movies, to triumph with The Wind Rises. Almost invariably inspired by the Japan’s landscape, and age-old sensitivity to the seasonal cycle, the traditional designations accompanying these colors are worthy of notice as beautiful entities unto themselves. A few examples include: asagi (light yellow, sunlight yellow), torinoko-iro (eggshell paper color), shiracha (white tea), usukō (pale incense), ōdo-iro (earth yellow, ochre), biwacha (loquat brown), chōjicha (clove brown), kincha (golden brown), kuchiba-iro (decaying leaves color), benjukon (red bronze), sharegaki (stylish persimmon), usugaki (pale persimmon), kōbai-iro (red plum color), sakura-iro (cherry blossom color), chōshun-iro (long spring color), akabeni (pure crimson), jinzamomi (thrice dyed crimson), karakurenai (foreign crimson), akebono-iro (dawn color), akakō-iro (red incense color), and terigaki (glazed persimmon), usubeni (pale crimson), momo-iro (peach color), nakabeni (medium crimson), arazome (washed-out crimson), tokiha-iro (ibis wing color), enji-iro (cochineal rouge), sango-iro (coral color), umenezumi (plum-

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blossom mouse), shishi-iro (meat color), araishu (rinsed out red), tokigaracha (brewed mustard brown), akashirotsurubami (sawtooth oak), kaba-iro (cattail color), and kurumizome (walnut color). In order to grasp the full bearing of Miyazaki’s chromatic sensibility, it is important to take into account the importance of color in Japanese aesthetics at large. Most notable, in this context, is Japan’s conception of subtle chromatic nuances which find no direct correlatives in any Western language. The exemplary list provided above attests this proclivity. The understated quality of those, and many other, hues appears to spring from a spontaneous attraction to what Mitsukuni Yoshida describes as “the beauty of the intermediate shades that lie between the five colours,” and of “the harmonious mixture that results when they are combined with one another” (Yoshida, p. 19). The aesthetic preference for intermediate nuances and restrained blends over undiluted colors has led to the ideation of a wide range of neutral shades of surprising richness. Some of the available mixes are so subtle as to seem insignificant to Western eyes unacquainted with their delicacy and refinement. A case in point is “the color moegi, a neutral tint corresponding to the green tinged with yellow color of onion tops as they sprout, and slightly darkened by the addition of gray so that it is more like strong green tea” (Haga). Moegi features often in Studio Ghibli’s landscapes, both by itself, and as a “bridge” color whose function is to link and harmonize two or more adjacent hues of stronger intensity.

A A A No account of Miyazaki’s approach to animation—the visible expression of his inner eye’s visions—could ever be adequate, let alone complete, without an assessment of his commitment to the perpetuation of handdrawn animation in the digital age. The director believes that free-hand drawing makes it possible for animators to instill a touch of humanity into the characters they draw. This is not an advantage which visuals generated wholly by digital means tend to afford. For instance, “when a character is feeling downtrodden, an animator can draw the character thin and small, and when a character is feeling full of confidence, they can draw his head bigger and show his feelings. It’s diicult for computers to intuit human feelings” (Guillén). Unlike digital animation, the traditional method enables the artist to capture the characters’ evolution as it happens under the pencil in its subtlest nuances. The concept of process is again pivotal to the enterprise. Miyazaki does not idealize cel animation in an uncritical fashion. In

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reality, he is well aware that the images it yields, albeit “simple, clear, and appealing,” tend to “lack much depth and sophistication.” Thus, while “even poorly rendered drawings” may “look fairly good as cels,” elegant drawings seem “diluted and weak” once they are transposed onto cels. Hence, the director recognizes that it is not enough for a studio to employ people who can just about draw passable figures, in the knowledge that these will look better once they have been turned into cels. This would amount to professional indolence of the least defensible kind. What is in fact necessary is the progressive building of teams of talented—and hard-working— individuals with an ability to “analyze, recombine, and sequentialize movements involving gravity and momentum, elasticity, perspective, timing, and the fundamental properties of fluids”—and to do all this in no more that “1/24th of a second” (Miyazaki, H. 2009i, p. 75). Nick Park of Aardman Animations, whom Paul MacInnes has portrayed as “one of the few animators who could be considered [Miyazaki’s] peer,” the anime director’s “beliefs are not outmoded because they stem from a deeper place.” Park himself is keen to stress that he is “not antitechnology” on balance, but praises Miyazaki’s commitment to the predigital approach as a bold effort to remind us all of “the importance of the artist’s hand.” It could actually be argued that for Miyazaki, hand-drawn animation brings into play not only the hand, but the animator’s whole body. In so doing, it underscores the corporeal nature not solely of the creative act per se, but also of human existence in general. Moreover, the ideas which take shape on the sheet of paper result from the accumulation, and processing, of impressions engaging the whole sensorium. The experiences underlying the outcome of the animator’s gesture are acoustic, olfactory, tactile, and gustatory no less than visual. This may be why hand-drawn images of the sort delivered by Studio Ghibli are able to appeal to all of the viewer’s senses. At the same time, by engaging all of the animator’s—and the spectator’s—senses in the production process, hand-drawn animation allows for the emergence of a synesthetic dimension in both the creation and the reception of a film. According to Park, Miyazaki’s emphasis on the artist’s hand (and, by implication, body) enables “his love of the art” to radiate through every image he draws. No less crucially, it makes his style “attractive” rather than “mathematical.” In this respect, the anime director’s work ethos can be seen as an implicit critique of Rationalism as a philosophy which by and large prioritizes the mind over the body, deeming the former a dependable means of advancing the postulates of reason and logic, and the latter a faulty apparatus prone to err and be caught in foolish illusions.

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It is critical to appreciate that the anti-rationalist thrust of Miyazaki’s approach does not render it escapist. Quite the opposite, the director never loses sight of reality’s pressures. It does, however, entail that he is capable of “enjoying the animation” every step of the way insofar as he guided by his native intuition. Over the years, this faculty—which appears to be as sharp in Miyazaki the mature man as it was in Miyazaki the child— has taught him how to “care about every shot.” Therefore, even situations and details which mainstream Western animation would consider trivial and uninteresting are viewed by Miyazaki as precious chances for the artist’s body to bring into being worlds that did not exist before. Park maintains that his esteemed Japanese colleague “is not afraid of wide-open spaces with nothing happening and wind in the clouds. This is refreshingly different from the Hollywood model and takes you to a different place inside yourself ” (cited in MacInnes, P.). The “deeper place” and the “different place inside yourself ” which Park talks about constitute the correlative, within the viewer’s mind, of the “deeper darker place” where—as mentioned in Chapter 1—Miyazaki situates the wellspring of creativity (cited in Guillén). As also noted in the opening chapter, Miyazaki himself maintains that his anime does not emanate from thinking so much as from a place lying even deeper that the subconscious. The traditional methods used by Studio Ghibli have the capacity to penetrate that remote region of the psyche because they abet the natural emergence of ideas. Computer- generated animation, by contrast, involves more extensive planning, and hence offers limited scope for spontaneity. Miyazaki’s genius for improvisation finds one of its most memorable expressions in The Castle of Cagliostro. The exhilarating sense of movement which pervades all of the movie’s action sequences and gags communicates a feeling of utterly uninhibited energy, eagerness, and élan. Among the many details given to abide in the viewer’s memory is the pattern of motion used in the sequence where Lupin and Jigen flee from the Casino guards. The two characters’ sprint is marked by an ingenious rhythmic alternation of short trots and gravity-defying athletic leaps, performed with impeccable coordination. The Castle of Cagliostro also bears witness to Miyazaki’s ability to combine well-chosen animation techniques with bold camera angles in order to capture his actors from unusual perspectives, and in unexpected positions. A good example is the scene in which Lupin swims through the air to catch up with Clarisse, as she plummets from the top of the clock tower toward the icy waters of the alpine lake below, in the film’s climax. The movie also abounds with aerial acrobatics involving imaginary flying

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vehicles, which can be seen as anticipations of many of Miyazaki’s later works, from Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, through Porco Rosso, to The Wind Rises. So pervasive is the film’s vitality that even inanimate objects appear to be endowed with autonomous life. The image of the little Fiat 500 “snoring” at end of a break-neck chase illustrates this proposition with emblematic vibrancy. Even the briefest account of The Castle of Cagliostro’s visual individuality cannot fail to mention its splendid use of shadows. A paradigmatic example is supplied by the sequence devoted to the procession prefacing the accursed wedding of the abominable Count Cagliostro and the gentle Clarisse. The silhouettes of the Count’s guards, in full armor and equipped with formidable swords, file along the stone walls alongside the flesh-andblood troops parading down the ancient staircase, like a ghostly army with a life of its own. These images bring to mind the “flight of shadows on the wall” perceived by Gerda during her visit to the royal palace in Part IV of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, “Prince and Princess.” Suggesting the spectral figures of “horses with thin legs and flowing manes, huntsmen, lords and ladies on horseback,” these shadows are said to be “dreams” which “come and take the gentry’s thoughts on midnight rides” (Andersen, unnumbered pages). Miyazaki’s sequence and Andersen’s description share the same rhythm and tempo. Their common cadence links both, by a leap of the imagination, to another episode which is likewise centered on a young royal couple: Part III of Nikolai RimskyKorsakov’s symphonic poem Sheherazade, entitled “The Young Prince and The Young Princess” (1888). In highlighting the special qualities of hand-drawn animation, Miyazaki is aware of his studio’s uniqueness as possibly the sole heir to this ancient art. Nevertheless, he never boasts about this reputation, let alone as exploit it as good reason for indulging in prideful self-aggrandizing. Rather, as noted in Chapter 2, he acknowledges its status as a dying art, and accept this fact with resigned pragmatism, in the knowledge that other great arts have become extinct over the course of human civilization (cited in Brooks). He deems it vital to accept that the world is caught in a process of continual change, and recognizes that he has been fortunate in being able to stick to the same craft for no less than four decades. In many ways, Miyazaki’s attitude on this matter echoes the spirit of iki: one of the most interesting and controversial terms in the ample pantheon of Japan’s aesthetic concepts. Formerly employed as the defining trait of a stylish, refined, and mainly bourgeois kind of beauty, iki is now also used in conjunction with

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the persona of an aluent individual who seems unconcerned with wealth, and/or recognizes the value of sensual pleasure, but is not enslaved to carnal desires. In addition, iki has been deployed as a fitting attribute for visual artifacts evincing a preference for subdued tinges, as opposed to bright colors, and for writing which carries erotic connotations without being engulfed by an atmosphere of sensuous intoxication. These days, iki is used first and foremost to designate a “cool” attitude. However, iki is also, as Shuzou Kuki explains, a form of “renunciation”: to be more precise, “a conscious distancing of the self from attachment” (cited in Calza, p. 51). The ethos of renunciation at the heart of the principle of iki reflects Zen’s positive conception of emptiness. This, as Shigenori Nagatomo points out, issues from a dispassionate appreciation of the self as “a groundless ground that is nothing.” Its inherent nothingness makes the self capable of appreciating the essence of freedom (jiyuu) as “the spontaneous creative act of living nature” (Nagatomo). Miyazaki’s attitude to both his own self and Studio Ghibli’s collective identity mirrors the concept of iki, insofar as it embraces a philosophy of self-denial. This enables the artist to communicate a sense of refinement in an unostentatious manner with no concern for public approbation. It is also noteworthy that as a form of deliberate renunciation, iki encapsulates Japan’s traditional dedication of an aesthetics of emptiness. In this respect, Miyazaki’s art reflects the principle of iki in its respect for emptiness (ma) as a key facet of the art of animation. As seen in Chapter 2, the director upholds the value of ma as a sensible alternative to no-stop action, interspersing the more eventful sequences in his movies with quiet moments which do not contribute to the advancing of the plot, but rather serve to enhance a story’s mood in a contemplative, low-key style. Moreover, in Miyazaki’s world picture, emptiness represents a vital way of suggesting an entire galaxy of plausible worlds, which individual spectators may envision in harmony with their own sensibility and temperament. By appealing to the creative potentialities of disparate people, emptiness becomes a space in which a person might discover unexpected opportunities for personal growth. Equating emptiness with a negative state—a proclivity often seen in Western culture—would therefore be quite fallacious. In order to rouse the viewer’s imagination, artworks deploy a variety of strategies. One way or another, all of these are meant to convey the impression that something has been left out (either by accident or by design). Japanese art in general can be seen to favor the depiction of partially incomplete forms over compositions meant to convey a sense of

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plenitude. Clouds, screens, or foliage, for example, function as convenient ways of suggesting an absence by placing a formal break between distinct planes of a composition. These prompt the eye to pause, and thus invite the beholder to wonder what might lie between or beyond the forms which are directly available to the senses.

A A A Miyazaki’s ability to impart even the most prosaic incidents of everyday life with a sense of value, or even gravity, is a corollary of his reverence for the animator’s material tools: an attitude which underpins his ongoing commitment to hand-drawn animation. All of his fellow artists and technicians appear to share the director’s devotion to the material devices at the basis of the art. The harmony engendered within Studio Ghibli by this communal aesthetic outlook is instrumental in enabling the synthesis of all the various aspects of an animation into a coherent whole. Meticulously executed backgrounds, combining stylization and photorealism, are complemented by lighting and chromatic effects replete with subtle gradations. Both the background art and the interplay of light and color are integrated with methods of characterization that throw into relief the characters’ inextricability from the worlds they inhabit. However eccentric these personae might seem at face value, once we begin to know them, their personalities reveal unsuspected credibility. This is no doubt an outcome of Studio Ghibli’s knack of delivering character portraits underpinned by acute psychological insight. The actors’ grounding in a distinctive environment and atmosphere further abets the enterprise. However, we should not forget that it is with the animator’s pencil that the entire process begins. Without this modest, yet mighty, tool, none of the other defining traits of the studio’s well-regarded cachet could ever have materialized. Saying that Miyazaki’s toolkit accords pride of place to the oldfashioned pencil does not mean that Studio Ghibli is hostile to computers in a dogmatic way. In fact, the company has been integrating digital techniques with cel animation since the making of Princess Mononoke, where CG technology was used in several major sequences. These include the one dramatizing Ashitaka’s pursuit by the Demon Spirit (Tatarigami), and the climactic one revolving around the colossal Nightwalker (Daidarabocchi): the nocturnal form of the deer-like Shishigami. The techniques employed in the film included mapping, masking, morphing, and particle system technology, as well as multilayer compositing using digital ink and paint.

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This indicates that Miyazaki and his studio are not shunning digital technology a priori, which would merely render their adherence to handdrawn methodologies obstinately luddite. In fact, they recognize its many advantages, not least its ability to combine numerous elements into a single image. On the other hand, they remain keen on integrating digitally processed visuals and traditional images in an organic manner, and thus replicating the distinctive look of traditional hand-drawn animation even while using CG. As CG expert Yoshinori Sugano explains, in the production of Princess Mononoke, this entailed the creation of a brand new program, “Toon Shader,” with the capacity to “simulate the texture of handpainted cels and precise contour lines” (Sugano 2014, p. 168). Another benefit afforded by digital technology is its elimination of the sense of inconsistency which can arise when various artists are responsible for the creation of the cels. This gain, however, comes with an inevitable loss. Indeed, as Digital Ink and Paint Supervisor Hiroaki Ishii points out, when digital technology is deployed to suppress uneven effects, it sometimes engenders “a strange unnaturalness.” Ishii gives a specific example: the case of scenes in which “only a character’s face and hands are moving and each of the parts must be drawn on separate cels,” while the rest of the body remains stationary. In traditional animation, to produce scenes of this kind, it is first necessary to “run the frames of the still figure through the trace machine.” These cels must then be combined “with those that animate the facial expressions of the character,” and, finally, be processed “through the trace machine again to create the finished product.” The multiple running of frames through the trace machine leads to uneven results. Digital technology can easily rectify this problem, since one only needs to produce “one image of the still figure that will remain static throughout the scene.” Yet, this method has a drawback: its removal of inconsistencies and irregularities evokes a peculiar feeling of artificiality. “The character ceases to live and breathe,” states Ishii. With typical resourcefulness, Studio Ghibli has come up with an answer. In order to infuse the digitally composited visuals with vestigial reminders of the human hand behind them, Miyazaki’s team resorts to an ingenious ploy: that of “deliberately retouching the body lines to look more hand-drawn,” while also—somewhat paradoxically—employing “digital effects to soften the stiffness of digital” (Ishii, p. 174). It is also noteworthy that some of the digital procedures incorporated by Studio Ghibli in its modus operandi have served to evoke the illusion of three-dimensionality. The techniques used in the ideation of the titular

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edifice in Howl’s Moving Castle are a case in point. Nonetheless, Miyazaki’s dominant aesthetic remains oriented in the direction of two-dimensionality. If the pencil is the director’s trusted instrument, the raw material he transforms into art is no less simple. It consists of none other than the line. It is to the line, rather than to mass and three-dimensionality, that Miyazaki entrusts the task of conveying the illusion of motion: the very essence of animation’s magic. Two-dimensionality allows animators to communicate what they themselves see as true, bizarre though this may be, as opposed to what they are supposed to think is true. “When turning a three-dimensional real- world image into a flat, two- dimensional image, the result is an expression of an artist’s way of viewing the world, even of his or her way of thinking,” argues Miyazaki. Even though, as noted above, the director does not oppose his studio’s use of computers, he senses that the undiscriminating deployment of digital technology we witness today may soon “cancel out a diversity of thoughts and ideas” (Miyazaki, H. 2014m, pp. 391–392). The erosion of variety in the ways people think (and hence act) is a tendency which the director sees as ubiquitous in contemporary culture at large. Education, as suggested in Chapter 2, has a lot to do with this deplorable trend. The idea that animation should become complicitous in its further propagation is most unwelcome to someone who has devoted the best part of his life to this art. Miyazaki’s allegiance to hand-drawn animation is quite congruous with the ingrained preference for two-dimensionality evinced by Japan’s artistic output and aesthetic tenets. In the domain of vestimentary art, for example, this cultural trait is typified by the flatness of an unworn kimono as the basic point of reference. Western couturiers, on the other hand, have by and large endeavored to adapt their designs to the body by constructing them as solid, three-dimensional entities. Devices such as pleats, crimps, tucks, folds and curvilinear cuts have abetted this aesthetic for centuries. The aesthetic preference for two-dimensionality signals a marked indifference to the concept of realism as understood in the West. This is not to say that Japanese art bears no connection with reality per se. In fact, even the most inconspicuous ink painting, just to cite an illustrative instance, is capable of evoking not only a vivid image of the particular aspect of the world it is supposed to suggest, but also a multihued bouquet of ideas and emotions. Works of this ilk radiate their own distinctive brand of realism despite their indifference to the notion of mimesis—i.e., the conception of art as a faithful representation of a pre-existing reality.

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The sophistication evinced by many of Japan’s artworks—and not just the most famous—shows that the aesthetic assumption that the absence of depth is synonymous with lack of realism, and, by extension, with a primitive conception of form, is both stereotypical and narrow-minded. By flouting mimesis as the prime goal of creative endeavor, Japanese art fosters an aesthetic of presentation (as opposed to representation), which does not recoil from the opportunity to expose the artifact’s artificiality with total frankness. This approach exhibits a distinctive taste for minimal forms, fluid lines, stylized silhouettes, bold and uniform colors, airy spaces, and daring perspectives. Its influence on several Western painters keen on freeing their visions from the fetters of strict representationalism should not go unheeded. Notable names include Edgar Degas, Paul Gaugin, Paul Cezanne, Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec, Henri Matisse, James Abbott McNeill Whistler, and Pablo Picasso. As Charles Dawson points out, the disregard for mimetic precision evinced by Japan’s visual culture is borne out by a deliberate avoidance of many of the techniques on which realist Western artists rely—e.g., “modelling and chiaroscuro.” This enables the artist to “pretend that the paper he works on is anything else but flat.” In fact, Japanese art “takes no trouble to deceive the eye with contours.” Nonetheless, “while he never imitates, he is a wonderful realist. With marvellous energy and power he seizes the very essence of what he wishes to portray, grips it intensely and allows nothing of its vivid and lifelike qualities to escape him” (Dawson, p. 96). Natalie Avella corroborates this view, maintaining that “Japanese design … does not present the viewer with an accurate representation of form or object,” since “colors are exaggerated or eliminated; an object is reduced to its barest elements; any superfluous element is discounted.” In spite of this, Japanese design yields convincing and moving images by making the most of allusion, as opposed to explicit statement, and of evocation instead of description. Its propensity “to work in similes and vague nuances” (Avella, p. 15) attests to this aesthetic preference. In looking at many of Japan’s artifacts, one senses a desire to engage with latent essences which elude rational scrutiny, and to articulate their mystery by means of restrained allusions and agile tropes. As Yoshida maintains, in his analysis of Japanese art’s distinctive handling of space, the mainstream Western notion of symmetry is of scarce relevance to his country’s aesthetics. For many centuries, Japan has tended to cultivate a “peculiar form of symmetry” which simply does not hinge “on precise geometrical values.” Quite the opposite, it seeks to “achieve a balance based on inner meaning rather than shape: in a pair of folding screens, the left-

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hand screen might represent autumn by a maple tree and the right-hand screen, spring, by a cherry tree. To Japanese eyes such a composition seems symmetrical and well balanced, in spite of the fact that cherry trees and maples are not at all symmetrical as shapes” (Yoshida, p. 18).

A A A Studio Ghibli’s unique standing as the champion of hand-drawn animation is widely recognized. What is rarely, if ever, considered is the unsettling effect induced by its creations: i.e., images which emanate from essentially flat drawings. As Maureen Furniss points out, this type of animation is “marked as being fabricated, rather than something of the ‘real world’” (Furniss, p. 165). Yet, it could be argued that the viewer’s acknowledgment of the image’s artificial nature does not by necessity produce a comfortable sense of distance between him- or herself and the image per se. Nor does it enable him or her to label the image as a distinct species with a purely metaphorical connection with the human species. In point of fact, a two-dimensional drawing capable of conveying an impression of animateness could be regarded as even more alarming than a threedimensional artifact—that is to say, an object that could be expected to be lifelike (if not downright naturalistic), due to its sculptural substance, and textural attributes. The sight of an animated puppet springing into action might at first be startling. Nevertheless, this event is in effect predictable. On the other hand, the discovery that a drawing of an obviously artificial nature may be able to convey sentience and energy enjoins us to engage in a complex train of thoughts. It invites us to speculate about the inherent—albeit hidden—aliveness not only of anthropomorphic creatures, but also of clearly non-human entities (representations of inanimate objects included). The uncanny sensations evoked by a puppet can be staved off by viewing the creature as an imaginary extension, or a symbolic interpretation, of humanity. Animated drawings challenge this kind of reading with great tenacity by remaining non-human in the face of even the most ingenious construal. The realization that non-human entities have the power to accrue human-like attributes and connotations disrupts the boundary between the human and the non-human, thus making humanity’s proclivity to assert itself as a superior breed rather untenable. (It is on the foundations provided by this specious tendency, as suggested in Chapter 3, that humanity has erected the myth of its rightful mastery over the natural realm.)

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Both puppets and computer-generated characters can be designed in accordance to the principle of mimesis. This does not, of course, make them mirror images of the actual world. Nevertheless, it does allow them to avert the viewer’s attention from their artificial nature by focusing it instead on their lifelikeness. Hand-drawn graphics of the kind which form the fundamentals of Studio Ghibli’s films wear their constructedness on their sleeve. They defy the classic realist ethos through a self-reflexive emphasis on animation’s intrinsic constructedness, and thus lay bare the art’s distinctive techniques. Miyazaki is a veritable champion of this approach, so much so that his worldview echoes the writings of the Russian Formalist critic Viktor Shklovsky, and especially his seminal essay “Art as technique” (1917). Poetry does not employ its often intricate tropes in order to express concepts in an economical fashion, and thus simplify life’s complexities, argues Shklovsky. Rather, it deploys them as a means of unsettling habitual perceptions, and automatic responses. “The technique of art,” writes the Formalist critic, “is to make objects ‘unfamiliar,’ to make forms diicult, to increase the diiculty and length of perception” (Shklovsky, p. 20). As a semiotic structure, a text can be deemed successful in proportion to its ability to frustrate conventions and entrenched expectations. Jacques Derrida goes further, by dismantling the very concept of mimesis, and stressing that reality is in fact only ever an effect of how it is represented, interpreted, and hence ineluctably distorted to a greater or lesser degree. Whenever we may be inclined to think that we are dealing with a reliable depiction of a given reality akin to a reflection in an unbiased mirror, we may do well to remind ourselves that we are actually looking at an interpretation, more or less partial, of a world which is itself far from stable, and hence hardly dependable as a given. According to the philosopher, this involves that “we need to interpret interpretations more than to interpret things” (Derrida 1978, p. 278). In rejecting mimetic precepts, Miyazaki’s animation is still capable of evoking a universe replete with characters and situations imbued with connections with the real world we inhabit everyday. In this respect, his films could be said to yield an alternate realism of the director’s own conception. Miyazaki himself articulates his position on the subject as follows: “anime may depict fictional worlds, but I nonetheless believe that at its core it must have a certain realism. Even if the world depicted is a lie, the trick is to make it seam as real as possible. Stated another way, the animator must fabricate a lie that seems so real viewers will think the world depicted might possibly exist” (Miyazaki, H. 2009a, p. 21). This entails

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that the type of realism cultivated by Miyazaki is a realism of possibilities (or even plausibilities) rather than brute facts. After all, as argued in Chapter 2 vis-à-vis Miyazaki’s stance on history, facts themselves only ever consist of indeterminate bundles of subjective impressions. The notion of basing an artwork, such as an animated film, on facts on the assumption that this will help it deliver a truthful image of reality is shaky to say the least. As an animator, Miyazaki’s chief aim is to harness his vision to the task of “building a truly unique imaginary world.” This project may seem uncomplicated, when expressed in plain terms, yet constitutes the most ambitious undertaking any artist could ever presume to pursue. However, the director does not hesitate to pinpoint it as the essence of his conception of the art he has been practicing with rare dedication for several decades. “Simply put,” he has stated, “this is what animation is to me” (Miyazaki, H. 2009a, p. 17). In order to construct a genuinely novel reality, it is not enough to focus on the appearance of people and things, and acquire the capacity to draw them with great competence. Strictly speaking, almost any person exposed to appropriate training could learn how to draw technically impressive shapes which any viewer would deem convincing. What is necessary is the ability to penetrate reality’s façade, and access its essential attributes. On balance, in the face of a picture which looks utterly credible but lacks life and substance, the viewer has every reason to wonder how this differs from a photograph—and, by extension, what the point is of going through the trouble of drawing such pictures, when one could resort to a camera instead. Miyazaki’s views tally with Richard Williams’ contention that “good drawing is not copying the surface. It has to do with understanding and expression.” The temptation to flaunt one’s grasp of the underpinnings of animal motion, such as the anatomy of “joints and muscles,” may be powerful. Nevertheless, real animators “want to get the kind of reality that a camera can’t get.” Their aim is not to learn how to imitate reality with flair. Quite the opposite, “many cartoonists and animators say that the very reason they do cartoons is to get away from realism and the realistic world into the realms of the imagination.” What they strive to accomplish is not “realism, it’s believability” (Williams 2001, p. 34). In the extended edition of his seminal text The Animator’s Survival Kit, Williams proffers additional reflections on the relationship between animation and realism with reference to the words of two of the greatest figures in the history of animation: “animator Art Babbitt said—‘We can accomplish actions no human could possibly do. It’s the fantasy/imagination/caricature which separates animation from live action.’ Disney called

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it the ‘plausible impossible.’ The characters could do impossible things, but it had to appear convincingly real…. We don’t just try to take a pencil and trace a subtle expression of emotion from live action (or use a mouse with a ‘mocap’) but somehow we try to find the graphic equivalent for an emotion” (Williams 2009, p. 369). Miyazaki’s works defy realism through a variety of techniques, one of the most notable being the preference for images choreographed in so suspenseful a pace as to seem static, or to have been filmed in slow motion. These serve to depict moments of heightened pathos. These are numerous enough in Miyazaki’s opus as to fill a whole monograph. By way of metonymic exemplification, one could do worse than cite the scenes in Princess Mononoke chronicling Moro and Ashitaka’s nocturnal exchange on the rocky ledge overlooking the forest’s depth, and the youth’s slumber in the forest clearing where Shishigami visits him so as to abet his recovery. Another useful illustration is supplied by the sequence in The Wind Rises in which Naoko approaches the room where her private nuptials are to be held. This is pervaded by a touching sense of calm, as well as a dream-like atmosphere of almost supernatural solemnity. As Daniel Thomas MacInnes observes, “Naoko’s presence, in glorious traditional dress, is almost ghost-like. She floats above the ground, her hair flowing, the red of her kimono glowing. And her face is one of tremendous sadness, gratitude, and acceptance. Hers is the face of a young person who knows they will die young, and every second becomes miraculous” (MacInnes, D. T.). The deliberate tempo which the director imparts on several key scenes is only unrealistic if judged against the yardstick of mainstream Hollywood animation, where characters tend to move in an overly energetic manner. However, Miyazaki’s approach to motion is truer to life than its American counterpart, when one considers that constant frisky movement—spiked with sudden outbursts of song which serve to reinforce the zing of the action’s flow—does not in fact mirror a real state of affairs. The relevant point of reference, in assessing Miyazaki’s take on motion, is not Hollywood so much as Japan’s traditional attitude to narration, where stylization is prioritized over naturalism. Dramatic forms such as Kabuki and Noh exemplify this tendency with their marked predilection for a strictly codified handling of storytelling, characterization, and staging. Furthermore, Miyazaki’s slow sequences are effective because they are interspersed with lively episodes distinguished by often vigorous levels of dynamism—a glorious example being the breakneck

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chase along the rickety railway track in Castle in the Sky (a vertiginous setting modeled closely on the scenic railway traversing the town of Blaenau Ffestiniog, North Wales). In Miyazaki’s anime, rest and movement occur in turns, in pretty much the same way as they do in most people’s lives.

A A A Although animation’s images and flesh-and-blood human beings are not made of the same stuff, the former hold the power to cross over into our world, just as we can be teleported into theirs. This crossing over is comparable to a magnetic force whereby each part attracts the other. Drawings and people could never fuse, insofar as they belong to different planes of being. Yet, through their encounter, they come to define each other as mutual counterparts and complements. Animation’s pictures need humans to make them. Humans, in turn, need animation’s pictures because these show them what is possible beyond the boundaries of their daily lives, while providing inspiration, and even enlightenment. Once again, Miyazaki associates with the very young the greatest degree of receptivity in the face of realities which transcend the everyday. Endowed with the capacity to suspend their disbelief (and their belief, too, when necessary) with notable ease, children access animation’s other worlds with a readiness and spontaneity unknown to adults. In the process, they allow their brains to be freed from spatial and temporal constraints. At the same time, they are both brave and curious enough to walk through the barrier separating the routine world from animation’s realms unencumbered by prejudices and unexamined opinions: namely, the foundations of many dangerous mythologies.

Vision as Visionariness The inner eye’s vision is predicated on the refusal to accept the notion of reality as a settled given. By the same token, visionariness rejects all tenets dictating how things should be represented. If the mind’s eye is what makes reality, as advocated in the previous segment of the discussion, there can be no firm pre-existing reality to which one may hold up the mirror, so to speak. A man of vision to the extent that he is endowed with a multifaceted imagination and with inexhaustible motivation, Miyazaki is also a vision-

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ary, whose inner eye has perceived many colorful pictures of what the future might yield, or might have yielded. The director’s visions bear notable ainities with those conceived by the techno-visonaries of a specific context: nineteenth-century Europe. This feature of Miyazaki’s world picture links him with the tradition of “steampunk.” A subgenre of speculative science fiction, typically set in a pseudo–Victorian milieu, steampunk develops a retrofuturistic aesthetic revolving around the technological achievements of imaginary cultures. Miyazaki’s first foray into retrofuturist anime is the TV series Conan, Boy of the Future, aired in 1978: a story set in a hypothetical world struggling for survival in the wake of a nuclear holocaust. Like steampunk, Miyazaki’s retrofuturist forays offer visions of the future which hark back to the conjectures of daring inventors from past eras. Such speculations were often dismissed as impracticable, and their proposers derided as hopeless eccentrics, by their contemporaries. However, while many visionary ideas fizzled out, leaving no more than graphic and verbal sketches in their wake, others paved the way to what today’s world worships as the greatest inventions ever conceived by our species. The Difference Engine (1990), a novel co-authored by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, is often seen to have inspired the conception of the term “steampunk.” The book applies all the distinctive trademarks of Gibson’s and Sterling’s cyberpunk fiction to a hypothetical version of the Victorian period, using as its leading thread the topos of Charles Babbage’s realization of the Difference Engine and the Analytical Engine—the “calculating machines” behind modern computers. This aspect of Gibson and Sterling’s novel demonstrates that techno-visions should not to be automatically snubbed, even when their preposterousness seems beyond doubt. The creations of the techno-visionaries inhabiting steampunk’s societies range from small-scale devices and gizmos to full-fledged mechanical apparatuses of monstrous proportions. It is also noteworthy that a number of steampunk stories utilize steam-age technology in conjunction with imaginary adaptations of contemporary digital technology. Miyazaki’s Castle in the Sky exemplifies this trend with its depiction of the complex machinery which holds together the flying island of Laputa: a system redolent of a supercomputer. Moreover, the images flowing behind the film’s opening credits regale the eye with a selection of quirky aeronautical creations of the kind one would readily associate with both steampunk, and the designs conceived by visionary nineteenth-century inventors (and thinkers with engineering tendencies). The volume The Art of Laputa (Castle in the Sky) showcases several of the pictures presented in the

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movie’s prologue, enabling the viewer to appreciate their exquisite charm in great detail. Manga and anime of the steampunk ilk often echo what the Japanese describe as “akogare no Paris” (“the Paris of our dreams”): the vision of an old Europe existing solely in Eastern eyes, akin to the West’s notion of the East as a land steeped in exoticism. The archetypal European city conceived by the idiosyncratic logic of akogare no paris finds humorous and charming expression (with even a playful homage to American geography), in the city of Corico: the setting for the main body of Kiki’s Delivery Service. In this location, “there are elements of Naples, Lisbon, Stockholm, Paris, and San Francisco, all mixed in, so one side faces the Mediterranean while the other faces the Baltic Sea” (Miyazaki, H. 2006b, p. 67). Another important visual influence behind the film’s cityscapes is the city of Visby on the Swedish island of Gotland, visited by Miyazaki’s team as part of their preliminary research. The movie’s “backstreets,” on the other hand, are “based on the downtown district of Stockholm known as Gamla Stan (“Kiki’s Delivery Service, The Original Story,” p. 11). Producer Toshio Suzuki cites Miyazaki’s liking for the nineteenth century as a major source of inspiration behind Howl’s Moving Castle. The director is said to feel instinctively drawn to the sorts of artists who “drew ‘illusion art’ in Europe back then…. They drew many pictures imagining what the 20th century would look like. They were illusions and were never realized at all.” What Miyazaki recognizes in these images is their unique capacity to evoke “a world in which science exists as well as magic, since they are illusion” (Suzuki, T. 2002). Like the visionary pictures mentioned by Suzuki, Miyazaki’s visuals are “illusions” whose visions are “never realized” in a literal sense. In fact, it could be argued that the worlds yielded by the art of animation at large partake of a likewise nebulous ontological status. Nonetheless, as argued throughout this study, Miyazaki’s anime does not confine itself to the depiction of magical and fanciful realms. Quite the opposite, it touches on grave social issues of global relevance to today’s world. In this perspective, it can be said to invest its “illusions” with both veracity and substance. Likewise commenting on Howl’s Moving Castle in his account of the film’s visual and cultural sources, Art Director Yoji Takeshige confirms Miyazaki’s attraction to nineteenth century techno-visionaries. “At the initial stage,” says Takeshige, “the director referred us to the work of an illustrator named Albert Robida (1848–1926).” The work of Robida, like that of his better-known contemporary Jules Verne (1828–1905), overflows with wonderful hypotheses about future technology (Takeshige, p. 49).

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The practicability of the contraptions concocted by visionaries like Robida and Verne seems irrelevant in comparison with the inventive enthusiasm imbuing their portrayal. The same holds for the vision pursued by certain American designers of the 1930s. Gibson describes these techno-visionaries’ bizarre, yet stunning, inventions in the short story “The Gernsback Continuum,” where they survive merely in the guise of sketches. These include that of a clearly non-airworthy plane which seems rather glorious in its absurdity: “grandiose prop-driven airliner, all wing, like a fat symmetrical boomerang with windows in unlikely places,” a “grand ballroom and two squash courts” (Gibson 1995, p. 39). Miyazaki’s films are pervaded by a compelling sense of fascination with visionary inventions and technological developments, most notably in the areas of flight and flight-related activities. From Nausicäa of the Valley of the Wind to The Wind Rises, the construction, testing, and operation of hitherto unseen flying machines by intrepid aeronauts are pivotal themes in the director’s cachet. This is confirmed, in varied and colorful terms, by films as diverse as Castle in the Sky, Kiki’s Delivery Service, and Porco Rosso. At times, Miyazaki dramatizes the frisson of flight not by means of machines as such, but rather of emblematic fantasy sequences triggered by otherworldly agencies. My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away illustrate this modality. In Howl’s Moving Castle, the director’s love of flight expresses itself in both actual aircraft of a visionary breed, and symbolic sequences centered on the titular wizard in his metamorphic avian incarnation. Miyazaki’s fascination with flight reaches its apotheosis in The Wind Rises, as the meeting point of a paean to visionary ingenuity, and a somber meditation on art’s hijacking by politics. As argued in Chapter 2, Miyazaki admits with absolute candor to having felt drawn to military planes—and other vehicles—from an early age, and having enjoyed the challenge of learning how to draw them in their tiniest detail. He is also eager to emphasize, however, that his childhood attraction to the status held by those machines in the collective imaginary as signifiers of power has been replaced by undiluted abhorrence of their inevitable imbrication with humanity’s most vicious and destructive drives. Of course, not all of the imaginary flying machines on which Miyazaki lavishes his affectionate care harbor martial associations. Several of them, in fact, are harmless contraptions utilized in his films as ludic, even carnivalesque, motifs. Tombo’s winged bicycle in Kiki’s Delivery Service, for example, is employed as the harmless butt of gentle jokes. Even the pirates’

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formidable ships in Castle in the Sky look like fanciful playthings despite the potentially lethal nature of the use to which they are put. The titular character’s spinning top in My Neighbor Totoro attests even more explicitly to Miyazaki’s association of flight with play. A far cry from these innocent giant toys, many of the winged vehicles depicted by Miyazaki are ugly weapons of mass destruction. The military aircraft coursing through Howl’s Moving Castle’s skies exemplify this idea. The Mitsubishi A6M1 (a.k.a. the Zero), namely, the fighter plane deployed in kamikaze missions during World War II, marks the culmination of the director’s engagement with flight as an instrument of death. The examples offered above ought to make it quite clear that the director’s attraction to flight and flying contraptions remains unabated throughout his career. His films seek to celebrate the unmatched beauty of bodies, both breathing and mechanical, as they soar and glide unfettered by the law of gravity. In a sense, this is precisely one of the principal achievements of which the art of animation is capable, especially in the hands of an artist as proficient as Miyazaki. However, his handling of the topos in the war-centered scenes which punctuate both Howl’s Moving Castle and The Wind Rises indicates that the director’s desire to portray flight as an object of admiration and awe, whenever possible, is not tantamount to blindness to its abuse by unscrupulous strategists and rulers. The visionary thrust of many of Miyazaki’s works does not reside solely with their use of imaginary entities of the sky-oriented ilk. In fact, it also carries ideological connotations, insofar as a number of his characters can be regarded as visionary to the extent that they strive for distant prospects of social transformation. At times, the communities these personae envisage are distinguished by unprecedented levels of economic prosperity and social equality. The eponymous heroine in Nausicäa of the Valley of the Wind and Ashitaka in Princess Mononoke typify this tendency. Just as Miyazaki’s visionary technology is not unremittingly amusing, so not all his visionary characters dream of fairer worlds. Mushka in Castle in the Sky, for instance, strives for a world predicated on his tyrannical domination of all wealth and natural resources by means of a substance in which technology, mysticism and magic mysteriously coalesce. Moreover, undiluted idealism is foreclosed by the director’s penchant for open-ended conclusions, suggesting that his protagonists’ struggles may continue well beyond a movie’s apparent resolution. Furthermore, their achievements always come at a price: primary among them, the obligation to learn how to negotiate the demands of an adult society into which they cannot place incontestable trust. It is also noteworthy that not

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all of the visions presented in Miyazaki’s movies are hopeful. For instance, the society likely to evolve from the historical moment coinciding with a film’s ending is not always promising. Princess Mononoke’s finale is a case in point, in that it makes it patent that modernity and industrialization are ineluctable developments whose detrimental impact on the environment may just about be contained, but by no means arrested. Given their tendency to counterbalance their optimistic visions with sobering hints at humanity’s greed and destructiveness, Miyazaki’s movies cannot be classified as utopian in the classic sense of the term—i.e., fanciful, unrealistic, and quixotic. Admittedly, all of Miyazaki’s works depict imaginary worlds, with the sole exception of The Wind Rises: a movie steeped in a specific epoch riddled with some of the most serious crises in the whole of Japanese history. Yet, mistaking the imaginary dimension of the director’s worlds with utopianism would be quite preposterous. It is worth recalling, in this respect, that the word utopia, coined by Thomas More in 1516, is a neologism resulting from the fusion of two pairs of Greek words: eu, “good,” + topos, “place,” and ou, “no,” and topos, “place.” Having thus come to designate an ideal world which does not exist, the concept of utopia has often elicited skeptical reactions, or even downright derision. These negative responses are to be attributed to the perception that utopia’s worlds are the creations of overly idealistic individuals: visions of perfect societies which have never obtained and never will obtain. Its potential respectability as an instrument for social criticism is often conceded. Nevertheless, this acceptance does not obliterate utopia’s negative associations as an escapist flight from reality. At times, utopias have also come under attack as circuitous ways of supporting the status quo. The argument, in this case, is that works given to dishing out dreamy visions of imaginary and unrealizable societies, which cannot be trusted because they are ultimately unreal, serve to reinforce the establishment to the extent that they advertise, by implication, its solidity and reliability. However, anyone who has read a novel like George Orwell’s Ninety Eighty Four 91949) or Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985) and seen movies like Blade Runner (1982) or The Matrix (1998) will be aware that not all works of art revolving on the articulation of visionary prospects are either optimistic or supportive of the status quo. William Morris’ News from Nowhere (1890) confirms this contention. Even in its most idyllic moments, its vision of an ideal commonwealth is always traversed by a trenchant exposure of the political and economic injustices alicting the real world, and poisoning its relationship with work. In assessing the rela-

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tionship between Miyazaki’s works and the concept of utopia, it is crucial to remember works of this kind, insofar as they repeatedly demonstrate that not all imaginary worlds are vapidly optimistic, and not all of their inventions, in turn, hymns to untarnished creativity. A visionary artist of special importance in Miyazaki’s world picture is Naohisa Inoue, the creator of the imaginary world of “Iblard.” Central to Inoue’s vision is the perception of reality as a process of constant and irrevocable transformation. A concomitant of reality’s erratic nature is that nothing it appears to contain can ever be said to have as clear beginning or end. Just as reality’s intrinsic penchant for metamorphosis knows no boundaries, so all of its phenomena and events could, in principle, go on forever. Inoue epitomizes this idea by recourse to a beguiling visual trope which recurs throughout his ample output with notable regularity: the image of a floating island akin to Miyazaki’s Laputa in Castle in the Sky. The skies of Inoue’s metamorphic reality are dotted with airborne worlds meant to symbolize the principles of instability and unpredictability which are so central to the artist’s conception of reality as such. Alongside the icon of the floating island, other recurring images in Inoue’s universe include mazes, enchanted gardens, sprawling forests, shifting clusters of celestial matter, staircases, and shops, which the visitor is powerless to leave. Ivy-clad buildings constructed along principles reminiscent of fractal geometry also make frequent appearances in Inoue’s Iblard. Gibson’s depiction of the “City of Darkness” in Idoru (1997) offers an apt point of comparison, in this regard. A space endowed with the uncanny aptitude to grow ad infinitum, the city unfolds “between the walls of the world.” It therefore stands out as an ambivalent location which does not belong definitely either to the inside or to the outside. “Building or biomass or cliff face looming there, in countless unplanned strata, nothing about it even or regular,” reports the narrator. “Accreted patchwork of random balconies, thousands of small windows,” with shapes “ascending a maze of twisting stairwells” (Gibson 1997, pp. 181–182). Like Gibson’s City of Darkness, Inoue’s Iblard can be regarded as a liminal or transitional space. It is not situated in unambiguous terms within the ordinary reality one inhabits on a daily basis. Yet, it cannot be dismissed as a mere product of fancy either. Hence, it cannot be pushed beyond reality’s boundaries as a place only to be visited in moments of leisure or sloth, or else out of meta-touristic curiosity. Inoue’s vision finds memorable expression in two animated shorts created for exclusive exhibition in the Saturn Theater, the Ghibli Museum’s auditorium: namely, The Day I Bought a Star and Iblard Time. Directed

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by Miyazaki, and based on an original story by Inoue, The Day I Bought a Star lasts approximately 16 minutes, and pivots on the adventures of a young boy named Nona. The latter is given a peculiar seed in exchange for a handful of vegetables, and sows it with care. Before long, the seed grows into a planet. The vision encapsulated in the fantastical world of Iblard imbues the short film’s entire scenery from beginning to end, giving the story an unmistakable oneiric feel. The facet of Iblard which most attracts Miyazaki, and The Day I Bought a Star is therefore intended to capture most vividly, is its mutability. In this “sparkling and glowing world,” observes the director in the booklet documenting the creation of the short film, “clouds and rocks and plants are all mixed together,” and “even planets and time meld together.” The most outstanding sequences in The Day I Bought a Star are those chronicling the evolution of Noa’s little seed into an orb capable of independent motion. As the magical planet begins to soar and float, accruing clouds, rain and seas, as well as a profuse flora and fauna, the action exudes a love for details matched only by the visuals’ lyrical elegance. In The Day I Bought a Star, time is not presented as a dimension whose function is to contain events, but rather as a stream of both events and mere potentialities, all of which intermingle irrespective of their likelihood and substantiality. Miyazaki likens Iblard to “the mantel Alice finds in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass.” In Inoue’s transcendental cosmos, as in Carroll’s image, “there are all sorts of unusual things, and when you … try to ascertain their shape and color, they become blurred, and you find yourself looking through the corner of your eye at other things that seem even prettier” (Miyazaki, H. 2014p, p. 361). Iblard ascends to the role of an actual protagonist in Iblard Time. Directed by Inoue himself, the film lasts approximately 30 minutes. Its pivotal attribute is a penchant for blending disparate temporal and spatial realms in a smooth continuum. Once again, Inoue’s perception of instability as a defining ingredient in human existence as a whole comes across in unequivocal directness. Iblard Time mirrors the portrayal of its visionary inventor’s aesthetic, as delineated supplied in Inoue’s oicial website. “Everything in Iblard is always under constant change,” we are told. “Floating islands often disappear, unknown forests grow spontaneously, new fantastic lands can suddenly appear.” As noted in The Late Works of Hayao Miyazaki, “this entails that each of Iblard Time’s shots should be appreciated as a fleeting instant in an inarrestable flux, not as a depiction of something permanent. No less importantly, the short film intimates that the world the artist is interested in portraying is one in which images

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emanate from the viewer’s memory, imagination, and desire no less than from his own personal perspective. We are in Iblard Time throughout its lyrical unfolding, and are therefore its makers no less than Inoue himself is” (Cavallaro 2015, p. 41). Concurrently, the short film intimates that Iblard is a potential reality which could be located just about anywhere: a proposition which provides the lynchpin for the whole of Inoue’s extensive oeuvre. The artist’s website invites its visitors to ponder this idea by appealing to their personal experience, while also slipping the germ of Iblard into everybody’s contingent reality. “Have you ever,” we are encouraged to ponder, “faced a beautiful landscape … which you thought was so beautiful that it was in some ways ‘out of this world’? That could have been a scene from Iblard…. Anything can open your personal door to Iblard…. When you see something that pleases your eye, that is YOUR entrance to Iblard.” The most remarkable attribute of Iblard Time is its capacity to conjure up an disquieting feeling of déjà vu in spite of—or perhaps because of—its arresting beauty. This quality again illustrates a crucial feature of Inoue’s output in its entirety: “when looking at various images from Iblard, one often feels nostalgia, and many times one can’t help feeling that he or she once knew such a place.” No less vital than its potential ubiquity is Iblard’s ultimately inexplicable and ambiguous nature. “Although some characteristics of Iblard can be explained,” the artist’s website informs us, “many elements also remain unanswered, even for Iblarders and Mr. Inoue himself! Some of the most peculiar things happen in Iblard, many which just can’t be accounted for. Just remember that Iblard is a mixture of the known and unknown, anything is possible in this curious world.” Once again, Inoue’s and Miyazaki’s visions collude. The latter echoes the former in its emphasis on the idea that whatever one may call reality is at all times punctured by the nebulous, the elusive, and the unknown. It is with its more numinous locations that Miyazaki conveys this contention most memorably: for instance, the Toxic Jungle in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, the sky filled with otherworldly plane fleets in Porco Rosso; the primordial forest in Princess Mononoke’s forest, the flooded plain in Spirited Away, and the field of dreams in The Wind Rises. The melancholy atmosphere conveyed by Iblard Time’s images evokes some of the more wistful moments in Miyazaki’s own movies, as well as the director’s conception of nostalgia as described in Chapter 2. A further similarity between the two artists’ visions which merits consideration in this context is their shared stance on audience response. This pivots on

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the principle that individual viewers should always be granted the right to formulate their own personal readings of both individual images and sequential graphic arrangements. In Inoue’s parallel reality, in particular, this means that “no one has the right to say what exactly exists in Iblard or not, or what is right and wrong in Iblard” (“Introduction”). Inoue’s sensibility does not only pervade the Ghibli Museum shorts described above. It also suffuses the arresting fantasy sequences in Yoshifumi Kondō’s Whisper of the Heart: a film to which Inoue contributed the background paintings, while Miyazaki was responsible for the screenplay and storyboards. The sequences in question include the one in which Shizuku, the heroine, flies through the imaginary world she herself has ideated as the setting of her visionary tale; the one devoted to the depiction of the magic toyshop where the statuettes of the talking cat Baron and his companion have been purchased; and the one dramatizing the nightmare in which Shizuku seeks out a gem in a mine, and, just when she thinks she has discovered one, she finds herself holding the carcass of a small bird. Both the magical arcade and the toyshop foreshadow Howl’s chamber, with its hypnotizing profusion of toys, jewels, feathers, trinkets, stuffed animals, dried plants, beads, fabrics, and knick-knacks, as well as countless objects with magical or semi-magical powers. Furthermore, the nightmare sequence chronicling Shizuku’s subterranean adventure in Whisper of the Heart anticipates the “Monster Cave” sequence in Howl’s Moving Castle. The art book Baron no Kureta Monogatari no Monogatari (i.e., The Story Baron Gave Me), offers a helpful companion to the study of the fruitful collusion of Miyazaki’s and Inoue’s visions. The volume looks closely at the aforementioned fantasy sequences, tracing their graphics evolution from Miyazaki’s storyboards for Whisper of the Heart and Inoue’s concept sketches, through the digital manipulation of these pictures, to the finished movie.

Vision as Phantasmagoria The pre-history of animation features numerous contraptions aiming to generate the illusion of motion. These can be regarded as attempts to work out how the fruits of the mind’s eye may be translated into images visible to others by mechanical means. The ongoing invention and production of different gizmos bear witness to a subliminal awareness of the ultimate impossibility of ever arriving at a mechanical apparatus capable

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of doing full justice to the opulence of the realities which take shape unbidden in the animator’s vision—from palaces buried deep in the perennial snow of alpine gorges, to subaqueous forests overflowing with giant ferns, and holly bushes bejeweled with minuscule jellyfish. The documentary value of those devices should not, however, be underestimated. Even at their least functional—or even sensible—they retain significance as testimony to the insatiable thirst for visionary alternatives to the tyranny of “things as they are”: namely, a convenient ideological fabrication of unverifiable substance. Several exhibits in the Ghibli Museum were designed with the intention of honoring the rich, if frequently overlooked, tradition of protoanimation. As Miyazaki himself observes, the collection features “a variety of gadgets and contraptions” demonstrating “the principles of filmmaking.” Among them is an imaginative adaptation of the “zoetrope, which was one of the first moving-picture devices” (Miyazaki, H. 2014k, p. 263). Also known as the “Wheel of Life,” as Williams explains, the zoetrope “appeared in the USA in 1867 as a toy. Long strips of paper with a sequence of drawings on them were inserted into a cylinder with slits in it. Spin the cylinder, look through the slits and the creature appears to move.” Alongside this contrivance, Williams describes several other gadgets which can likewise be regarded as the forerunners of animated cinema as we know it. These include the following: the Thaumatrope: A cardboard disc mounted on a top—or held between two pieces of string. A birdcage drawing is on one side and a bird on the other. When the top is spun or the strings are pulled the disc twirls, the images merge and the bird seems to be in the cage. The Phenakistoscope: Two discs mounted on a shaft—the front disc has slits around the edges and the rear disc has a sequence of drawings. Align the drawings with the slits, look through the openings and as the disc revolves you have the illusion of motion…. The Praxinoscope: Devised by the Frenchman Emile Reynaud in 1877. He was the first to create short sequences of dramatic action by drawing on a 30 foot strip of transparent substance called “Crystaloid.” This opened the way for the tremendous advances to come. The Flipper Book: In 1868 a novelty called “the flipper book” appeared worldwide and it remained the simplest and most popular device. It’s just a pad of drawings bound like a book along one edge. Hold the book in one hand along the bound edge and with the other hand flip the pages and “see ’em move.” The result is animation—the illusion of continuous action [Williams 2001, pp. 13–14].

The etymologies of the words that were coined to name the devices described by Williams deserve consideration. The term “Zoetrope” combines the Greek words zoe (“life”) and tropos (“turn”); “Thaumatrope” is

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an amalgamation of thauma (“wonder”) and tropos (“turn”); “Phenakistoscope” combines phenakizein (“to trick”) and (skopein (“to see”); “Praxinoscope,” finally, brings together praxis (“action”) and skopein (“to see”). These etymologies look forward to crucial aspects of the art of animation, not solely in its primitive guises, but also in its contemporary manifestations. Indeed, regardless of the sophistication achieved by the technology underlying the medium as it is practiced today, at its core still lie the same essential goals which prompted the inventors behind the aforementioned devices. Primary among them is the desire to turn inert images into moving forms by imparting them with the semblance of life, and, through this metamorphosis, inspire a sensation of wonder. What one sees is the ingenious outcome of an ability to trick, and, in so doing, generate a type of action entirely sui generis. While deliberately “low tech,” the Ghibli Museum’s zoetrope is very effective in demonstrating the simple logic whereby stationary objects are capable of coming to life, and hence casting light on animation’s capacity to evoke the illusion of movement: the essence of its mysterious charm. The gimmick consists of “a turntable about two meters in diameter,” upon which have been placed “three-dimensional models of the characters that appear in My Neighbor Totoro. When the turntable is rotated and a strobe light shines on it, Totoro appears to hop and the Catbus runs about” (Miyazaki, H. 2014k, p. 263). As the Ghibli Museum Special published by GhibliWorld observes, this exhibit was the result of a lengthy and complex production process. This originated in a somewhat hazy objective: the creation of “something ‘fantastic’ that would make anyone stop and gaze in awe for at least a few minutes.” To begin with, Miyazaki wanted the zoetrope to emulate the pattern of motion seen in “the scene at the bus stop from ‘My Neighbor Totoro’ where the Totoro jumps up holding an umbrella, and comes down hard making Mei and Satsuki bounce up in reaction.” The plan was abandoned in recognition of the visual and kinetic limitations entailed by the chosen scene. Indeed, it was felt that in order to make a visitor wish to pause, and take a good look at the mechanism, a more varied configuration was necessary. As a result, the project kept becoming more and more ambitious as time went by. Even when “the repeating movements—Bouncing Totoro, running Cat Bus, flapping bat wings—were decided,” suggestions regarding their rendition kept proliferating, and, with them, so did “the numbers of figures” to be included in the plan. An eminently collaborative project, the Ghibli Museum’s zoetrope was can be regarded as a colorful monument

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to the work ethics to which Miyazaki and his studio are devoted. “Katsuya Kondo was in charge of the key animation,” the article goes on to explain, while “media artist Toshio Iwai helped a great deal in conceiving a LED device to be used instead of powerful strobe lights which hurt the eye, and in making a layout plan using a computer for the positioning of the figures” (“Ghibli Museum Special”). Alongside the Totoro zoetrope, the Ghibli Museum features another wonder of proto-animation: namely, a “panorama box.” One of the most intriguing attributes of this exhibit is its lack of any clues to its meaning and function. As Miyazaki points out, “it just sits there with no explanatory signs or anything accompanying it, and when you look at it, nothing seems to move at all.” The true wonder of this—at first unexciting—machine lies not with its inherent structure but rather with its creative use. It does not hold any obvious appeal until it is instilled with life by a user’s interaction with it. It thus demonstrates that in Miyazaki’s universe, no image really means anything in an absolute sense until it is met by a viewer willing to lend his or her imagination to its construction. The beholder’s interpretation is instrumental in investing the image with meaning. Even the least stirring visual stimulus, in this logic, may become the launch pad to a whole string of dazzling imaginings in the eye of an imaginative spectator, while even the most captivating image may melt away like Baum’s Wicked Witch when its recipient is insensitive to its allure. As argued elsewhere in this study, it is to children that Miyazaki attributes the possession of the greatest imaginative resources. The responses to the panorama box evinced by visitors to the Ghibli Museum has served to reinforce this position. “When adults take a brief peek at it,” notes the director, “they usually comment that it looks like the ‘bottom of the ocean.’ But when children take a look at it, they usually change their perspective and start exclaiming things like ‘Wow, there’s a demon!’ and then they start to find all sorts of hidden things all over the place. When I hear some kids saying they’re exhausted from staring so long at this undersea scene, I’m really happy, and feel like ‘we really did it’” (Miyazaki, H. 2014k, p. 263). One of the landmarks in the prehistory of animated cinema is called phantasmagoria, and can be taken as a fitting metonym for the whole class of devices in its genus. This is because its name bears an explicit association with sequences of images pregnant with dreamlike qualities, and hence with a limitless dreamland beyond the visible and its strictures. Its choice as an apt heading for this segment of the analysis has been prompted precisely by the phantasmagoria’s symbolic import.

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Launched in France in the late eighteenth century, soon to acquire popularity throughout Europe during the nineteenth century, the phantasmagoria is “a form of theatre which used a modified magic lantern to project frightening images such as skeletons, demons, and ghosts onto walls, smoke, or semi-transparent screens, frequently using rear projection. The projector was mobile, allowing the projected image to move and change size on the screen, and multiple projecting devices allowed for quick switching of different images.” The Victorian age capitalized on performances of this kind, often referred to as Magic Lantern shows, to promulgate its moralistic messages by means of sensational cautionary tales. Its illusory quality, and attraction to fantastic images, throw into relief the phantasmagoria’s association with animation, especially of the kind favored by Miyazaki and his studio. It is also noteworthy that “early stop trick films, developed by Georges Méliès most clearly parallel the early forms of phantasmagoria. Trick films include transformations, superimpositions, disappearances, rear projections” (“Phantasmagoria”). These are effects which the art of animation cherishes, and has perfected over time to reach the current standards of fluidity, and—in the case of directors as imaginative as Miyazaki—to realize a spellbinding evocation of worlds which feel both real and inscrutably Other at one and the same time. Japanese culture was quick to import the Western Magic Lantern (an image projector invented in the seventeenth century), and to adopt this apparatus in the staging of popular performances. Known as utsushi-e, these allowed people of disparate ages and social provenance to acquaint themselves with images, stories, and even real-life events, which they had never seen or heard of before by any other means. Therefore, the utsushie fulfilled a significant cultural function not only as a flexible instrument for the creation and dissemination of illusions, but also as a form of practical education, and as an information medium. As Brigitte KoyamaRichard explains, utsushi-e differed from their Western antecedents to the extent that they did not rely on “fixed” visuals, but rather employed a “movable” lantern. As a result, they were able to proclaim their technical excellence in both the Eastern and the Western world as autonomous inventions, rather than pedestrian imitations. At the same time, they endeavored to outshine Western machinery by means of “lanterns made from paulownia wood … lit by lamps of rapeseed oil” (Koyama-Richard, p. 52). These vaunted an aesthetic value which the somewhat unattractive (and clumsy) equipment used in the West could not quite claim.

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The special exhibition held at the Ghibli Museum from June 2013 to May 2014 was designed in order to pay homage to the instrument at the heart of many gadgets which can be seen as the forefathers of today’s cinema: the lens. So common as to be by and large taken for granted even by practitioners, let alone lay people, the lens has by and by been relegated to the status of the Cinderella of optical devices. As the introduction to the museum’s display explains, “more than 2000 years ago, people discovered that wonderful images would come to life when light was shot through a tiny hole onto a wall. The desire to make these images brighter and much clearer gave birth to lenses and eventually the movies.” Miyazaki’s chief objective was to emphasize the idea that “the screening of a film simply cannot happen without the lens.” The Ghibli Museum show, accordingly, aimed to encourage “visitors to experience first-hand these close-by yet unnoticed lenses.” Numerous exhibits were created for the purpose of alerting guests to the sheer diversity of forms which lens-based mechanisms can take. “While walking through and looking into small viewing booths,” we are informed, “visitors [could] peek through lenses and see how objects in front of their eyes seem to change in shape, size and brightness…. Additionally, in the footsteps of those forerunners dedicated to entertain crowds with ‘the world through lenses,’ visitors will be able to experience projecting ‘moving pictures’ at an interactive exhibit” (“Announcement of a new exhibition: ‘The Lens at Work in The Ghibli Forest’”). Through the Ghibli Museum displays described above, Miyazaki harks back to the magic acts in which the art of animation strikes its roots. Animation is akin to the art of stage magic insofar as it pivots on the capacity to direct the audience’s attention so that no sleight of hand or coup de théâtre will be wasted. It is through this skill that animation is capable of hypnotizing its spectators, of inviting reflection on what they see, and of fostering their desire to go on feeling inspired by an intrinsically magical universe.

A A A In a culture of relentless photographing, courtesy of the omnipresent mobile phones on which people’s lives appear to have become dependent, the idea of the lens is bound to evoke right away the word photography. For obvious reasons, this is not the place to embark on lengthy discussions of this medium, either technical or otherwise. There is, however, one topic of special relevance to Miyazaki’s vision worthy of consideration in the present context: photography’s relationship with absence.

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In Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes maintains that photography is the realm of absence par excellence. “Whatever it grants to vision and whatever its manner,” avers the philosopher, “a photograph is always invisible: it is not it that we see” (Barthes 2000b, p. 6). This is because the essence of the photograph is not what is present in the image per se but rather its referent, the thing or person it claims to display—in other words, something or someone absent from it. The referent can only ever exist, within a photograph, as a ghostly trace, a disembodied double of the material entity it refers to. “The person or thing photographed,” argues Barthes, “is … a kind of little simulacrum, any eidolon emitted by the object, which I should like to call the Spectrum of the Photograph, because this word retains, through its root, a relation to ‘spectacle’ and adds to it that rather terrible thing which is there in every photograph: the return of the dead” (p. 9). Moreover, the photographer is also absent from the picture, which makes him or her a ghost of sorts. Therefore, photography is imbued with spectrality on two counts. Susan Sontag bolsters the argument that photography is shot through with absence by proposing that even though it acts as “a way of certifying experience, taking photographs is also a way of refusing it—by limiting experience to a search for the photogenic, by converting experience into an image, a souvenir.” In addition, “photographs” only ever “give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal”: a no-time stranded between a past to which the image no longer belongs, and a present to which it just cannot belong (Sontag, p. 9). Sontag’s exposure of photography’s imbrication with absence reaches its apotheosis in the following extract from the author’s seminal On Photography: “all photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt” (p. 15). Later in the same volume, Sontag corroborates her contention with reference to William H. Fox Talbot’s reflection that the camera has a unique capacity to record “the injuries of time” (p. 69). The entire argument finds a resonant summation in the artist Jasper Johns’ assertion that the camera can only ever be “an object that tells of the loss, destruction, disappearance of objects” (cited in Sontag, p. 199). Both Barthes and Sontag emphasize Western culture’s addiction to photography despite its infiltration by troubling pockets of absence and ghostliness. As argued earlier with reference to Blanchot, human beings are powerless to interact with specters. For this very reason, ironically,

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they are also subliminally drawn to them. It could be argued that in feeding their fascination with photography, people perpetuate their ambiguous relationship with liminal and invisible forces. They enter by choice the hazy terrain of eidola and wraiths by associating themselves with a medium whose products are inseverable from nonexistence. Avery F. Gordon’s reflections on the phenomena of haunting and spectrality deserve attention, in this context. The critic avers that “the term haunting” designates “those singular yet repetitive instances when home becomes unfamiliar, when your bearings on the world lose direction, when the over-and-done-with comes alive, when what’s been your blind spot comes into view. Haunting raises specters, and it alters the experience of being in time, the way we separate the past, the present, and the future. The specters … appear when the trouble they represent and symptomize is no longer being contained or repressed or blocked from view” (Gordon 2007, p. xvi). Miyazaki himself does not appear to hold photography in great esteem. In fact, he shuns the practice of collecting photographs as potential sources of inspiration for anime, preferring to rely on the pictures stored inside his own sensorium over time. (The director’s veto on photography within the space of the Ghibli Museum, discussed in Chapter 3, is worth recalling.) Toshio Suzuki confirms the Miyazaki’s preference for mental over documentary memories by means of an anecdote. While visiting the Isle of Aran, Miyazaki and Suzuki witnessed a spellbinding nocturnal scene, whereupon Suzuki “did something rare”: that is to say, he “took a photo.” In response to this spontaneous action, the director “did something more rare” still—“he got angry,” and protested: “I’m trying to remember the scene; don’t disturb me!” As Suzuki goes on to explain, “Miyazaki does not often work from photos; he sees, and recalls…. When he draws, naturally he can’t remember everything, so he fills in the details from his imagination—in this way, the work becomes original” (Suzuki, T. 2005). To convey its images to the screen, animation must perforce rely on photography. This medium’s impact on Miyazaki’s hand-drawn approach deserves special notice: “when an entire sequence has been transferred to cels, the photography process begins. Each cel involved in a frame of a sequence is laid on top of each other, with the background at the bottom of the stack. A piece of glass is lowered onto the artwork in order to f latten any irregularities, and the composite image is then photographed by a special animation camera, also called rostrum camera. The cels are removed, and the process repeats for the next frame until each frame

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in the sequence has been photographed” (“Traditional animation”). Miyazaki would neither deny nor ignore the crucial role played by these (and more advanced) photographic techniques in bringing drawings to life. Nevertheless, he seeks to highlight the medium’s relationship with absence, as described by Barthes and Sontag. He does so by embracing absence, instead of effacing it, at two levels: the visual and the thematic. Visually, he makes lack a vital player by focusing so assiduously on tiny details as to have made this proclivity a key component of his signature. In this way, the director shows us that he does not presume to ensnare, or exhaust, the entire visual paradigm. Indeed, by concentrating on the small, marginal, and oft forgotten minutiae of both nature and everyday life, Miyazaki implicitly alludes to the huge number of entities and phenomena encircling such details at all times—in other words, to what he is leaving out of the picture, what is de facto absent from it. He thus foregrounds the ineluctable selectiveness attendant on the presentation of visual images by amplifying it to notable extremes. Miyazaki further highlights the principle of selectiveness—and hence the reality of absence to which it is germane—in a fashion which harks back to Impressionist painting. In this context, an image is only ever presented as an ephemeral, fragmentary and subjective impression, never as an absolute truth. This intentionally fragmentary aesthetic constitutes a radical departure from both realism, and the discourse of perspectivalism emplaced by the Western Renaissance as a sort of universal criterion of beauty and truth. Miyazaki’s corpus also acknowledges absence as an ineffaceable element of the filmed/photographed image through its cinematography. The director handles the camera so that it follows characters and the contours of their settings, instead of framing them, and filling the screen with their apparent presence by adopting the authoritarian attitude of the authorgod. The latter is the typical stance of an all-powerful I/Eye that sees everything, but only allows us to see what his or her camera selects us for us to see. Selectiveness is obviously intrinsic to this modus operandi. Absence constitutes its unavoidable corollary, for the process of prioritizing certain portions of the visible, while leaving others out, is bound to create an opposition between what is present (or, to be more precise, allowed to be present), and what is not—what has been deliberately excluded. However, the godlike auteur obscures the inevitability of both selectiveness and absence, by handling the camera so that it presents its images as loci of plenitude and totality. In spite of their partiality, images are shown as

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though they could somehow take in the domain of the showable and the visible in its dizzying entirety. The method based on the principle of following, on the other hand, shows its acceptance of selectiveness as an inescapable part of making a movie—or indeed any kind of art. It does not endeavor to cover it up by cramming the screen with faces, bodies, and places meant to convey an illusion of presence. As the camera follows the characters and settings, it does not pretend to capture the entire remit of the visible within its purview. Thus, it implicitly reminds us of the vast swathes of absence which surround, overshadow, and puncture the domain of presence—and, as Jacques Derrida would put it, its “metaphysics.” According to the deconstructionist philosopher, the metaphysics of presence has dominated the history of Western thought, shaping its conceptions of identity, history, philosophy, art, literature, and politics in accordance with the premise that meaning is available for immediate perception. This deeply ingrained position presupposes that language is transparent. Derrida, by contrast, argues that meaning is inevitably mediated by language, and that language always poses an interface separating meaning from its potential perceiver. This mediation is never innocent, insofar as all linguistic signs and structures are determined by the systems of belief which shape the culture wherein the language is employed. At the same time, all texts perform a displacement of meaning, and hence presence: “no element can function as a sign without relating to another element which itself is simply not present” (Derrida 1981, pp. 26–27). Thematically, Miyazaki’s anime shows its respectful acceptance of absence by acknowledging the spectral forces alluded to by Barthes and Sontag. Phantasms are granted recognition as living entities with an autonomous existence—and, more importantly, with the right to exist. As anticipated earlier in this discussion, this idea is encapsulated in the sequence from Howl’s Moving Castle where Sophie penetrates Howl’s past, opens herself to its ghosts in order to decipher their secrets, and thus puts an end to the wizard’s curse. As hinted, Sophie succeeds in her selfappointed task because her goal is not to vanquish the troubled creatures dwelling in Howl’s childhood. On the contrary, she is respectful of their ineradicable difference, and of their right to preside over their domain. All she asks for is some compassion, or, should she fail to obtain that, at least a modicum of tolerance. Sophie’s unselfish attitude is repaid. Through her own innate generosity, she is able to release the latent kindness of the spectral entities she has bravely approached of her own accord. Having gained their trust, Sophie does not abuse her advantage. Rather, she takes

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only the fragment of Howl’s past she needs to make the loved one whole again, ensuring she does not thereby to extinguish the fire demon, Calcifer, whose life is entangled with Howl’s curse. It is through sequences like the one just described that Miyazaki’s magic shines forth in its full glory, giving tangible confirmation of the idea that animation may well be the ultimate art of dreams.

For Further Thought (4): William Gibson and Bruce Sterling’s The Difference Engine “Do you like your work, Mr. Tobias?” “Pay’s not much. Gas-light ruins your eyes. But it has advantages.” He shrugged again, and pushed his way through another door, into a clattering anteroom, three of its walls lined with shelves and card-files, the fourth with fretted glass. Behind the glass loomed a vast hall of towering Engines—so many that at first Mallory thought the walls must surely be lined with mirrors, like a fancy ballroom. It was like some carnival deception, meant to trick the eye—the giant identical Engines, clock-like constructions of intricately interlocking brass, big as rail-cars set on end, each on its foot-thick padded blocks. The white-washed ceiling, thirty feet overhead, was alive with spinning pulley-belts, the lesser gears drawing power from tremendous spoked flywheels on socketed iron columns. White-coated clackers, dwarfed by their machines, paced the spotless aisles. Their hair was swaddled in wrinkled white berets, their mouths and noses hidden behind squares of white gauze. Tobias glanced at these majestic racks of gearage with absolute indifference. “All day starin’ at little holes. No mistakes, either! Hit a key-punch wrong and it’s all the difference between a clergyman and an arsonist. Many’s the poor innocent bastard ruined like that…” The tick and sizzle of the monster clockwork muled his words. —Gibson and Sterling, pp. 125–126

.5,

The Courage to Smile Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion, to the futility of thinking and striving anymore. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward—and since I can start thinking and striving again that much sooner. —Kurt Vonnegut (1981) Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass…. It’s about learning to dance in the rain. —Vivian Greene (unknown date)

Miyazaki’s works evince a profound aversion to dogmatism in all its forms. In consonance with this disposition, the director’s worldview is not informed by an agenda to which he returns with doctrinaire insistence. There is, however, a conviction which has underpinned his entire career from start to finish, finding a thoughtful culmination in the director’s last feature film, The Wind Rises. Miyazaki avers that the world is careening towards catastrophe. The habitat’s defacement, the global economic crisis, and the escalation of belligerent militarism—among other factors—corroborate the validity of this prognosis. Nonetheless, he also believes that life remains meaningful as long as it holds room for sincerity, compassion, resilience, and a liberal imagination. Hence, even though is seems certain that the “problems we have now” will soon “run rampant,” and “the air will … be ever more polluted,” human beings will “still have to go on living” (Miyazaki, H. 2009p, p. 387). Nourishing a modicum of hope in the face of a bleak state of affairs, the director does not advance any specific political scheme. Even though his goal is political to the extent that it is relevant to all members of society, the instrument by which he seeks to achieve it transcends political demarcations. This is the medium of animation itself. It is by relying on his own creativeness that Miyazaki aims “to send a message of cheer to all those 163

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wandering aimlessly through life” (Miyazaki, H. 2009e, p. 51). In the face of “the flood of visual material” which surrounds us these days, of the unbridled commercialization of anime, and of the cheap overexpressionism to which the art has surrendered, Miyazaki is “struggling desperately in the hope of creating something a little better.” To remain true to his objective, he cannot trust any predetermined formulae, as he knows that in doing so, he would simply be dishing out yet another unadventurous and uninspiring work. In fact, his ethics enjoin him “to go back, again and again, to [his] starting point” (Miyazaki, H. 2009i, p. 85). The director’s objective is encapsulated in his preliminary project plan for My Neighbor Totoro, where he states that through his work, he wishes to encourage us to reassess and rediscover What we have forgotten What we don’t notice What we are convinced we have lost [Miyazaki, H. 2009n, p. 255].

Miyazaki’s message is not meant to convey a facile sense of optimism. Such a move, he intimates, would be as ineffectual as a descent into the bleakest shade of pessimism. On the contrary, its ambition is to inspire its recipients to retain their sense of motivation, and go on valuing their innate capacities regardless of fleeting vogues and material gains. Ultimately, there may be nothing one can do to save the Earth, put an end to wars, or stall the ascendancy of greed. Nonetheless, there is one crucial thing we can all do—and, from an ethical perspective, must do. This consists of acknowledging our natural proclivities, identifying the activities in which those proclivities are likely to find appropriate expression, and go on engaging in such activities come hell or high water. If, for example, a spontaneous attraction to words inheres in a person’s being from an early age, and this at some point leads to the desire to write, it is incumbent upon this person to write come what may. Likewise, should one’s instinctive fascination lie with lines or colors, and relay itself in drawing or painting, it is one’s responsibility to draw or paint, as long as the basic wherewithal to do so subsists. The illustrations supplied above place deliberate emphasis on the idea of obligation, insofar as they want to stress the idea that honoring one’s native tendencies, and giving the corresponding skills an outlet, is not just a way of whiling away the hours while the planet hurls towards destruction. In fact, it is a duty we have to ourselves and to other human beings, to the extent that it is essential to our retention of our humanity.

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In an interview with Newsweek’s Devin Gordon, titled “A Positive Pessimist,” Miyazaki states: “my thoughts are very pessimistic, yes, but my general state of being is very positive” (Miyazaki, H. 2005b). The director’s self-portrait begs a challenging question: how is one to reconcile pessimism and positivity? In everyday discourse, pessimism is viewed as “a tendency to see the worst aspect of things or believe that the worst will happen” (OED). Pessimism is ultimately conducive to despair: a state of helplessness and despondency arising from “the complete loss or absence of hope” (OED). While pessimism and despair bear an obvious connection, optimism would seem to have a natural fellow traveler in hope. The Oxford English Dictionary defines optimism as “hopefulness and confidence about the future or the success of something.” Hope, for its part, designates the feeling that a certain state of affairs provides suicient “grounds for believing that something good may happen” (OED). In light of these definitions, Miyazaki is a pessimist insofar as he is painfully aware of the problems alicting contemporary society, and of the likelihood of their getting worse and worse as time goes by. He retains a positive outlook, however, in the sense that he trusts humanity’s ability to deal with even the most atrocious situations, and devise strategies which will make life tolerable, if not undilutedly enjoyable. The interpretation of hope he holds dear, in this respect, is disarmingly simple. If there is any room left for hope in the present age, Miyazaki feels it is likely to consist of “working and struggling along with people who are important to you” (Miyazaki, H. 2009l, p. 170). These tasks will be all the more effective, if only in the short term, when one is able to undertake them with a smile on one’s face. Miyazaki’s smile—the smile of a child regardless of the thick beard, candid beard and tresses, and extra-thick spectacles which accompany it—is a paean to the capacity to snatch positivity from the jaws of pessimism. Therefore, Miyazaki’s stance shows that pessimism and positivity may go together, and represent, in combination, a more realistic formula for confronting today’s world. Ironically, it is the vein of pessimism in Miyazaki’s stance that allows him to maintain his overall positivity. He is able to go on believing that human beings may cope with their bleak destiny to the best of their ability, precisely because he is not an optimist. Optimism simply takes it for granted that things will be all right anyway, so there is no need to do anything about them. Miyazaki, on the other hand, does not make any facile assumptions about the planet’s future. If anything, he accepts the inevitability of impending disaster. What he preserves is just

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the belief in our latent capacity to do our best in the time left to us. He makes no mystery of the fact that doing one’s best, in this instance, means doing a lot, and doing it with devotion and passion. We have no choice if we wish to go on living without plunging into suicidal misery. Were Miyazaki an optimist, he would simply sit back, and assume that things will work out fine anyway without us having to do anything much, or at all. It is feasible that the director himself would not feel the urge to go on drawing, making up stories, and producing animations of a kind nobody has ever seen before. Miyazaki’s positive pessimism echoes Friedrich Nietzsche’s conception of optimism as an attitude which does not emanate from the expectation that life delivers positive and beneficial experiences at every turn. Quite the opposite, Nietzsche bases his optimism in a principle of airmation grounded in pessimism: namely, the preparedness, and strength, to accept and accommodate anything which life throws at us (knowing that much of this will probably be awful). This idea is exemplified in The Birth of Tragedy, which argues that the Greek tragedians knew only too well that life is full of woes, and made this knowledge central to their vision in terms which many would deem pessimistic. Nevertheless, the picture of life they deliver is not pessimistic. What it actually yields, according to Nietzsche, is a positive airmation of the human will’s capacity to take the most painful things on board by embracing life’s horrors without reservation—instead of struggling to conceal or marginalize them—and by devising ways of articulating them with great beauty. Greek tragedy is optimistic, in the philosopher’s view, to the extent that it reveals an ability to accept the worst by throwing into relief all the reasons one may have for being a pessimist. Thus, while it does not yield rosy pictures of human life (either in the real world or in the fantastical realm of myth), it does evince a willingness to take the worst on board. Optimism, in this perspective, is only achievable through pessimism. It is the individual’s capacity to acknowledge the worst, in both the outer and the inner worlds, that enables him or her to imagine the most wonderful things (Nietzsche 1993). “You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star,” states Nietzsche in one of the most gorgeous of his aphorisms (Nietzsche 1883–1891). It should not go unnoticed that Miyazaki has literally created whole hosts of superlative dancing stars in Howl’s Moving Castle. This connection between Nietzsche’s discourse and Miyazaki’s art constitutes one of those rare serendipitous correspondences which truly make one wonder (in the sense of both “ponder” and “marvel”). The outlook proposed by Nietzsche is a tragic optimism based on

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the conviction that a pessimistic outlook should not result in one’s withdrawal from reality. This is no more than an easy escape, suitable only for the cowardly and the immoral. Hence, one must find ways of engaging with the world, and of confronting its evils with vitality and curiosity. Nietzsche’s tragic optimism is closely related to the concept of “amor fati,” i.e., “love of fate,” or “love of one’s fate.” This designates the readiness to regard everything that takes place in the course of one’s existence, even pain and loss, as necessary parts of nature’s rhythms. The ideas of like and dislike just do not enter the equation. Indeed, it is totally irrelevant to the unfolding of one’s life whether one likes or dislikes what it brings. Life simply happens. We only stand to gain from acknowledging that this is the case, and adjust to events accordingly. According to Nietzsche, it is possible to refine this awareness to the point that things which at first appear to be no more than inevitable will gradually acquire a special beauty. “I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things,” states the philosopher. “Then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful” (Nietzsche 2001, p. 157). Jacques Derrida offers an adaption of Nietzsche’s concept of optimism in his notion of play: the result of a radical deconstructive explosion of all the fixed concepts traditionally deployed in order to organize human experience around solid centers of meaning—i.e., transcendental signifiers such as Truth, God, Being, and Reason. Presumed to be natural, and therefore unquestionable, these ideas are actually metaphysical constructs which serve the interests of specific ideologies (Derrida 1978). Given Miyazaki’s antipathy to mythologies—which of course depend on transcendental signifiers of the kind attacked by Derrida—and his emphasis on literal play throughout his career, the relevance of this perspective to the director’s world picture can barely be overestimated. Miyazaki’s oeuvre embodies play both as a deconstruction of spurious myths, and as an activity of undying importance to people of all ages. The chief reason for which neither Miyazaki’s films nor his writings ever signal a headlong descent into pessimism is that the director’s temperament has preserved an element of childlike playfulness in defiance of age, experience, and the disillusionment which is wont to accompany both. This is what makes him recognize the importance of maintaining a balance between the bleaker and the jollier dimensions of life on Earth. Today’s world gives people few real excuses to feel cheery, let alone laugh, and have fun to their heart’s content. In Miyazaki’s opinion, to counteract this mood of total negativity, we should all “make sure [we] do crazy things once in a while” (Miyazaki, H. 2009p, p. 389).

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Implicit in these words is an exhortation to play with gusto. The world as we know it may be approaching a catastrophic end, but in the mean time, our abstention from “crazy things” of the ludic ilk would do nothing to forestall that end, and would make us miserable—or rather more miserable than we already have reason to feel by looking at environmental depletion, the global economy, and the ubiquity of horrifying conflicts. Miyazaki’s attitude, in this respect, brings to mind James Joyce’s pronouncement, “children may just as well play as not. The ogre will come in any case” (Joyce, p. 144). A germane message is upheld in the ending of Kiki’s Delivery Service: “I wanted the film to leave the viewer with the impression that no matter how dispirited she [i.e., the heroine] gets, in the future she’ll always rise above it” (Miyazaki, H. 2006b, p. 143). The topic of Miyazaki’s retention of an indomitable child self will be returned to at the close of this chapter.) It is first useful to explore in further detail the nature of the director’s positive pessimism. An apt portrayal of Miyazaki’s positive pessimism is provided by Julian Baggini’s analysis of cynicism—an attitude which is often bracketed together with pessimism in the description of an unproductive, jaded, or even detrimental disposition. As the writer points out, “‘cynical’ is a term of abuse hurled at people who are judged to be insuiciently ‘positive’ by those who believe that negativity is the real cause of almost all the world’s ills. This allows them to breezily sweep aside sceptical doubts without having to go to the bother of checking if they are well-grounded.” In fact, cynicism is what allows people to ask questions about the world they inhabit, and ascertain, as far as this is ever possible, the authenticity of the truths they are expected to believe a priori, and uphold against any allusion to their speciousness. In other words, cynicism is a helpful shield against the lure of the accepted doxa. Miyazaki’s positive pessimism, like Baggini’s cynicism, is what compels him to quiz the many mythologies which, as argued in Chapter 1, underpin human society. The Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of the word “cynic,” cited by Baggini in his article, reads: “distrustful or incredulous of human goodness and sincerity.” The pejorative connotations inherent in this definition are palpable. However, not to embrace these proclivities today means to endorse the materialism, belligerence, bigotry, and intolerance of those who have the power to establish a society’s mythologies, and ensure their perpetuation against any scrutiny or infringement. These are also the very people who uphold the rightfulness of wars launched at the behest of some religion; the legitimacy of greed as the ultimate trigger of individual, national, and transnational actions;

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and the innocence of the rapacious leaders responsible for the Earth’s march towards catastrophe. “Perhaps the greatest slur against cynicism is that it nurtures a fatalistic pessimism,” argues Baggini, “a belief that nothing can ever be improved…. But at its best, cynicism is a greater force for progress than optimism. The optimist underestimates how diicult it is to achieve real change, believing that anything is possible and it’s possible now. Only by confronting head-on the reality that all progress is going to be obstructed by vested interests and corrupted by human venality can we create realistic programmes that actually have a chance of success” (Baggini). A cynic, in this perspective, is someone who does not forsake idealism, but is, in fact, able to foster it because he is not afraid to denounce the iniquities on which human society thrives. Miyazaki never tires of questioning what he sees, and asking himself what he can do about it. It is his willingness to speak up against injustice that gives him the force to retain certain unshakable ideals and, with them, a degree of hope. Like Baggini’s cynicism, the director’s positive pessimism constitutes a constructive and tantalizing alternative to the established dichotomy of optimism and pessimism which so many people accept without any qualms. Baggini’s article also comments on the stereotypical association of optimism with a cheerful temperament. “To be light and joyful today means spending freely, without guilt, on whatever looks as if it will bring us pleasure,” states the author. Indeed, the notion of happiness has been narrowed to such an extent as to have been rendered synonymous with reckless expenditure. Given everything that has been said about Miyazaki’s world picture in the foregoing chapters, it ought to be obvious where he stands on this front. Like the cynics depicted by Baggini, “modern-day counterparts” of the Cynics of ancient Greek philosophy, Miyazaki extols the virtues of living “more lightly, unburdened by the pressure to always have more,” and without “relying on purchases to provide happiness and contentment.” In so doing, he also calls attention to the pernicious extent to which “our desires have been infected by the power of markets” (Baggini). It is not Miyazaki’s intention to turn horror into utopia. Nor does he aim to fool the little ones coming into the world now with false illusions. Although preserving a vestige of hope in a bleak world is every adult’s responsibility, Miyazaki avers that only one thing is certain: “reality always has the final word.” Thus, while his films lodge “much dreaming,” he knows that not even the most visionary creator can ultimately elude the real’s tenacious grip (Miyazaki, H. 2013; my translation). Nor should artists feel

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free to forsake their social conscience. We all have a duty to recognize that as long as the world goes on existing, we have a part to play in maximizing our and our children’s chances of living on. Joining a militant group, or divulging polemics about the iniquities of politicians and bankers, is rarely the most appropriate tactic, in this regard. In fact, it might be more constructive to contemplate a shift in perspective: what Ford describes as “adaptation, development from a way of living that doesn’t work toward one that does.” This might even require so drastic an adjustment as to “be about crossing a line and never being able to come back” (Ford, p. 483). This is a risk not only worth taking in the style of adventurous gamblers: it is a challenge we may soon have to confront if we are to survive at all.

A A A Miyazaki gives concrete form to the idea that humanity must somehow find the strength and desire to go on living even in the gloomiest scenario in his plots and screenplays. Thus, at the same time as he eschews oversimple consolatory endings à la Disney, he seeks to underscore his characters’ capacity to endure. The director’s commentary on the making of Princess Mononoke brings this notion into clear focus. At first glance, this film may seem irrelevant to the present age due to its remote historical setting: i.e., the Muromachi Period (1336–1392). However, the message it conveys holds timeless significance, its crux being the proposition that “even amidst hatred and carnage, life is still worth living. It is possible for wonderful encounters and beautiful things to exist.” Thus, though determined to “depict animosity” without prudishness, Miyazaki has developed Princess Mononoke as a means of emphasizing that we should never lose sight of “the fact that there is something more precious.” Likewise, the depiction of “the bondage of a curse” is intended to throw the eventual “joy of liberation” more tersely into relief (Miyazaki, H. 2014v, p. 12). Princess Mononoke’s finale encapsulates the director’s intent with rare pathos through its portrayal of the protagonists’ interaction, and of the very special kind of understanding they are able to reach despite their ineradicable difference. San is seen to have learned to trust Ashitaka, even though she hates all humans encroaching upon the forest with good reason, and Ashitaka to have understood the laws of an alien environment, and learned to respect its distinctive ethics. Miyazaki’s following feature film, Spirited Away, offers an alternate interpretation of the idea that the beauty of freedom is best appreciated

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when one has endured its absence. It also revisits, in quite a different tone, the proposition that life-enhancing interactions may occur even in a world seemingly devoid of loyalty and compassion. The Oscar-winning 2001 movie develops these themes by stressing the importance of acceptance and resilience, and of the attendant preparedness to see what one can do with the situation in hand, however undesirable this may appear, instead of leashing vainly against fate, or wallowing in self-pity. The director’s intentions, fully realized in the finished work, are clearly delineated in the prefatory statement placed at the start of The Art of Spirited Away. “This story is not a showdown between right and wrong.” In fact, the world into which the protagonist is spirited by unknown forces is one “where the good and the bad dwell together.” It is in this hybrid domain that Chihiro’s bildungsroman unfolds, as many aspects of the familiar world become immaterial or trivial, and unforeseen options for human interplay and collaboration open up like moonflowers at dusk. Amongst the most crucial lessons gleaned by the girl are the value of “friendship,” and the existence of a special capacity: “devotion.” This makes it possible for an individual to put one’s friends’ wellbeing ahead of self-interest, and even overcome the fear of defeat at the hands of one’s oppressor. The film’s heroine is able to survive the risky tests to which she is subjected “not because she has destroyed the ‘evil,’ but because she has acquired the ability to survive” (Miyazaki, H. 2002c, p. 15). The achievement of this same capacity—via comparably tricky routes—enables other Miyazaki protagonists faced with extreme challenges to adjust to the demands of their respective worlds, without having to relinquish either their humanity or their desire to live on. This applies to personae as diverse as Clarisse in The Castle of Cagliostro, Sheeta and Pazu in Castle in the Sky, Ashitaka and San in Princess Mononoke, and Sophie in Howl’s Moving Castle. Even characters asked to confront trials of lesser gravity become capable of overcoming their diiculties despite their superficial weaknesses (immaturity, youth, timidity), by developing the will to survive. Satsuki and Mei in My Neighbor Totoro, and the titular heroine in Kiki’s Delivery Service attest to this proposition. Miyazaki has stated that it is in Howl’s Moving Castle that his belief that life must go on at all costs is expressed most exhaustively, and in the most fulfilling fashion for him personally. At the 70th Venice Film Festival (2013), where Miyazaki announced his decision to retire from featurelength animation, he was at one point asked whether he had a favorite among his movies. According to Ryan Lambie, the director singled out

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Howl’s Moving Castle without hesitation. “I wanted to convey the message that life is worth living, and I don’t think that’s changed,” he proffered by way of explanation (cited in Lambie). Too sophisticated a director to compact his lesson into the film’s finale, Miyazaki diffuses it over the entire action in an discreet manner. It is in its allusions to humanity’s capacity for compassion, ingenuity, and courage that Howl’s Moving Castle takes the idea that “life is worth living” to its apotheosis. These cinematic moments are articulated in so understated a style as to recall William Wordsworth’s “little, nameless unremembered acts of kindness and love”—acts which the Romantic poet posits as “the best portion of a good man’s life” (Wordsworth and Coleridge, p. 89). It is not hard to picture Miyazaki expressing his enthusiastic agreement with Wordsworth’s contention. The sequence where Turnip- Head holds an umbrella over Sophie’s head to protect her from torrential rain, as likewise profuse tears course her wizened mien, epitomize the movie’s commitment to the assertion that life remains worth living—despite the fact that in the world we inhabit today, so many values have lost their definition, becoming blurred, uncanny, absurd. Life remains a meaningful endeavor because there will always be routes on which we have not yet dared to embark, and options we have not yet dared to face. Miyazaki’s own creations exemplify this message, insofar as they show an abiding resolve to remain open to unexpected possibilities—new styles, new forms, new ideas—by embracing at all times the peculiar wisdom of serendipity. The Wind Rises asks us to face the horrors of history without either trepidation or resentment so as to conquer their burden, and find the desire to go on living. This is the message discerned by Miyazaki in Paul Valéry’s “Le cimetière marin” (Valèry), and thereafter embedded in both the movie’s title and its logline: “we must live” (“Ikineba”). The action itself may seem not to abound in illustrations of this uplifling message. However, the protagonist’s devotion to the ideation of beautiful aeroplanes, and his abiding love for an ill-fated woman uphold the conviction that life remains worth living even in the darkest of moments. Those qualities counterbalance Jiro’s political myopia, which makes him powerless to grasp the magnitude of the events unfolding around him, and render the character acceptable, though not necessarily pardonable. After all, blaming inventors for human brutality is beside the point. The perpetrators of the most abominable crimes are not the inventors themselves but the bloodthirsty politicians who harness their creations to iniquitous ends, all the while ensuring that talented, yet vulnerable, individuals like Jiro are kept well away from the truth.

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All of Miyazaki’s yarns suggest that the worlds in which his protagonists undergo their rites of passage allow for the coexistence of conflicting ethical values. In this respect, these fictional dimensions bring to mind the Buddhist belief in the continual coexistence of good and evil. This is regarded as not only an inevitable, but also a valuable feature of human nature, and indeed of every facet of the universe around us. As John Reeve points out, Buddhist philosophy treasures the interplay of “serenity and turbulence, spirituality and slaughter” (Reeve, p. 22). This contention is upheld by Mitsukuni Yoshida, who maintains that “even the most glorious life will end in darkness and death; holiness and profanity, splendour and gloom form the dual basis of man’s culture” (Yoshida, p. 22). An emblematic exemplification of this position is provided by popular representations of the Indian guru Daruma, held to have founded Zen Buddhism, which underscore the character’s fusion of conflicting proclivities in a single body. These, in the words of a thirteenth-century Chinese poem, render him comparable at one and the same time to a “death-dealing knife” and a “life-giving blow” (cited in Reeve, p. 27). Likewise pertinent are the many figures from Buddhist art whose fierce features and ominous weapons appear to coexist with a compassionate disposition. In both instances, baleful and endearing connotations are seen to complement, rather than negate, one another. As seen in Chapter 3, it is in nature itself that Miyazaki perceives the ultimate power to combine ferocity and benevolence in a seamless fabric. Miyazaki’s world, like the cosmos imagined by Buddhist philosophy, is characterized by ceaseless flux. In this universe of eternal becoming, all things exist in a state of intrinsic impermanence (mujou), and therefore partake of the same endless cycles of birth, death, and rebirth. In this mutable reality, seeking to isolate good from evil (or right from wrong, stability from tumult, joy from sorrow) is not an ethical act to be commended. In fact, it constitutes an arrogant attempt to tamper with the world’s flow, and arrest its becoming. The outcome is a blockage, which is bound to result in the emergence of conflict and strife both among humans and in nature at large. The disruption of social, political, and familial harmony is paralleled by no less grave a despoliation of the ecosystem’s spontaneous equilibrium.

A A A In the late 1880s, when Morris’ News from Nowhere and “Useful Work v. Useless Toil” made their appearance, and indeed in the early 1970s, when both E. F. Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful and Ivan Illich’s Tools for

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Conviviality were published, it seemed feasible not only to offer critiques of the dominant economic systems, but also to propose strategies for radical social transformation. This is no longer the case in the second decade of the twenty-first century, and Miyazaki would be the first to concur with this suggestion. The societies in which those earlier thinkers were operating retained a premise which the contemporary scene has in effect suppressed. This was the notion that the world still offered possibilities—that it was realistic for a person to speculate about the countless what ifs to which any culture is, in principle, open. The perception of as-yet-unrealized possibilities made it viable for a person to harbor principles, and cultivate ideals, to an extent which contemporary economic globalization precludes. Not many film directors, let alone anime directors, have tackled weighty ideological issues as consistently as Miyazaki has. However, his sensitivity to the state of affairs delineated above restrains him from exploiting his art to promote a utopian plan for socio-economic transformation. His aim is far more congruous with the limitations which the contemporary world imposes. This is to deploy his medium to intimate how, in a world which seems devoid of hope, we may still look for a way forward by reassessing some of our unquestioned belief systems: the ubiquitous mythologies which permeate human society the world over. Miyazaki knows that it would be hypocritical and misleading to offer hope in a hopeless world. On the other hand, he believes that there is no escape from this world, however dire it may be, and we might as well make it as palatable as possible while we happen to inhabit it. To reinforce his longing to preserve a modicum of hope in the darkest of times, Miyazaki turns to nature. He is well aware that even though it is hard to establish how many cataclysms ensue spontaneously from nature, and how many are sparked off by humanity’s abuse of the environment, evidence abounds for the man-made character of the triggers conducive to many so-called “natural” calamities. Nevertheless, he is disinclined “to equate disaster with evil” in a dogmatic fashion, since he trusts nature’s resilience and self-regenerative capacities in the aftermath of even the most vicious disasters. Those powers are demonstrated by the fact that in some cases, the influence exerted by such crises on the environment turns out to be beneficial—even though its practical manifestations might take a long time to become visible. To exemplify this idea, the director notes that “after a flood, a lot of sediment is left in the forest and the plants and trees seem to benefit from it. So flood waters bring good things as well as bad” (Guillén). Nowhere are nature’s self- restoring capacities dramatized with

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greater resonance than they are in Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind—though the film is also eager to expose humanity’s blindness to the environment’s hidden resources, and inclination to misconstrue the agents of environmental self-renewal as destructive foes. Miyazaki has also stressed that nature’s most threatening expressions are able to forge a unique sense of solidarity among people, as though the ephemerality and instability inherent in their circumstances had the capacity to elicit their more positive qualities. Ponyo offers a veritable paean to this hypothesis. Nature’s endless resourcefulness is further borne out by the baling multivalence of its forms. No creature—be it animal, vegetable or mineral—can ever be given a conclusive explanation, for nature keeps shifting incessantly. No sooner has one attached a specific meaning to this or that being than it acquires connotations which question, or contradict, that interpretation. If this state of affairs were assessed with reference to the attitude known as “pathetic fallacy,” it would be tempting to deduce that nature is out to fox us, playing with our feelings and brains just in order to prove its excellence. However, this construal tells us little about nature itself. All it sheds light upon is our species’ tendency to project human emotions onto the environment, which is a short step from personification: a close relative of anthropomorphism (a concept examined in depth in Chapter 3). Pathetic fallacy ascribes to nature what is in effect a very human proclivity: the urge to awe other people into submission by constantly eluding their grasp, moving the goalposts, and defying their efforts to understand either our personalities or our distinctive outlooks. In effect, the pathetic fallacy approach is deeply disrespectful toward nature, insofar as it casts her in the role of the spoilt brat. A more likely reason for nature’s shifting connotations it that in keeping with the logic of continual becoming which guides its cycles, none of its forms stays the same from one moment to the next. In addition, Miyazaki avers that each facet of the environment gains clashing connotations as a result of its discordant perceptions by disparate human beings. In his letter to the Reverend John Trusler of August 23, 1799, William Blake foreshadows the director’s approach to nature as he states: “the tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature all ridicule and deformity … and some scarce see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself ” (cited in Underhill). These reflections bring to mind Miyazaki’s own thoughts on the arbitrariness of humanity’s

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responses to the environment, encapsulated by the fact that many people “see birds that harm humans as harmful and those that are useful to humans as useful,” without reflecting for a moment on those creatures’ intrinsic qualities (Miyazaki, H. 2009). Once again, humans prove themselves the victims of a simple but dangerous misconception: the belief that whatever nature presents, must be there for them. This is not the sole relevance of Blake’s observations to Miyazaki’s philosophy. Also worthy of consideration is their emphasis on the significance held by the imagination in the process of perception. The imagination is the faculty that enables the discernment of nature in its true richness, which means much more than appreciating nature’s beauties from the standpoint of an external observer. In fact, it means being able to participate in nature’s richness in a direct, even visceral, way. This makes it possible for a person to recognize not only the splendor of nature’s forms, but also the extent to which these incarnate the power of imagination itself at a quintessential level. Our personal imagination, therefore, can allow us to sense that nature represents the ultimate embodiment of the imagination as a universal concept. Moreover, Blake contends that as it comes into contact with the outside world, the imagination creates whole new worlds of its own, by transforming the raw data gleaned through sensory experience, and projecting its visionary speculations onto the environment. Hardnosed logic might dismiss these alternate realities as mere fantasies, but this does not deprive them of an undeniable logic, and substance of their own. As a result, their existence cannot be refuted. “You certainly mistake,” declares Blake, “when you say that the visions of fancy are not to be found in this world” (cited in Underhill). No oicial body is endowed with the authority to deny those visions a place in the ordinary world, and a right to develop according to their own rhythms within the skein of everyday life. Neither experts nor the social constructs and discourses they deploy hold any final power over the autonomous dimensions engendered by the imagination. Even the ubiquitous mythologies which people live by, in ignorance of their servitude to specters, are powerless to indent imagination’s worlds. They will do their best to repress those worlds’ existence, but they cannot disavow it in a conclusive fashion. Nor can they silence the subversive voices emerging from their midst: voices which might dare to deploy fantasy as a means of questioning the status quo, its institutions, and its very mythologies. This, as argued, is just what Miyazaki’s art endeavors to do, and what his world picture incarnates through and through. On his own admission, he tells “fantasy stories,” and would never presume to negate

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their imaginary status. Yet, he also seeks to harness them to a critical examination of the false truths which shape our lives, and “to take a stand” on some of the most controversial political matters of our times (Miyazaki, H. 2014a; my translation). Miyazaki’s philosophy accords the term “fantasy” a meaning which harks back to the Greek word “phantasia,” from which “fantasy” derives. Ancient Greece saw phantasia—which is by and large synonymous with “imagination” no less than with “fantasy” in its vocabulary—as the faculty which enables people to picture what is not present to the senses in the form of ideas. Phantasia, therefore, is the capacity to envisage realities unavailable to empirical observation on the inner screen of the mind. No less more vital to Miyazaki’s outlook is phantasia’s own root: the word “phos,” which means “light.” Fantasy’s etymological association with light implies that mental images should not be derided as vacuous delusions, but respected as a form of illumination which can provide special insights into the reality we take for granted. What Miyazaki accomplishes, by using his fantasy stories to examine the unexamined, is precisely to shed “light” on what society willfully obscures.

A A A The coexistence of pessimism and positivity, and hence despair and hope, within Miyazaki’s commodious world picture can ultimately be ascribed to his ability to perceive the irreplaceable value of every moment, the most humdrum included. We are most likely to espouse the ideology of pessimism, and thus sink into a state of forlorness whenever our efforts seem vain and our dreams futile, if we are incapable of cherishing the fleeting instant and its unique, albeit not always pleasant, significance. On the other hand, we may discover a modicum of positivity and hopefulness even at the heart of the most inauspicious situation as long as we remain able to grant the passing moment its own special value. Lives capable of savoring simple everyday activities, yet are infused with a sense of responsibility toward nature and others, may constitute the sole viable option for the human species. As Morris emphasizes in “The Aims of Art,” it is from the ability to take a candid interest in the minutiae of everyday life that happiness—whatever this means—might originate. Miyazaki points us in this very direction, by emphasizing with tireless dedication the importance of recognizing the details through which both nature and everyday human existence express their ultimate beauty.

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Unlike the “blue-footed booby” extolled by Kurt Vonnegut in Galapagos, we cannot afford to dedicate our lives to sheer aesthetic bliss (Vonnegut 1985). We all stand to gain, however, from a respectful appreciation of the exquisite creature’s ability to cherish its daily activities. The bluefooted booby’s lifestyle may help us understand that the domination of nature through technology, and of each other through military aggression and voracity, is not the only alternative to aestheticism. “Though we may seem to be living lives of routine each day,” states Miyazaki, “each experience is a once-in-a-lifetime event.” He does acknowledge that by and large, “it is incredibly diicult for us to perceive the significance of the experiences in our own lives.” Nevertheless, we only need to turn to the very young to remember how it is in fact possible, as long as we retain an open mind, to perceive “each day” as “full of new things”— which is precisely, in the director’s opinion, what kids do with artless glee. This does not mean, of course, that children live lives of utter comfort, unburdened by fears and specters of any kinds. As seen in Chapter 2, this is far from true, especially in today’s world, where children are subjected to severe pressures on a daily basis in both the domestic and the scholastic camps. The germs of insecurity and vulnerability are likely to take root in the growing child, and limit his or her innate survival skills, from an early age. Thus, it would be absurd to claim that children enjoy undiluted contentment. Forever latent in their development are the phantoms of failure, disappointment, and hostility, which are bound to raise their heads later in life. This is why, at the same time as declaring that “they are the spirit of hope,” Miyazaki is also keen to underline that kids are destined to “experience setbacks.” What keeps them buoyant, while their precarious bliss subsists, is their capacity to perceive even the most unexceptional daily occurrences as “a series of significant events.” It is only when they are quashed by language and social mores that imaginative and enthusiastic kids are forced to grow into “normal, boring adults” (Miyazaki, H. 2014o, p. 452). Viewing children as the best reason for preserving a positive outlook in desperate times, it is first and foremost to them that Miyazaki wants to convey his message of hope. This idea is substantiated by an interview with Mario Serenellini, held just prior to the screening of the director’s last feature film at the 70th Venice Film Festival. When asked whether he would call himself an optimist, Miyazaki riposted: “on the contrary, I am a pessimist. An excellent pessimist…. Whenever I am shown newborn babies, I feel like telling them: ‘But what are you doing here? Haven’t they told you that it’s really not the right time to be born?’ … Yet, once babies

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have been born, what should we do: send them back or give them a modicum of fantasy?” His own films are efforts to provide these innocent newcomers with a few glimmers of optimism: fleeting moments of reassurance to alleviate the anguish inherent in life’s arduous ride. (Miyazaki, H. 2013; my translation). In divulging his positive pessimist’s message, the director is able to address children with immediacy and charm because, as Richard Corliss suggests, he himself has “learned the secret language of children.” It could be surmised that in fact, he has not so much learned as never forgotten that special idiom. Whatever the case may be, Miyazaki communicates with children “as one gifted five-year-old to his enthralled peers. That’s how an anime veteran turns animation into ani-magic” (Corliss). Many adults dismiss childhood as a “simple” state. In a sense, we are all disciplined by our societies into thinking this way, so as to perpetuate the illusion that the encultured world is sophisticated and complex, whereas its childish counterpart is home to naive assumptions and vaporous illusions. Miyazaki, by contrast, views childhood as the preserve of complexities of prismatic richness. For one thing, as argued in Chapter 2, he credits children with the possession of imaginative faculties which far exceed those of adults. Not only are children’s imaginations more ingenious and far-reaching, however. They also harbor a propensity to let anything that happens, including the most outrageous occurrences, as natural components of the fabric of life. This is a faculty we renounce as society instructs us to draw clear lines between the proper and the improper: what the adult world considers permissible and what it rejects as an affront to normality. Very few grown-ups retain the child’s commodious perspective. When Miyazaki elaborates his stories and images with a child’s viewpoint in mind, he does so because he knows that kids can relate without effort to circumstances which grown-ups would find hard to negotiate. In an ideal world, he would like his adult viewers also to look at his images with the eyes of a child—to accept that the ocean can come to life, as it does in Ponyo, and that a goldfish may morph into a red-haired girl; or that trees can grow to monumental sizes in seconds, and furry buses with feline features whisk you through the sky, as is the case in My Neighbor Totoro. We all have the potential to preserve childlike elements throughout life. Miyazaki’s views on the matter echo Kitaro Nishida’s suggestion, cited at the beginning of this chapter, that it is with the possession of a childlike heart that the greatest chance of happiness lies for any human being,

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regardless of age. In many of us, those childlike elements abide only in a dormant fashion, and do not dare manifest themselves anywhere other than untold dreams. Their endurance nonetheless deserves recognition and, wherever possible, due encouragement and love. Miyazaki’s entire oeuvre is an implicit exhortation to acknowledge the child in us, the ability to see the world as one, and, come what may, go on believing that life’s worth living.

For Further Thought (5): Kurt Vonnegut’s Galapagos I have written these words in air—with the tip of my index finger of my left hand, which is also air. My mother was left-handed, and so am I. There are no left-handed human beings any more. People exercise their flippers with perfect symmetry. Mother was a redhead, and so was Andrew MacIntosh, although their respective children, I and Selena, did not inherit their rusty tresses— nor has humankind, nor could humankind. There aren’t any redheads any more. I never knew an albino personally, but there aren’t albinos anymore, either. Among the fur seals, albinos do still turn up from time to time. Their pelts would have been much prized for ladies’ fur coats a million years ago, to be worn at the opera and charity balls…. When my tale began, it appeared that the earthling part of the clockwork of the universe was in terrible danger, since many of its parts, which is to say people, no longer fitted in anywhere, and were damaging all the parts around them as well as themselves. I would have said back then that the damage was beyond repair. Not so! Thanks to certain modifications in the design of human beings, I see no reason why the earthling part of the clockwork can’t go on ticking for ever the way it is ticking now. If some sort of supernatural beings, of flying-saucer people, … brought humanity into harmony with itself and the rest of Nature, I did not catch them doing it. I am prepared to swear under oath that the Law of Natural Selection did the repair job without outside assistance of any kind. —Vonnegut 1985, pp. 265–266

Filmography Feature Films Cited The Castle of Cagliostro (dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 1979) Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 1984) Castle in the Sky (dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 1986) My Neighbor Totoro (dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 1988) Kiki’s Delivery Service (dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 1989) Only Yesterday (dir. Isao Takahata, 1991) Porco Rosso (dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 1992) Whisper of the Heart (dir. Yoshifumi Kondō, 1995) Princess Mononoke (dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 1997) Spirited Away (dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 2001) Howl’s Moving Castle (dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 2004) Tales from Earthsea (dir. Gorō Miyazaki, 2006) Ponyo (dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 2008) The Secret World of Arrietty (dir. Hiromasa Yonebayashi, 2010) From Up on Poppy Hill (dir. Gorō Miyazaki, 2011) The Wind Rises (dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 2013) When Marnie Was There (dir. Hiromasa Yonebayashi, 2014)

Short Films for the Ghibli Museum Cited The Day I Bought a Star (dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 2006) House Hunting (dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 2006) Mon Mon the Water Spider (dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 2006) Iblard Time (dir. Naohisa Inoue, 2007) Mr. Dough and the Egg Princess (dir. Hayao Miyazaki, 2010)

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Index Franklin, J.H. 28 From Up on Poppy Hill 63, 101, 104, 105 Furniss, M. 139

Abe, M. 14, 62 Abe, S. 53 Adorno, T. 77–78 Andersen, H.C. 133 Atkinson, M.E. 47, 49, 51 Avella, N. 138

Ghibli Museum 71, 99, 109–116 Gibson, W. 144, 146, 149, 162 Godwin, W. 100 Goethe, J.W. von 13, 24 Gordon, A.F. 159 Gordon, D. 61, 165 Gore, A. 76 Greene, V. 163 Guillén, M. 13, 22, 61, 126, 127, 130, 132, 174

Baggini, J. 168–169 Barthes, R. 9, 27, 158, 160, 161 Bazzano, M. 67 Blake, W. 70, 76, 86, 118, 175–176 Blanchot, M. 123, 158 Bloom, H. 107 Broderick, M. 55 Brooks, X. 29, 67, 133 Caleb Williams 100 Calza, G.C. 134 Campbell, J. 44 Campen, C. van 35–36 Castle in the Sky 19, 41, 49, 71, 98, 108, 110, 121, 129, 143, 144, 146, 147, 149, 171 The Castle of Cagliostro 40, 90, 91, 120, 132, 133, 171 Cavallaro, D. 71, 93, 101, 151 Coleridge, S.T. 119–120 Corliss, R. 179

Haga, T. 130 Hoffmann, E.T.A. 45, 46, 47 Horkheimer, M. 77–78 House Hunting 112–113 Howl’s Moving Castle 7, 19, 42, 47, 61, 102, 123, 137, 145, 146, 147, 152, 161, 166, 171, 172

Dawson, C. 138 The Day I Bought a Star 149–150 Derrida, J. 5, 140, 161, 167 Deschooling Society 16, 38 Discipline and Punish 38 Drinkwater, J. 21–22

The Journey of Shuna 103–104 Joyce, J. 168

Iblard Time 149–151 Illich, I. 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 38, 97, 174 Inoue, N. 149–152 Ishii, H. 136

Kawai, H. 116 Kiki’s Delivery Service 47, 71, 89, 90, 108, 129, 145, 146, 168, 171 Kondō, Y. 101, 102, 103, 152, 155 Koyama-Richard, B. 156

Eckbert the Fair 47, 48, 49 Eliot, T.S. 65

Lacan, J. 36 Lambie, R. 171 Lasseter, J. 1, 55 Le Guin, U.K. 103

Flusser, V. 124 Ford, R. 21, 170 Foucault, M. 19, 38, 39, 40

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196

Index

Lim, S. 116 Lott, T. 64 Lowell, P. 74 Lubbock, J. 69 MacInnes, D.T. 142 MacInnes, P. 131, 132 Marvell, A. 25 Marx, K. 85 Maurer, D.M. 34 McGinn, C. 123 Mr. Dough and the Egg Princess 99–100 Miyazaki, G. 63, 101, 103, 104, 105 Mon Mon the Water Spider 71, 72, 106, 112 Morris, W. 5, 12, 42, 82, 85, 89, 97, 99, 102, 114, 115, 116–117, 148, 173, 177 Murphy, M. 104–105 My Neighbor Totoro 23, 32, 42, 47, 48, 51, 52, 56, 63, 66, 70, 72, 76, 112, 114, 129, 146, 147, 154, 164, 171, 179

Schilling, M. 197 Schlegel, F. 123 Schumacher, E.F. 11–12, 15, 22, 82–83, 97, 98, 173 The Secret World of Arrietty 101, 105, 106 Seifert, L.C. 44 Shklovsky, V. 140 Small Is Beautiful 11, 82, 173 Smith, A. 15 Smith, L. 61–62 Socrates 5 Sontag, S. 158, 160, 161 Spirited Away 7, 20, 23, 42, 47, 50, 52, 55, 56, 57, 61, 63, 66, 71, 91, 92, 94, 100, 102, 108, 146, 151, 170–171 Spitzer, K. 53 Steinbeck, J. 69 Sterling, B. 144, 162 Stern, E. 124–125 Sugano, Y. 136 Suzuki, D.T. 25, 98 Suzuki, T. 102, 104, 145, 159 Swift, J. 118

Nagatomo, S. 134 Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind 9, 31, 41, 48, 50, 52, 70, 75, 88, 95, 129, 133, 146, 147, 151, 175 Nietzsche, F. 166–167 Nineteen Eighty-Four 39 Nishida, K. 13–14, 28, 80, 81, 98, 179 Niwa, K. 63, 105 The Nutcracker and the Mouse King 45– 46

Takahata, I. 26, 101, 107, 113 Takeshige, Y. 145 Tales from Earthsea 101, 103, 104, 105 Tieck, L. 47, 48, 51, 52 Tools for Conviviality 174 Tuan, Y. 107–109 Turan, K. 105

Only Yesterday 101 Osaki, T. 12, 13, 102

Ueda, A. 115, 116 Underhill, E. 175, 176

Petr, V. 64–65 Picasso, P. 12, 138 Pizzolatto, N. 26 Pond, S. 53 Ponyo 8, 9, 22, 24, 32, 33, 37, 43, 47, 52, 53, 71, 101, 121, 175, 179 Porco Rosso 42, 47, 59, 60, 71, 79, 80, 86, 99, 133, 146, 151 Preston, A. 38–39 Princess Mononoke 9, 19, 23, 41, 42, 46, 47, 48, 52, 56, 66, 70, 75, 79, 96, 98, 100, 101, 108, 135, 136, 142, 147, 148, 151, 170, 171

Valèry, P. 172 Vonnegut, K. 163, 178, 180

Reeve, J. 173 Rilke, R.M. 123 Rizov, V. 16, 53, 57 Robinson, J.G. 107 Sartre, J.-P. 15 Satō, T. 69

Warner, M. 44, 51, 122, 125 Watts, A.W. 65 The Wealth of Nations 15 When Marnie Was There 101, 102, 107 Whisper of the Heart 101, 102, 103, 152 Williams, R. 141–142, 153 The Wind Rises 8, 43, 50, 58, 59, 60, 66, 71, 94, 102, 129, 133, 142, 146, 147, 148, 151, 163, 172 Wordsworth, W. 21, 29, 119, 120, 172 Yonebayashi, H. 101, 105, 106, 107 Yoshida, M. 130, 138–139 Yoshida, N. 101 Zipes, J. 43, 46