Hayao Miyazaki began his career at Studio
Toei, and quickly found himself involved in
the union struggles occurring at the time,
efforts which eventually saw he, Isao Takahata,
and others virtually forced out of the studio.
Rising to prominence in this milieu, Miyazaki
spent his early life as a self-proclaimed
Marxist, and the artistic priorities set by
those politics survive even into his present
work. In the 80s he declared that he wanted
to, “always be aware of the dangers of being
too wishy-washy, to be aware of the relationships
between media creators and consumers, capital
and labor.” Yet, within a decade, this belief
in Marxism totally crumbled. With the fall
of the USSR and the writing of Nausicaa, Miyazaki’s
faith in historical materialism—which centers
class struggle and the relations of economic
production in its analysis—collapsed, and
he declared that the kind of thinking where,
“if things like the distribution of wealth
and the means of production were properly
taken care of, everything would get better”,
was something he could no longer accept. Indeed,
in 1994 he claimed that, “Leaving decisions
up to the collective wisdom of the masses
just results in collective foolishness”,
as well as saying, outright, that “Marxism
was a mistake,” and from here, the ecological
tones already present in his work became even
more central.
As a director whose films often tell quite
political stories, it’s worth pondering
what they actually say, how they tell the
tale of Miyazaki’s own evolution as a thinker,
as well as what they mean in their own right.
Over the course of his career, Miyazaki constantly
returns to common points, though often in
changed ways; his ambiguous feelings towards
the Japanese nation, animist environmental
tendencies, opposition but resignation to
the historical process of industrialization
and modernization, empathy towards all human
and non-human life, the nature of childhood
and adulthood, the value of labor, and so
much more. Of course, throughout all of his
work, there’s an ever-present focus on flight,
and much of his concerns with technology can
be understood once his portrayal of the wind-based
form of travel is divined. Yes, to understand
all of it, we have to look at every major
worked he helmed, and to begin that task,
it’s time to start with his only complete
TV anime: Future Boy Conan.
Released in 1978 and based on Alexander Key’s,
The Incredible Tide, Future Boy Conan takes
place after a catastrophic war is fought between
the United States and Soviet Union, tearing
apart the surface of the planet and leaving
little arable land to sustain the human population.
The main character, a young boy named Conan,
is raised by his grandfather, a former scientist.
At the start of the series, he meets a girl
named Lana, who’s fled from the fittingly-titled
nation of Industria, which wants to rebuild
the world which was destroyed through the
labor of its underclass and the technology
which comes with that power relation. However,
Lana has spent time on another island known
as High Harbor, a relatively peaceful, agrarian
community which offers the truest hope of
survival for the human race. Throughout the
story, Conan and Lana work together to protect
the remaining world from Industria and its
cruel leader, Lepka. At the end, they see
success, destroying the planet’s last warship
and sinking Industria. Ensuring High Harbor’s
safety, Conan, Lana, and many others return
to the island Conan grew up on, which is now
a larger landmass, to repopulate it.
Without a doubt, Conan has a Marxist bent.
While it makes no attempt to defend the USSR’s
own developmental urges, it alters the novel’s
portrayal, in which High Harbor is the West’s
successor while Industria is the Soviets’.
Indeed, Industria in the anime represents
not the sins of some supposed communism, but
instead the faults of industrial society as
a whole; there’s no indication, compared
to the novel, of who began the war, but it
didn’t matter much by the time the bombs
dropped. Industria’s class structure, in
which a great many workers are forced to slave
away underground, all while the nation colonizes
abroad in order to forcibly gather more resources
and workers, is more reminiscent of the US
than the USSR, but clearly, neither nation
is meant to be viewed positively here.
No, it’s the unstoppable drive for quote-unquote
“progress” which the series marks as malignant.
After all, not only did industrial civilization
destroy the Earth, but it threatens to do
so again if the ruling class of Industria
gets its way. Yet, one might object that this
isn’t a very Marxist view of things. After
all, isn’t Marxism explicitly about progress,
specifically towards communism. Well, yes
and no. It’s true that many interpretations
of Marxism take that view, where communism
is, in effect, what the return of Christ is
for Christians; a certain-to-happen event
coming in the future, one bound by the forces
of the world to bring humanity to its next
stage. However, this is not a universal trait
of Marxism, and it’s one which has become
less popular in the last fifty years; Marxists
may still be communists, but the idea of communism's
inevitability isn’t exactly the rage, especially
as climate change threatens to end us before
revolution can ever come.
And it’s with that caveat that I believe
the Marxist and ecological tendencies in this
anime see themselves combined, not unravelling
fully until later in Miyazaki’s career.
See, Conan is a very Romantic series, not
in the sense of love, though Conan and Lana
are cute together, but in the sense that everything
is portrayed with a certain Romance, drawing
upon the 19th-century movement which reacted
to capitalism’s encroachment by turning
to nature’s beauty, specifically by attempting
to revive the spirit of Medieval romances
which focused on chivalry and pastoralism.
High Harbor isn’t perfect, but its agrarian
system of production is one that avoids the
danger industry poses for society. That said,
it’s not as if the series doesn’t allow
for expansion, or the development of production.
Technology is allowed to return when it doesn’t
come in the form of a giant, humanity-threatening
warship. Indeed, workers rise up and seize
Industria by the end, escaping with all the
others to the healthy lands. Miyazaki is clearly
hesitant, even at this early point, to believe
that industrial society can be maintained,
at least in the form we use it today, and
yet the series still has some belief that
workers can bridge what Marx himself called
the metabolic rift, that gap between human
production and the environment we exist within;
there’s still hope that, through the power
of labor, we can synthesize as best as possible
the needs of humanity and the rest of nature.
In many senses, while the world is destroyed
and billions have died, this is a very optimistic
future; eventually, the survivors’ descendants
will spread, perhaps without a need to reestablish
a destructive capitalist society.
Of course, the Romanticism of Conan has one
other trait we must touch on; the Romanticism
of a young boy. Don’t worry, all I mean
by that is that the series glorifies Conan’s
form of masculinity; there’s a purity to
it, as his supernatural strength allows him
to help Lana and others without the barriers
drawn up around adult men. In Conan, children
like Conan and Lana were literally born after
the disaster, and thus, in a certain sense,
free of that original sin known as capitalist-derived
ideology. Gender relations still exist in
this society—Miyazaki is only so radical—but
they’re purer, what some might wrongly call
more natural. The selfishness and perversity
of adult men are traits not present in Conan
himself, who’s able to help save the world
as a result of his youthfulness and sacred
bond with Lana. This level of Romanticism
hardly sticks with Miyazaki for long—as
we’ll see, it fades as he grows further
from Marxism, reappearing from time to time
in changed ways—but it’s an important
starting place for understanding him. Yet,
this optimistic, relatively Marxist work of
his was not his only one, as a year later
he’d return to the franchise he’d worked
on before, Lupin III, for his first theatrical
production.
The Castle of Cagliostro, released in 1979,
is a strange entity within the Lupin franchise,
in spite of its current place as its most
popular entry. Significantly toned down in
many regards when compared to its predecessors,
it’s a far more Romantic work. While Lupin
himself is always something of a gentleman
thief, the gentleman side is often far weaker
than the thief bit, and his perversion is
a constant element in many other Lupin series.
Here, however, it’s an almost purehearted
desire to help the damsel-in-distress, Princess
Clarisse, from the threat of arranged marriage
to her evil uncle, that motivates the majority
of his actions.
To understand this film in particular, it’s
worth thinking about what Lupin represents.
In my video on remakes last year, I mentioned
that much of the reason we love characters
like Lupin is that they hurt those we intuitively
recognize as harmful to us: the extremely
wealthy. Absorbed in a belief that capitalist
property relations are natural or just, we
can’t totally forgive Lupin—he’s still
a thief, after all—and yet his thievery
isn’t really all that bad. It’s inherently
somewhat Romantic, in fact, especially as
he has little concern for what’s done with
the wasted treasure he gets.
When Lupin nabs a stash of gold, we all recognize
that, at its core, the metal’s pretty useless
to the world; these pointless treasures have
little to no utility. Lupin takes that implicit
recognition and makes it explicit by practically
throwing it out as soon as he’s satisfied
the thrill of taking it. This is what’s
so important about him as a character, and
what’s so Romantic about it. He’s not
a Robin Hood, an outright benevolent figure
who we all recognize as basically morally
correct to his core. Robin Hood deprives the
rich of their ill-gotten wealth and returning
it to those who actually need it, something
that most people unconsciously accept as the
right thing to do, hint hint, but while Lupin
lacks this redistributive element, he can’t
be called a bad guy either; he steals from
those who deserve it purely for the sake of
it, and it’s hard not to admire a guy so
willing to do what he wants even as it upsets
those in power.
In this context, it’s worth understanding
why Cagliostro is often seen as “one last
adventure” for the Lupin crew. It’s not
the chronological last event, insofar as the
series has any consistency, and the 2018 anime
even demonstrated that quite directly. It
is, however, the symbolic “last burst”
of the Romantic thievery Lupin himself participates
in. Rather than act for his own interest on
any level, such as in his usually characteristic
pursuit of girls, he works almost purely for
Clarisse’s actual well-being after meeting
her. It’s the ultimate act of the Romantic
hero, recalling the false but memorable days
of European chivalry, and yet it’s bound
to die, just as the kingdom itself is clearly
not long for this world, sustaining its practically
medieval structure purely on account of its
small size and its irrelevance to world capitalism.
Yet, the film’s ending, which reveals that
the true treasure hidden by Clarisse’s kingdom
are ruins of a Roman city, makes clear that
this conclusion to Romantic thievery can have
a greater ending than simply saving a girl;
by taking from those who seek to do ill, in
this case the evil Count as an allegory for
the ruling classes as a whole, we can regain
the Earth as a whole, and with it the history
that they’ve cast aside, while ignoring
the meaningless, ultimately false wealth they’ve
accumulated for its own sake. This isn’t
to say the film is literally revolutionary,
of course, but in it, the death of Romanticism
isn’t seen as purely bad, even given Miyazaki’s
clear admiration of it as an aesthetic in
his show from just one year prior. Romanticism
is a reaction to the conditions of privatization
and industrialization that surrounded it,
and once those conditions fade, so too will
the movement. It’s a bittersweet ending,
and the intrusion of the police to once again
chase Lupin acts as a safety valve which returns
everything to the status quo, but the potential
for a utopian exit from our present situation
is opened up by the film, at a time where
Miyazaki’s own hope in such a revolutionary
break was still alive. His next works, however,
served to indicate his growing distrust of
such a perfect result.
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, or more
specifically, its film adaptation, may be
seen as the beginning of the end for Miyazaki’s
Marxism, and the first point at which ecological
concerns eclipsed productive ones for him.
Set a thousand years after an apocalyptic
world event, young princess Nausicaa is a
wind-rider, and travels the surrounding area
in order to scavenge what her village needs
from the environment around her, protecting
the kingdom from the toxic Sea of Corruption
and the insects who inhabit it. After a massive
airship from a neighboring kingdom crashes
in the Valley’s fields, the powerful Tolmekian
Empire arrives, killing Nausicaa’s father
before taking her with them. On this journey,
Nausicaa learns more about the most powerful
insects, the Ohmu, and is made aware of the
fact that the Sea of Corruption is purifying
the world, slowly returning it to a state
befitting pre-industrial life. As the Tolmekians
bring an ancient bioengineered being known
as a God Warrior back for a pivotal battle,
Nausicaa sacrifices herself to help a single
young Ohmu, and is then revived by the insects,
returning Christ-like to help rebuild her
kingdom in league with others.
Central to the film, far moreso than the manga
which I’ll be covering later, is the Valley
of the Wind itself. A near-constant backdrop,
almost everything our lead does is for the
sake of her kingdom. An agrarian community
built primarily on sharing due to its relative
lack of excess, there’s little sign of capitalism
or anything of the sort, unlike in the industrial
kingdom that the young prince Asbel comes
from. Life in the Valley of the Wind is far
from ideal in many ways, yet it is life, and
a nearly utopian one at that until the invasion
of the Tolmekian army. Similar in depiction
to High Harbor in Conan, what makes the Valley
of the Wind so effective as a utopia may be
that we don’t live in it. While those in
the kingdom seem happy enough, they’re beset
on all sides by more powerful forces, and
just on the border of a life-ending forest.
It’s a hard existence, one which would be
ill-fitting for most people in the 21st century.
Yet as we stare down the barrel of the climate
change gun, it’s difficult to conclude that
an agrarian life like that in Nausicaa is
a bad thing. The elements we idealize, from
the tight community to its sustainable lifestyle,
are exactly what most of us, especially those
of us in the First World, don’t have, and
they naturally lead us to understand Nausicaa’s
desire to protect it, even as we wouldn’t
want to live there ourselves. I’d hardly
wish to live in Heaven as described by many
Christians, but it’s inarguably a utopian
vision, and the same applies to the Valley
of the Wind.
At its core, the Valley of the Wind gathers
both its power and safety from, well, wind.
The strong winds in the valley prevent the
Sea of Corruption from spreading anything
beyond trace spores into the kingdom. Furthermore,
wind power shows Miyazaki’s acceptance of
some technologies; windmills are perfectly
acceptable, and while far from ideal, airships
are okay too. However, while a great many
flying machines appear in the film, there’s
a clear dichotomy between Nausicaa’s Mehve,
which primarily uses her understanding of
the wind to stay aloft, and the giant airships
which, like the one in Conan, make use of
dangerous power sources to lift great masses
of soldiers into the sky. Wind power is not
only free but natural in Miyazaki, and though
this’ll be examined more thoroughly in his
next work, the active desire to fight against
it in the form of airplanes and their ilk
clearly marks a dangerous trend in human development,
one that the director, in his love of these
vehicles, finds himself deeply ambivalent
towards.
Ultimately, the Nausicaa film, as opposed
to its manga counterpart, tells a messianic
story, yet this in itself does not deny Marxism.
Nausicaa returns from the dead, legitimately
in a crucifixion pose, yes, but in doing so
she comes armed with greater knowledge, assisting
in the improvement of production and productive
forces. Signs of a belief in labor’s power
still exist within the text, though evidently
in an increasingly pessimistic form. However,
even stronger is the focus on ecological systems,
and what we might call the assemblages within
them. Anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
defines ‘assemblages’ in this context
as “open-ended gatherings” that let us
“ask about communal effects without assuming
them.” In other words, they are connections
between various entities in diverse forms,
where individual elements are separable from
one another yet also fundamentally tied. While
human societies play a role in the natural
assemblages built around the Sea of Corruption,
they hardly take a primary role. Nausicaa
herself, in protecting the Ohmu both as a
child and then as an adult, recognizes other
life as equally valuable to human life—but,
notably, in the film it stops there, never
implying that other life is superior to human
life. Increasingly, Miyazaki’s work is growing
away from a direct focus on production and
historical materialism, towards a study of
ecological assemblages heavily informed by
animist religious philosophies such as Japan’s
folk beliefs. Still, Marxism was given one
last major chance in his following film, the
first work properly made by Ghibli.
1985's Castle in the Sky tells the tale of
two children, Pazu and Sheeta. A poor orphan
in a mining town, Pazu finds Sheeta after
she’s escaped an attempt to capture her
and her pendant, learning that she’s the
heir to the castle’s royal line. Together,
they work to escape the pirates who had chased
her previously, but ultimately find themselves
unsuccessful. However, after being recaptured,
Pazu is able to convince the pirates to help
them, and they rescue Sheeta while losing
the amulet. Going after it, they eventually
reach the eponymous castle, and after a fight
with a man who reveals himself to be Sheeta’s
cousin, the sole other heir, they defeat him,
preventing him from forcibly marrying her
and sending him to his death below. Following
this, they recognize that the castle, in spite
of its beauty, serves little purpose aside
from wonton violence and control, and they
send it to its own doom before returning to
the mining town, the two of them happy together.
Castle in the Sky draws much of its imagery
from the 18th and 19th century, and the titular
castle's true name, Laputa, comes directly
from Swift’s satirical Gulliver's Travels.
As an early steampunk work, one of relatively
few in anime, this is quite fitting. Steampunk
could, perhaps, be viewed as the antithesis
of Romanticism, and yet in another way, it’s
simply an updated rendition of it. On the
one hand, steampunk glorifies industrial society,
usually Victorian Britain and worlds like
it, crafting an aesthetic wherein the absolute
power exerted by England at the time was capable
of continuing forever. This is not to erase
the fact that steampunk, like its close neighbor
cyberpunk, was born with a skepticism towards
imperial and industrial expansion. Many steampunk
works highlight the danger that these technologies
might pose to colonial subjects, or the disgusting
labor conditions that undergird such a system
in the first place. Yet, in spite of that,
there is, as in cyberpunk, a utopian character
to these worlds, one that conflicts with the
revulsion that the Romantics felt towards
the actually-existing steampunk that surrounded
them.
However, this glorification of a past period,
one before capitalism had intruded over so
much of daily life, when there was still some
small measure of enchantment to the world,
is actually very aligned with the project
of Romanticism. The difference, of course,
is that Romanticism is increasingly untenable,
and realistically died in the 19th century
itself; while we still gaze at nature with
reverence and longing, most of us are now
three hundred years from industrial civilization’s
rise, not one hundred, and the idea of accessing
the pastoral grasslands of medieval Japan
or England is nothing more than a joke. Even
those living in rural areas feel the effects
of capitalist disenchantment on their lives,
apparent in the many deindustrialized towns
across the Global North, or in the horrifically
poor towns of the Global South; it’s a small
group which still resists with any potency.
In light of this, steampunk, which pictures
a malignantly utopian version of industrial
society, offers just a little bit of that
magic we’re missing from our lives today.
But okay, that clarifies the genre’s broader
political appeal, what does Castle in the
Sky specifically communicate? First off, it
is, as I claimed, perhaps the last work in
Miyazaki’s portfolio to focus specifically
on workers as a class, though it’s hardly
his last piece to focus on labor in less materialist
ways. Drawing inspiration from Welsh miners,
the film released shortly after Thatcher’s
infamous strike breaking moment, tied only
with Reagan’s victory over the air traffic
controllers’ union in signifying the death
of organized labor and the victory of neoliberalism
over the coming epoch. Castle in the Sky,
which argues for the dignity of workers and
their independence from those who rule them
from above, must be understood in this context.
Miyazaki claimed that a reason behind making
Castle in the Sky was the fact that, “In
Japan, the idea of workers with a true sense
of solidarity … is a thing of the past,”
responding to the horrific destruction of
the labor movement that surrounded him at
the time. It’s notable that Pazu is a worker
himself, and allegorically causes the ruling
structure and the age of Modernity it rules,
the castle in the sky itself, to come crashing
down to Earth.
Yet, reducing the film solely to its appeals
for worker solidarity and liberation would
be wrong-headed. After all, while it’s a
steampunk work, Miyazaki’s typical skepticism
with technology remains present, though perhaps
in a reduced and more Marxist form. As academic
Thomas Lamarre has pointed out, the film’s
opening shows that the cycle of wind itself
allows for technology to develop, only for
that technology to eventually work against
the wind and, inevitably, to come crashing
down. As in Nausicaa, it’s not hard to read
this sequence: human technology exists, it
will develop, and there’s no helping that.
However, we must go with the wind, not against
it, or we risk perishing ourselves, and Modernity
certainly went against the wind. What’s
interesting is that, compared to Nausicaa,
the film is far more anthropocentric; our
actions hurt ourselves in Castle in the Sky,
while in his earlier film they hurt the planet.
Perhaps they’re best understood together;
ecological danger caused by runaway technological
development will ruin both us, more specifically
those among us who are most vulnerable, and
our surrounding environments. Forging the
connection here, however loosely, between
workers and ecology is an important move,
and unfortunately one he won’t revisit for
a while. To intercede with my own politics
for a moment, I believe this linkage, which
offers to mend the metabolic rift, is the
most important thing to organize around for
the next century.
In many ways, the narrative of Pazu and Sheeta
reflects elements of both Conan and Cagliostro.
The forced marriage plot beat returns, as
does the juvenile romance between an ordinary
boy and a girl with magical powers and important
knowledge. As in those films, and in Nausicaa,
this is ultimately a story of redemption,
as humanity is saved from its past sins by
the messianic figures of Pazu and Sheeta.
To quote Marxist critic Walter Benjamin, revolutionary
redemption, “call[s] every victory which
has ever been won by the rulers into question,”
refusing to accept a history of constant domination
by the ruling class and the dangerous technology
it gestated. The utopian visions of these
films is their ability to pierce through this
fiction that the victories of the past are
always admirable, to empower the disempowered,
even as the worlds in these films, like ours,
are incredibly fraught. Before too long, this
unambiguous possibility of redemption would
be questioned, though not necessarily rejected.
Before that, however, the problem of children
became a central one for Miyazaki.
My Neighbor Totoro, more than any other Miyazaki
work, is not simply a popular movie, but an
institution, and while it’s not a franchise
as such, Totoro himself is one of the most
popular mascot characters in Japan and around
the world, rivaling the likes of Doraemon
and, of course, Pikachu. Something must be
particularly appealing, on all levels of the
art, to achieve that level of popularity,
and Totoro certainly is. Telling the story
of two girls, Satsuki and Mei, who move to
a rural village with their father to be closer
to their hospital-bound mother, they discover
a series of tree-spirits called Totoros in
the midst of their childish adventures, who
they eventually rely on when Mei becomes lost
searching for their mother after falsely getting
the impression that she’s in danger. Totoro
and the famous catbus transport them to the
hospital, where they leave a gift for their
mom. The film resolves thusly, with the girls
happy and their mother eventually safely returning
home. Compared to most Miyazaki films, it’s
light on plot, and also fairly short. Yet,
in spite of that, it holds its own politically
among the rest of his works.
Totoro is, of course, concerned with childhood,
but the question has to be asked: what kind
of childhood? As scholar Karatani Kojin claims,
“although the objective existence of children
seems self-evident, the “child” we see
today was discovered and constituted only
recently.” In other words, while young people
have always existed, often being given their
own social role, the specific role of the
child that we recognize today was formed only
in the last few hundred years, largely as
a result of the distinction capitalism has
made between private and public life, as well
as various struggles surrounding “child”
labor and education. It’s in this context
that we must understand Totoro, because it’s
specifically interested in how these socio-political
changes might shape the figure we recognize
as the child.
Totoro was released as a double feature with
Studio Ghibli’s most well-known work not
directed by Miyazaki, Isao Takahata’s Grave
of the Fireflies. In that film, a pair of
children struggle and eventually die at the
tail end of the Pacific War. The work employs
a certain irony, clearly marking the cause
of their death as being Japan’s nationalism,
while also declaring that it was their attempts
to live up to that nationalism that really
sealed their fates. For this reason I, following
Phillip Wegner, would like to propose that
Totoro is an alternate reality narrative.
While supposedly set in our fifties, Totoro
shows little intrusion from those elements
which doomed the children of its sister film;
industry is never seen, reverence of spirits
remain a part of life, and perhaps most importantly,
there’s little sign of the American occupation
which, if set when it’s said to be, would
have ended a few years prior at the latest.
Even if not literally an alternate reality
tale, a what-if of sorts, Totoro is filmically
still asking a question of how the world might
be if modernization had gone differently,
in a manner more in harmony with nature, and
how that might affect children. Given the
happiness of Satsuki and Mei, and the almost
total lack of negative events that they face,
it’s pretty obvious that any potential effect
is a positive one, as rather than being prepared
for a future of industrial labor, they instead
get to interact freely with nature.
Of course, the forest itself is also central
to any analysis of Totoro. The titular character
appears to be the spirit of the giant camphor
tree next to the girls’ house, and this
tree is part of a so-called satoyama, which
one might describe as the landscape used for
agriculture, especially the wooded regions.
While satoyama are necessary for any agricultural
production under this definition, they’ve
gained note over the last century due to attempts
to restore them, for both ecological and community
reasons; perhaps those two things can’t
be so easily separated. Certainly, the Totoros’
recognition of the girls signals that they’re
more than willing to live alongside humans
even today. Yet it must be acknowledged that
there’s also an element of national pride
to satoyama restoration, at least in many
cases, and it’s that I want to pull out.
This is a controversial claim to make, but
I believe that Totoro is, to at least some
extent, a nationalist film. Yet, it is not
the jingoist nonsense that’s attacked in
Grave of the Fireflies. Instead, it’s a
nationalism based on a Japan before modernity,
and the utopia it presents is simply the satoyama
itself, opening up room to believe that through
an engagement with past cultural values from
before Western modernity, Japan can restore
itself to a society which flies with the wind,
rather than against it. In this sense, I suppose
it’s another work concerned with redemption,
but in this case, it’s for those lost in
Japan’s pointless struggle for more and
more power, rather than the working classes
more specifically. Just as with more harmful
nationalisms, this is ultimately false, and
this mythical Japan never existed, but it
might be a useful fiction for convincing kids
to love trees.
While a Marxist-influenced skepticism towards
industrial mass society is still alive and
well within Miyazaki’s works, Totoro shows
a shying away from any specifically Marxist
framework, and an ever-growing appreciation
for a Shinto-inspired animism embodied in
the Totoros themselves. As in his other narratives,
he builds a utopia here where the disenchantment
of industrial life can be overcome, and the
lives of the girls is certainly quite enchanted.
On childhood, a topic Miyazaki will return
to, the film makes it clear that the difficulties
of growing up, which are very much real and
expressed in the girls’ fears about their
mother, are best resolved by inhabiting the
world in some authentic way, working with
the nature around us. In the end, however,
while it may be a utopian vision, Miyazaki
isn’t stupid: there’s no true escape from
Modernity, not at this stage; after all, satoyama
preservation is a distinctly modern concept,
and any satoyama that’s been restored is
certainly not the same as it was before it
needed to be in the first place. It may be
a better rendition, but it’s certainly not
an extended pre-modernity. His next film would
take a break from the focus on natural landscapes,
but it’s no less concerned with the problems
of growing up under this modern, industrial
condition.
Where Totoro is perhaps symbolically set in
an alternate reality, Kiki’s Delivery Service
literally is. Not only does it take place
in a non-existent Northern European city that’s
simultaneously somehow both Mediterranean
and French, but the technology on display
is all out of whack, and while it roughly
aligns with the 50s, the same period as Totoro,
there are a great number of objects and symbols
which cast doubt on that assumption; the only
sure thing is that it ranges somewhere from,
say, the 30s to the 70s. Starring a young
witch named Kiki who’s sent off at the age
of 13 to find herself a city to live in with
her cat familiar, Jiji, she ends up growing
disappointed when she learns that few in her
chosen town care about magic. Fortunately,
a nice baker takes her in, and she sets up
a delivery service using her broom. As various
jobs go wrong, and she finds herself unable
to connect properly to a boy interested in
her, Tombo, her depression catches up with
her, and she finds herself unable to fly or
talk to Jiji. That is, until Tombo is involved
in an airship accident and ends up hanging
far above the ground. Here, she regains her
motivation, and thus her powers, and she manages
to save him. At the end of the story, she
declares that while there’s still times
she feels sad, she’s happy with the city
she lives in.
The world of Kiki’s is one where witches
are rare enough to be a spectacle, but not
so uncommon as to be valuable after the novelty’s
worn off. Truly, compared to Totoro, it’s
a disenchanted world. No wonder, then, that
Kiki finds herself depressed; there’s little
use for magic when we have modern technology.
Not all of it is directly portrayed, but industrial
society comes with its consequences; medicine,
flight, so many things once best kept in the
domain of witchcraft are now achieved through
scientific rationality. Even Kiki’s mother,
a witch herself, measures her potions like
a chemist, and for whatever value that may
bring—and certainly there is some—there’s
a loss to it as well. Surely, Kiki’s ancestors
had an easier time, living in an age where
witches served a real utility. This disenchantment
of modern capitalist society is clearly marked
as akin to the disenchantment of adolescence
and artistry in Modernity; Kiki is shocked
by all of this at 13, just as a great many
teenagers are forced to understand, having
left true childhood, something of what the
world’s like, losing much of their childish
wonder in an ultimately bittersweet move.
Would Kiki be able to see the Totoros? Who
can say, but it’d certainly be more difficult
for her than it was for Satsuki and Mei, just
as it’s easier for them to notice what still
remains of magic in our society. The airship
disaster at the end of the film, which takes
lines directly from our world’s famous Hindenburg
disaster, drives this point home; Modernity
is fundamentally disastrous, causing far more
problems than it claims to solve. Its lies
of continuing enchantment will always, inevitably
die, but who are you to stop them?
Yet, as always, there are utopian elements
in this world as well. It’s seemingly at
peace, and where intercontinental passenger
airships were sent to the farm in our world
after the Hindenburg disaster in 1937, they
continue well into the 50s here. Indeed, while
large industry is alluded to, and surely must
exist for the sort of city which relies heavily
on automobile transit, it’s never shown
in any great detail; the best examples of
labor we see are Kiki’s deliveries, Tombo’s
plane construction, and the bakery. What ties
all of these together? Well, they’re relatively
independent ventures, and yet they connect
those around them, creating a web, perhaps
even an assemblage of producers. Of course,
this is obviously a capitalist society, so
it’s not the union of producers Marx discussed,
but that’s actually essential. In Kiki’s,
the importance of labor is absolutely central;
it’s upon feeling as if she can’t accomplish
what she’s meant to that Kiki grows depressed,
and finding a job that connects you to a joyous
environment is clearly one of the main tasks
for young witches. Yet, what’s noticeably
absent here is any critical eye towards labor
itself; certainly, the workers in Castle in
the Sky are idealized, yet their plight is
apparent as well. No such thing is true in
Kiki’s, because while the main characters
all perform labor, they are certainly not
a proletariat, lacking any conception of what
class they might be a part of, or any real
bosses to speak of. While Miyazaki may not
have totally abandoned Marxism at this point—his
interviews are slightly vague on exactly when
this occurred—it no longer held any real
presence in his films by Kiki’s.
As a Marxist myself, it may sound as if I
believe this is a negative development for
the film in relation to his past works, but
I’d argue that it’s actually not; the
appeal of the movie lies chiefly in the relative
freedom Kiki possesses, both due to the freeing
power of flight, and the freedom inherent
in lacking hierarchy. If only so many could
avoid feeling exploited in their labor, then
perhaps depression would be so much easier
to overcome; at least, that’s what the film
says, and while this is a romanticized view
of artistic labor more likely to come from
a successful director like Miyazaki than a
poor in-betweener, it still has some merit
to it. Of course, it’s got some realism
as well; Kiki does not overcome her depression,
not entirely, and it’s not the labor alone
that connects Kiki to her surrounding environment,
but the humans she interacts with because
of her labor, those who extend their arms
to pull her up when she’s feeling down.
Without an active attempt by those she works
for, Kiki actually finds her work quite alienating
at points, as she conveys packages she has
no connection to. As I said earlier, this
is in many ways a depiction of an assemblage,
which all cities might be said to be in a
certain way, and it’s without a doubt Miyazaki’s
kindest depiction of the urban landscape;
it makes a fitting pair with Totoro’s satoyama.
Ready to leave both urban and rural spaces
behind in the last of this string of nostalgic
films, his next work would directly tackle
the issue of nostalgia itself, with fascism’s
approach as a key backdrop.
1992’s Porco Rosso is set in the early 30s,
a time where Italian and German fascism are
growing increasingly powerful and the Depression
has its grip on most of the world. A World
War I veteran and bounty hunter, Porco Rosso,
who’s been transformed into a pig by a curse,
attempts to avoid arrest by the fascist authorities.
Along the way, he meets with his lost love
Gina, now a singer, and Fio, a young airplane
mechanic who comes to develop a crush on him.
Curtis, a man interested in both women, eventually
ends up dueling Marco, Porco Rosso’s real
name, for Fio’s hand, and loses before the
fascist air force arrives in order to shut
them all down.
Perhaps the most famous line in this film
is Marco’s statement where, when asked to
return to the air force he responds, “I’d
rather be a pig than a fascist.” Obviously,
this is a hilarious quote in itself, one made
even funnier when you learn that Miyazaki
made a comic wherein supposedly heroic Nazi
tank drivers were drawn as pigs, and it’s
also one which clearly signifies that Marco,
in spite of his fairly serious misogyny and
status as a World War I hero, is not the kind
of man who’d be caught dead working for
Mussolini or some nebulous idea of the reborn
nation. Yes, the film is obviously antifa
propaganda, that’s inarguable. However,
what I think is important here is that, to
a large extent, fascism in Porco Rosso is
boiled down to its aesthetic. It’s dark,
seemingly powerful, and based on raw numbers,
not on any so-called “authentic” qualities
of those who abide by it or by any purity
in their culture. There is no joy to being
a fascist; even a creature as ugly as a pig—and
while real pigs can be quite cute, Marco is
one nasty lookin’ dude—is still a lot
prettier than a fascist. For most ideologies,
this would be a pretty facile argument, yet
so much of fascism’s appeal lies in its
aesthetic, it’s such an, as Walter Benjamin
declared, aestheticization of politics itself,
that there’s real power in mocking its looks
and charm. After all, it only takes some leaked
audio to see what really lies beneath the
surface of a fascist’s charming rhetoric
and fashy—I mean flashy—facade.
So, what does Porco Rosso pose against fascism?
Well, I don’t think I need to tell you that
it’s Romanticism, that old aesthetic that
Miyazaki hadn’t truly embraced in proper
form since Cagliostro, even as he’d taken
elements of it for Castle in the Sky and Kiki’s.
Certainly, the work is more critical of this
Romanticism than his past material was. Porco’s
sexism, as well as the overall sexism of the
male characters, is directly tied up with
their particular attitude, the same attitude
which allows them to live as free spirits
while the most atrocious ideology in human
history gains power. While Miyazaki, and perhaps
most viewers, find this misogyny charming,
it’s certainly negative, and while I’m
not of the opinion that we should outright
call Miyazaki a feminist, his works wouldn’t
stoop that low. Yet, in spite of this, and
other concerns, it’s still a Romantic film
at heart. And, as long as you’re not willing
to put your life on the line and face the
fascists head on, perhaps that’s the best
weapon you’ve got.
After all, Fascism harkens back to a nonexistent
past, one more in tune with the environment
and the world as a whole, and Romanticism
does the same without the baggage of national
genocide on its hands. Both aesthetics will
propagandize using pastoral vistas, and both,
while calling back to pre-modern times, could
only ever arise in a modern state where going
back is impossible, but for however many faults
Romanticism may have, its aesthetic is at
least a prettier lie. Yet, ultimately, it’s
still a thing of the past; it’s wonderful,
and Miyazaki clearly admires it, but it’s
utterly cut short by the arrival of the fascists.
An unproblematic Romanticism was murdered
as soon as the reactionary powers took elements
of it for their own cruel ends. It’s sad,
but it’s how things go.
How does this Romanticism tie into airflight,
though? Airplanes are clearly a complicated
subject for Miyazaki; as one of his later
films will detail further, they’re designed
and produced for war and death, and yet they
remain beautiful. They maintain the ability
to fly both with the wind and against it.
Perhaps airplanes are Modernity, and it’s
for that reason that Miyazaki works so hard
to redeem them, even as he never learns to
truly do so. As time goes on, he develops
into an increasingly anti-modernist director,
perhaps to the extent you could call him an
anarcho-pastoralist or something of the sort,
and yet he cannot give it up. The airplane,
the city, they exist. They can’t be erased.
All we can do as those who recognize this
is use them to fly freely, rather than to
box our enemies in.
Lastly, I think it’s necessary, before moving
on, to touch on labor in Porco Rosso. Even
this is marked with the tinge of Romanticism,
as the airplane shop run by Fio’s grandfather
is a happy, though very difficult place. Yet,
with the Depression raging, unemployment is
a serious issue—the grandfather’s sons
ditched to find work elsewhere—and it’s
not as if no complaints are voiced; those
working are simply women, who’d have little
hope of other work in the first place. As
in Kiki’s, labor certainly does build connections
here, but the potential harm of this is not
overlooked; after all, while Fio is able to
become the head at the story’s conclusion,
toppling the patriarchal nature of the company,
it’s still, in the last, an airplane manufacturer,
likely to make machines for Mussolini’s
forces. A good life in this film is not one
free of problems or potential harm, but one
where you get by with what you’ve got, and
push the boundaries to ensure that what you’ve
got never shrinks too small. Such an optimistic
ending must’ve been a nice change of pace
for those simultaneously reading Miyazaki’s
almost-finished Nausicaa manga, which took
sharp and misanthropic turns as it continued
past the anime.
Nausicaa's manga is a dark work, finished
as it was in 1994, three years after the fall
of the Soviet Union. By the time of its completion,
Miyazaki had lost all faith in Marxism. Indeed,
he said after the fact that, “I don’t
think I abandoned Marxism because of any change
in my position within society—on the contrary,
I feel that it came from having written Nausicaa.”
Similarly, he’s mentioned that the fall
of the USSR was less impactful to his ideology
than Nausicaa. Of course, I don’t believe
we can trust this straightforwardly. A person’s
own art is not some external eldritch horror
which enters their mind and changes them;
Miyazaki was already primed for a political
shift as he wrote the manga, affected by outside
forces, one of which likely was his own changing
class position, and through the manga he discovered
how to articulate his new beliefs. Still,
Nausicaa occupies a special position in his
portfolio due to this; not only is it arguably
his longest work, his most epic in scale,
and ultimately his greatest, but over the
course of its run, the immediate shift in
Miyazaki’s ideology can be seen. For this
reason, I believe it deserves particular attention.
The Nausicaa manga diverges from the anime
practically from page one, but to simplify
things, most of the events in the film happen
in the manga as well, though the God Warrior
is never awakened by Tolmekia, and rather
than survivors from Asbel’s kingdom, the
Tolmekian army is faced up against the Dorok
Principalities, a highly religious group whose
leader, the Holy Emperor, dominates the people
with his psychic powers. In addition to the
Doroks and the Tolmekians stand the worm-handlers,
a pariah group used as mercenaries, and the
Forest People, a small collection of humans
who live in harmony with the Sea of Decay.
While the story is too epic to fully recap
here, I’ll deliver the briefest explanation
I can: rather than die and be revived as in
the film, Nausicaa is simply injured and healed.
Eventually, she comes face-to-face with a
Dorok-engineered mold which creates a dangerous
miasma, attracting the Ohmu, who sacrifice
themselves to stop the mold and create a new
Sea of Decay. Protected by the insects, Nausicaa
learns the truth of the world; in the center
of the Sea of Decay lies a pure land, a Romantic
dreamworld. Following this, Nausicaa helps
awaken a God Warrior, which treats her as
her mother even as it spews radiation all
around it. On the way to the Dorok central
city, Nausicaa discovers a strange place where
all the treasures of Western civilization
still exist; she abandons it nonetheless after
learning that the humans of her time can’t
live in the land purified by the Sea of Decay.
Once at the city, she enters the monolithic
Crypt, where she confronts the AI programmed
by the scientists of industrial society. There,
it’s revealed that all of Earth was engineered,
that the humans of Nausicaa’s time are altered
to be able to live in the polluted atmosphere,
and that the Seven Days of Fire which destroyed
the world were an intentional attempt at resetting
it by a group of ecologists. The AI keeps
the humans of industrial society in the Crpyt,
ready to release them when the Sea has spread
far enough. Despite protestations, Nausicaa
destroys this, admitting that even though
she may doom humanity, she’s not willing
to cling to a false hope created by the technology
that rendered the world as it was. In her
final words, she urges the remainder of humanity
to live in spite of hardship.
Rather than the messianic figure of the film,
the Nausicaa of the manga is an apocalyptic
woman, and as Susan Napier has rightfully
pointed out, very shamanistic. Central to
Nausicaa’s journey is her ability to interact
across multiple planes and between multiple
types of being; she can communicate with bugs,
the God Warrior, the AI, and even the dead,
in various ways. Her ability to forge assemblages
beyond the material is what gives her the
chance to decide the world’s future. Yet,
using this, she makes no attempt at crafting
some sort of agrarian Millenium Kingdom as
in the film. Indeed, she never returns to
the Valley of the Wind in spite of being its
Queen for most of the story. Perhaps the point
at which Miyazaki was the most pessimistic,
having seen the potential for world socialism
fall into ash with nothing to show for it,
and confronted with the human population’s
continued refusal to address pressing ecological
concerns, the manga is increasingly difficult
to read towards its latter half; there’s
almost no hope for utopian escape here, and
Nausicaa throws away all the chances at it
that she’s presented with. In her mind,
neither a Romantic fantasyland nor a bio-engineered
redemption is worth it as long as they bear
the mark of Modernity. Yet, this is what makes
Nausicaa an endlessly enduring work.
Within the Crpyt, Nausicaa replies to the
AI, which asks if she’s willing to cause
mass extinction, with these words, “Your
question is laughable. We have lived all these
centuries with the Sea of Corruption. Extinction
has long since become a part of our lives.”
This exchange is an extremely realist position,
lacking the utopian vision Nausicaa displayed
in the past. Simultaneously, it excuses her
actions, writing the prevention of extinction
off as impossible, while also providing its
own sort of hope. After all, humanity and
other species, through their cooperative assemblages,
have continued in the time of mass death.
Nausicaa may be inviting doom, but at least
she’s not holding out hope for some magic
solution.
Moreso now than in 1994, we are facing down
this exact same conundrum. The idea of preventing
another great mass extinction event is a fantasy,
utterly impossible to actually achieve. For
whatever we damage we can curtail, and there’s
still great room to mitigate things, we are
already fucked. Hundreds of millions of deaths
are practically guaranteed at this point;
our goal must be to prevent that number from
growing to billions. The struggle between
the Tolmekians and the Doroks over scraps,
as the environment only further degrades by
their actions which don’t even attempt to
build a better world, is not far off from
the events currently caused by the capitalist
classes least at risk from the coming apocalypse.
Yet, for all this, we must take heed of Nausicaa’s
word; we must live. What else are we to do,
give in and die? No, humanity has made it
through a great deal, and extinction is all
around us. It has become inherent to our lives.
But we must remember that after saying this,
Nausicaa returns and helps those still left,
trying to craft a humanity, a world that can
survive what’s to come. Surely, that’s
possible for those of us still in the 21st-century
as well.
But this utopian belief in the ability of
humanity to power through is not all the manga
contains. No, it also has a far darker side
than even that; Nausicaa very well may have
consigned humanity to oblivion, and if so,
that might not be entirely bad. Where the
film established other life as equal to humans,
in the manga it clearly becomes superior.
Fail as they might, other species attempt
to build mutual assemblages, at least on an
ecosystemic level if not an individual one.
Humans, even in the twilight of their existence
as a group, continue to squabble over ever-decreasing
amounts of land, desperate to exert their
own power, to the point they’ll destroy
the land itself to get what they want. Hell,
to “save” humanity, a group of scientists
were willing to temporarily doom the Earth.
How is this a species worth saving? There’s
a certain antipathy towards the concept of
change just as prevalent in Nausicaa as its
hope for our survival, a belief that we can
only make things worse. Perhaps it’s right.
Nonetheless, it’s an attitude that, if universally
adopted, would doom us all. It’s something
we must resist, and in his own unique way,
I believe Miyazaki recognizes that. Yet, it’s
hard to deny the appeal of giving up when
the obstacles seem so insurmountable and decided
by past actions.
Regardless, one thing is clear in this manga;
the idea of Western civilization must be left
behind. It may not be so easy to do so entirely,
after all, Nausicaa continues to fly using
machines derived ultimately from our time,
yet for whatever technologies we may borrow,
we can’t accept the system behind them.
Those profit-motivated inventions are dangerous;
Nausicaa leaves behind the European paradise
for a reason, as no matter how beautiful the
music stored there may be, it comes with the
scourge of imperialism, colonialism, and violence,
no longer capable of redemption in a world
long since ravaged. No, animism and extremely
local politics are back in, a reaction to
the faltering belief of both Miyazaki and
the world as a whole in the ability to meaningfully
direct large, structural change. As much as
I still believe in the workers’ revolution
myself, I find myself considering we may not
have enough time on my darker days. Perhaps
we are living in the twilight of humanity,
chilling as that is to imagine. It’s that
mood that Nausicaa taps into so perfectly,
making it Miyazaki’s best work, and he would
never again come so face-to-face with utter
despair. This conclusion would be a tough
act to follow, and due to shifts at Ghibli
it took a while, but for his next work, the
director continued many of Nausicaa’s thematic
impulses, while setting them in the past rather
than the future.
1997’s Princess Mononoke is particular in
that, unlike Miyazaki’s other works, it’s
set entirely before modernity took hold. Occuring
in a somewhat anachronistic version of the
Muromachi Period, which lasted from the 14th
to the 16th centuries, the main character,
Ashitaka, is a prince of the sole surviving
Emishi tribe, which was otherwise wiped out
centuries prior by imperial rule. When a demon
pig attacks the village, Ashitaka’s arm
is corrupted in fighting it, and he’s banished
for the protection of his homeland, told to
look for a cure with “eyes unclouded”.
After a shady monk tells him to seek help
from a powerful Forest Spirit, he encounters
a fight between gun-wielding men, led by the
powerful Lady Eboshi, and a girl, San, who
identifies with and fights alongside wolf
gods. Taken in by Lady Eboshi, Ashitaka learns
that her industrializing Irontown is damaging
the ecosystem, but simultaneously benefiting
those who truly need support. After saving
San from the town, Ashitaka is injured, and
healed by the Forest Spirit. It’s revealed
that Eboshi is working with the monk to deliver
the Spirit’s skull to the Emperor in return
for Irontown’s continued autonomy, and her
forces decimate the remaining spirits who
fight against her. As the Forest Spirit’s
head is stolen, it destroys the entire land,
unable to serve the recuperative role it had
when it was whole. However, Ashitaka and San
work together and return its head, and though
it still dies, it heals the land in doing
so. Rather than stick together, Ashitaka stays
with Eboshi to rebuild a better version of
the town, while San returns to the forest,
though they promise to meet again.
The world Ashitaka comes from is Edenic, a
relatively untouched land free of the sin
that the outside world is capable of bringing.
His village’s structure is closely aligned
with primitive communism, that period of human
existence which occurred before the introduction
of a class system, which has always played
a role as a paradise which, through the messianic
power of revolution, we can regain in new
and improved form. Yet, Ashitaka himself is
never to return to the village after leaving
it; this revolutionary redemption is not a
literal return, and the best we can do for
those of the past is respect the lives they
lived and move to make our own world better.
Indeed, the ending of the Nausicaa manga is
reversed here; while Ashitaka also demands
that life continue on, he does so by working
with Eboshi’s group to build new settlements.
With eyes unclouded, he can look at the past
for what it is, a terrible series of tragedies
with some kernel of salvageable beauty still
held within them. Despite almost ruining the
land for generations, Eboshi is worth working
with, because what else is to be done? Ironically,
this is the same as Nausicaa’s ending in
action, as she too leaves to build a better
world, yet it’s tonally so different that
the message it’s sending feels worlds apart.
Yet, like Nausicaa, the seeming inevitability
of all the events is not lost on the film.
Rather, it’s shockingly progressive, not
in the sense of egalitarian, or leftist, but
in that it understands the value of quote-unquote
“progress”, something many Marxists, funnily
enough, could not despise less. Eboshi is
an objectively positive figure to many of
those around her. She employs lepers, sex
workers, and others with no place left to
go. At a time where imperial rule is minimal,
where a new shogun has not yet stabilized
power and roving bandits are running roughshod
on much of the countryside, she’s built
a self-reliant community capable of resisting
attempts at subjugation. Ashitaka recognizes
that her actions against the Forest Spirit
must be opposed, and for that reason he fights
against her. Yet, this does not mean she needs
to be unilaterally cast aside. She’s no
fascist, and learning from what’s occurred,
she has the potential to build a truly utopian
community with Ashitaka’s help.
The Emishi village from which the boy descended
may not be returned to, but another land may
be. Perhaps, in an ideal world, this industrialization
would simply not occur. The ultimate death
of the Forest Spirit, the inevitable demystification
already ongoing, certainly signals that as
the case, and Eboshi isn’t cautious in amplifying
the metabolic rift that I spoke of earlier
in the video, that industrial division between
humans and the environment, though again,
she does so with the best of intent, unlike
most historical industrializers. Yet, we can’t
stop the wheels of history merely by wishing
for it to be so. No, the ethnic minorities,
the outcasts, the traumatized, the poor, they’re
capable of taking hold of history and bending
it to their will, but there’s certainly
no going back. Perhaps through Ashitaka, the
angel who can gaze back at Paradise, knowing
what we lost in our fall, while still understanding
how to move forward, a healthier relationship
to the coming Modernity can be built.
The spirits of the forest, as in Miyazaki’s
other works, are part of natural assemblages,
ones worth revering, and the possibility of
doing so while embracing some elements of
Modernity is made blatant in Ashitaka himself.
Arguably, the film goes too far in its optimism;
it’s unclear what kind of world Ashitaka
and Eboshi will build, and who’s to say
if the power attained by the oppressed under
Irontown’s old regime can be maintained?
Yet, there is at the core a hope for humanity;
we can see with eyes unclouded, if we absolutely
try our best at doing so. San is able to reconcile
with humans because Ashitaka proves that the
relationship between human production and
natural ecosystems need not be so antagonistic,
that the metabolic rift isn’t fundamental
to human life, but to certain ways in which
it can be organized. Doubtlessly, there’ll
be changes. Nothing is static, even when humans
aren’t part of the picture. Yet, a healthy
relationship is possible. All is not lost.
And after Nausicaa, that’s a very important
thing to hear. Miyazaki would remain in Japan
with his next film, once again taking a highly
critical but still loving look at the nature
of that dangerous word we call progress.
2001’s Spirited Away is by far Miyazaki’s
most popular work worldwide, and took a chance
to return to the present. Set in the late
90s or so, after the Japanese asset bubble
popped, ending 40 years of growth and plunging
the country into its so-called ‘Lost Decade’,
a girl named Chihiro is moving with her family
to their new home in the suburbs. As her dad
attempts to take a “shortcut”, they end
up in a supposedly abandoned amusement park
stocked with food, which both parents eat
before promptly transforming into pigs. Realizing
the place isn’t so abandoned, Chihiro is
brought along by a boy named Haku, and ends
up working in a massive spirit bathhouse.
Here, the establishment’s leader, Yubaba,
takes her name as a way to chain her, renaming
her ‘Sen’. Realizing that Haku needs his
name back to be free, she ingratiates herself,
working hard alongside the other employees
who service patrons including gods and spirits.
After a strange spirit called No-Face takes
a liking to her, and grows upset when she
doesn’t respond, she travels outside the
bathhouse, leaving No-Face with Yubaba’s
sister, Zeniba. On the way back, Chihiro recalls
Haku’s name, realizing he’s the spirit
of a river she fell into years prior. Having
returned, Chihiro retrieves her name from
Yubaba and promises to meet Haku again, before
leaving with her parents, now restored to
humans.
While no time is actually spent there, the
film opens alongside a suburb, one that Chihiro’s
parents plan to move into. A row of virtually
identical houses, minus the paint, there’s
nothing appealing about them, yet they feel
the need to buy into the system anyway. Spirited
Away is deeply concerned with consumption,
specifically overconsumption, and the negative
effect it has on our relationship to the world.
Upon arriving at the supposed amusement park,
Chihiro’s father comments that it’s one
of many places shut down after the bubble
crashed. The dreams of true economic prosperity,
and the material pleasures that would lead
to, are dead. Yet, upon finding food, they
eat anyway, just as they buy into the Modernist
imposition to buy a house in the suburbs even
as the actual reason for doing so has become
quite vague. Here, there’s consumption without
reason or caution. While this is clearly a
moral failing—they’re not made into pigs
for no reason after all—there is a sense
that these issues are structural, and not
merely individual, yet that’s not apparent
until No-Face walks on frame.
Upon entering the bathhouse with the use of
fake gold, No-Face goes on a consumptive rampage.
He learns to speak by eating a little froggy
boi, and sucks up anyone who upsets him, though
they first have to consume a commodity he
offers for him to do so. Eventually, he grows
to a massive size, and bids Chihiro to come
to his room. Now, this scene, one that’s
deeply uncomfortable, is clearly meant to
evoke a sense of prostitution. You don’t
call young girls to your secluded room in
a bathhouse without that intent, and while
that’s not what No-Face specifically wants,
it’s clearly what it represents. In other
words, No-Face signifies an evolved form of
consumption from Chihiro’s parents, where
even other people have become just one part
of the broader platter of things to devour.
And how is he broken from this? Well, he loses
his mass as Chihiro refuses to consume his
gift herself and then causes him to throw
up what he’s consumed. With the addition
of the kindness she shows in allowing him
to come with her, he ultimately manages to
find kindness himself after becoming Zeniba’s
spinner and presenting Chihiro with a hairband
that he himself produced. In other words,
it’s through human connections, ones often
fostered through labor, that happiness can
truly be discovered, not through participation
in the realm of commodity consumption. Local,
small-scale trade, is what this film promotes.
Yes, it’s a return to the same ideas that
we saw in Kiki’s!
Yet, there’s also something of Mononoke
in this film. Like that work, it’s set at
a time of transition; not literally, but artistically.
The bathhouse is not feudal, it’s got a
smokestack and employs complex, industrial
machinery, yet it’s not a place that’s
on the cusp of the 21st century. Rather, its
aesthetics are more Meiji-era in appearance.
As a result of this intentionally transitionary
time period, I believe this film is also one
worth reading with eyes unclouded, viewing
it through the lens of progress. Even on the
border of absolute suburban hell, a world
of spirits still exists, though it’s become
detached enough from the disenchanted world
that humans rarely interact with it. As human
society has changed, so has spirit society,
and that’s not wholly negative. The bathhouse
would not have been possible in the Forest
Spirit’s time, and given the soothing role
it serves for tired spirits, perhaps some
elements of society’s progression have been
good. Over Mononoke and this film’s runs,
Miyazaki has, in spite of his serious hesitance
towards modern technology, ultimately found
a way to embrace it, if not whole-heartedly.
Understood with the context of Nausicaa, this
makes sense; the only way to leave modernity,
after the abandonment of Marxism, is apocalypse,
and for however likely that may seem, it’s
not the preferable option.
Haku and Chihiro forge as strong a connection
as Sen and her wolf-mother did, in spite of
meeting 500 years later. Utopia here is figured
not as the bathhouse itself, which while warm
and inviting has a great many downsides, but
the connections forged there and elsewhere.
The raw fact of progress is not positive,
but it opens space for encouraging potentials.
In what form exists the work’s negative
thoughts, then? Well, of course, the answer
is once again overconsumption. Nothing, changes,
and ultimately, while Chihiro is affected
by the experience, her parents still move
her into the suburbs, none the wiser, consuming
as much as they ever have. Chihiro is no revolutionary,
and in most of his works, Miyazaki seems to
caution that revolution itself may not even
be preferable. But hey, you can get a river
dragon boyfriend if you’re willing to reach
beyond the consumptive habits of your world,
and that sounds like a pretty great deal to
me. The film resonated unlike any other outside
Japan, and earned an Academy Award at the
Oscars, which Miyazaki declined attending
in order to protest the Iraq War. This conflict
would figure directly into his next work.
Howl’s Moving Castle is a strange film.
Frankly pulling together more elements than
it actually has the time to manage, it’s
an adaptation of a book fairly widely regarded
as better all around. In adapting the original
work, Miyazaki subbed out a focus on class
dynamics for an attention to war, and the
compassion needed to fight against it. At
the start of the story, a young hat-maker
named Sophie meets a wizard named Howl, after
which a witch turns her into an old woman.
To break this curse, Sophie leaves her town,
and ends up in Howl’s titular moving castle,
a steam and magic powered monstrosity. They
grow closer, and Sophie is sent to the King
of her nation, which is making war with a
neighboring kingdom through industrialized
wizardry, where she tells him that Howl can’t
fight. After things take a turn for the worse,
Howl arrives to save Sophie and she learns
that he’s been transforming into a powerful
bird-man to lessen the war’s damage, at
the cost of his own body. When Sophie’s
town is attacked, Howl leaves to defend it,
while Calcifer, the fire demon powering the
castle, is doused, breaking the castle apart.
Sophie and Howl reunite, with the girl placing
Howl’s stolen heart back inside him, breaking
her curse. Following this, the war is ended
by the King’s mother, the real power in
the kingdom, and Sophie and Howl fly off together.
So, the first thing that must be mentioned
for this film is that Howl is, let’s see
here, the fact that Howl is absurdly hot.
No, wait, it’s the Iraq War, sorry. An obvious
imperialist conflict, it was far from the
only event to inspire the film—Miyazaki
surely had not forgotten Japan’s own wars—yet
it’s hard to deny America's influence on
it. While the kingdom it’s set in is far
more European than American, the drive for
war even where it’s irrational certainly
seems to apply both to the fictional nation
and to the real world’s most powerful empire
in history. Yet, perhaps tellingly, the war
here is hardly based on material concerns
at all, while American ventures are universally
conducted for economic and political interests,
in the name of preserving the empire’s hegemony.
It’s not a stronger enemy that prevents
war but compassion, the kindness that Sophie
shows to Howl and others, and it’s the lack
of that compassion that fuels it. Certainly,
the situation itself creates a lack of compassion.
Were war not on the table, the wizards who
signed up to bomb other countries surely would’ve
been more hesitant. Yet, nonetheless, this
is ultimately nothing more than a criticism
of moral failing on the part of jingoists.
This is part of where the film falters—compared
to the portrayal of conflict in Mononoke,
it’s disappointingly unnuanced.
Yet focusing on war alone is insufficient;
the castle itself must be paid attention to.
The animation is central here; at all times,
the thing seems as if it’s about to fall
apart, and yet, literally by magic, it fails
to do so. It’s a definitively modern building,
or vehicle, depending on how you’d like
to refer to it, and yet it’s nevertheless
enchanted. Miyazaki is quite fond of these
early 20th century settings, and perhaps the
reason why is how unfixed they are. It may
be too late to steer industrial society in
a beneficial direction, or at least far more
difficult, but there’s always a chance in
the past. The magic of the castle comes from
Calcifer, who is after all a fire demon, representing
a natural, elemental force, and it’s through
interacting with him that’s it’s kept
stable. Perhaps, if we maintain our belief
in the enchanted, these machines which cause
us so much trouble in the here-and-now can
be managed. Yet, it’s not so easy to conclude
that’s the point of the castle. In its bizarre
construction, its strange amalgamation of
disparate elements that hardly seem to fit
together, there’s a certain satire of real
industrial machines, and perhaps even steampunk
itself. After all, while the animation is
certainly impressive, the layering of the
parts gorgeous, who could really claim to
find the castle itself beautiful? While not
a machine of war—Howl is a pacifist, after
all—it’s certainly in line with those
combat oriented-vehicles Miyazaki himself
is so fond of. The castle gives the film a
simultaneously hopeful and satirically cynical
view on the possibility of redeeming industrial
machinery, perfectly appropriate for this
state of Miyazaki’s career.
Ironically, after turning from the supposed
anthropocentrism of Marxism during the writing
of Nausicaa, his films only became more humanist,
for good and for ill. Howl’s falters with
almost everything it tries to say, in spite
of how ultimately simple each of its messages
are. For a director so talented at conveying
nuance, it’s a disappointing work, though
it has a hot boy so who can really say whether
it’s good or bad. His next film would be
more nuanced, though in turn it’d also be
far simpler.
Ponyo released in 2008, and was the first
Miyazaki film I remember seeing trailers for—thanks
for that one, Disney Channel. At its heart,
it might be the simplest of Miyazaki’s films,
even moreso than Totoro. A small fish girl
escapes from her wizard father and is saved
by a young boy named Sosuke, who promptly
names her Ponyo. They spend some time together
before the father, Fujimoto, retrieves her,
though by then she’s been altered by human
affection, unwilling to be called by her birth
name, and when he’s gone she escapes again,
using magic to make herself human. Unfortunately,
this magic causes a global catastrophe as
tsunamis wreak havoc, but Sosuke and Ponyo
reunite. With nature imbalanced, the two young
lovebirds leave to find Sosuke’s mom. When
they find her, Ponyo’s goddess mother, verifying
their love, allows Ponyo to permanently become
a human, returning the balance of nature to
the world.
While ecology and childhood return as focal
points in this film, I must be honest with
you: this movie has the least to say of anything
the man’s directed. That doesn’t mean
that it communicates nothing, it certainly
does, but so many of the themes are repackaged
versions of ideas he’s already displayed
in a more complex form, that going through
every major point would just be a retread,
primarily of the Totoro section. This isn’t
a criticism of the film per se, as a heady
discussion simply isn’t one of its priorities,
but it does make it challenging to analyze
after already talking above 10 other films.
So, to avoid that, I’ll just pick out those
elements of the movie I found the most interesting
in regards to politics.
Ponyo is, of course, about children, and childish
love. In the context of Howl’s as his previous
work, both films speak to the importance of
compassion, and frame the showcasing of it
as something affected by age. Both children
and the elderly are, perhaps, more likely
to be compassionate than those who’ve become
jaded to the world, but haven’t yet reached
the final stage of their lives. Given Kiki’s,
adolescence may be the point at which compassion
can level off in our societies, though it
would, of course, be silly to imply that teenagers
and adults can never be kind. The need to
fulfill the role given to normal adults, of
constant labor until you’re too old to continue,
seems not to make the kindest people.
Yet, while Sosuke and Ponyo are inarguably
the protagonists, and certainly gain from
their literally enchanted lives as children,
parenthood figures into this film to a far
greater degree than it did in Totoro. Sosuke’s
mother, Lisa, is a regular presence throughout
the film, successfully taking care of her
son as her husband sails the seas, granting
Sosuke enough freedom to grow into his own,
healthy person, while still providing enough
guidance to help him survive. It’s this
that Ponyo’s father, Fujimoto, doesn’t
do, boxing Ponyo in and attempting to control
her. While this is a simple enough message
on its own, “give your children some freedom
but not too much, mmkay,” it says far more
once connected to ecology. Much of Fujimoto’s
justification for keeping Ponyo under his
watch is the environmental impact that’ll
occur if she escapes and becomes a human;
on one level, he’s right, given the disaster.
Yet, ultimately, when her mother, Gran Mamare,
allows her to transform, nature becomes balanced
again. In Fujimoto’s concern for the environment,
he becomes too controlling of it, and with
that move, definitively sets the world on
the actual path for disaster. Much as there’s
no way to avoid parenting a child, nothing
can be done to avoid influencing the environment
we inhabit, yet if we try and micromanage
it, to play God, then we might end up ruining
what we were trying to save in the first place.
However, through this view, is the film not
incredibly optimistic? After all, nature ultimately
rights itself; in Spirited Away, on the other
hand, Haku’s river remained dried up. Indeed,
the entire island on which it’s set is very
communal, and the world experienced during
the disaster is hardly an awful one. Everyone
seems to get along, and it’s presented in
a somewhat strangely pleasant tone. One might
say that through struggle, greater connections
can be built, but I’m not quite sure that’s
right. After all, the connections existed
prior. Instead, I view it as a very apathetic
perspective. The world might end, it might
not, and we can and should try and steer it
away from doing so. But, well, if we’re
good people, we can build a fine society even
if it ultimately does. Still, the faith shown
in Ponyo and Sosuke provides great hope for
future generations, to a far greater extent
than one might expect from Miyazaki’s curmudgeonly
image—this is, after all, a man who made
Spirited Away because he thought his friend’s
daughter was a brat. Next, in his latest film
to date, Miyazaki would once again return
to the ideas that preoccupied his early career,
while finally engaging with the conflict that’s
fueled so much of his politics.
In 2013’s The Wind Rises, Jiro Horikoshi,
a real historical figure, has a dream in which
he encounters a famous Italian plane designer
which spurs him to pursue engineering. He
leaves for university, helps a girl after
the Great Kanto Earthquake, and makes his
way into Mitsubishi’s airplane company.
While Jiro has no interest in war, the fact
of the plane’s eventual purpose hardly bothers
him at this stage. After growing frustrated
with Japan’s seeming backwardness, exemplified
by the country’s planes being pulled to
the airstrips by oxen, he’s sent to Germany
for research, where he witnesses scenes that
precurse the rise of the Nazi Party. Eventually,
Jiro is promoted to chief designer, but his
plane is ultimately rejected after failure,
and he travels to a resort for vacation. There,
he meets the girl he saved again and falls
in love, while also meeting a German guest
at the resort, who warns that the path both
Japan and Germany are on will only lead to
disaster, before he’s forced to leave in
order to avoid the secret police. While Jiro
hides due to his connection to the man, he
and the girl, Naoko, get married, after she
sneaks out of the sanatorium in which she
was being treated for tuberculosis. As Jiro
watches the test flight for his newest design,
Naoko returns to the sanatorium and passes
away. The film ends at the war’s conclusion,
as every one of Jiro’s planes, the infamous
Zero fighter, is shown to be dead, Jiro himself
telling his fantastic mentor figure that not
a single one returned from the war. At the
last moment, a vision of Naoko demands that
he continue to live.
Miyazaki’s father owned an airplane factory
during the Second World War. While I generally
find that autobiographical details can clog
a critique such as this, it’s important
here. Miyazaki has always, even going back
as far as Conan, been deeply concerned with
the war. It was a travesty, where a failing
effort at imperial domination was erected
on the bones and blood of millions. For a
long time, it made him hate his own country.
After all, how could Japan mean anything positive
when its power derived from the oppression
of the Chinese and Koreans? Many leftists
of the 60s and 70s came to similar opinions,
and while Miyazaki was far from those who
proposed that the Japanese people as a whole
must be exterminated, his anti-nationalism
certainly derived, at its core, from World
War II. A general opposition to war runs through
all his works, from Nausicaa to Mononoke to
Howl’s. Yet, this entire time, he’s sought
to love Japan, and to love those very weapons
which lead to the loss of life, those very
tools of modernity with no value other than
their ability to snuff out the existence of
autonomous beings on an industrial scale.
With a turn to animism and the idea of a past,
ecologically harmonious Japan, Miyazaki was
able to find some form of national culture
worth believing in, even if the condition
of the country as it exists is far from what
he’d want. Small gestures, like cleaning
up a local river, became central to his real
life politics as a result of that change;
sure, it might not change the world, but it’ll
make life around you a bit better, and it’s
actually achievable, whereas the promises
of Marxism, while quite seductive, were difficult
to imagine as realistic once the world’s
foremost socialist state fell. Yes, it would
be strange to call Miyazaki a nationalist,
especially when he’s so against Japan’s
actions during the war, but is that really
correct? As I said in regards to Totoro, it’s
not a jingoist nationalism, but there’s
still a Japan that Miyazaki both supports
and reveres. Whether it’s worth calling
nationalist or not is up to you, but in my
view, it is.
This is confirmed in one of The Wind Rises’s
most important lines, when the German character
says that, “Japan will blow up. Germany
will blow up too.” It’s made clear that
the biggest issues with this national chauvinism
that fuels fascist ambition, this drive for
power at all costs, including at the peril
of marginalized groups, is ultimately that
the nations themselves will suffer. Now, to
be clear, this doesn’t mean the film isn’t
aware that the wars also hurt those they aren’t
fought in the names of. Anti-semitism, portrayed
in the German segment, is clearly bad, and
Miyazaki isn’t one to defend the actions
committed for the sake of the Japanese Empire.
Yet, ultimately, the problem with this jingoism
is that it’s suicidal, not that it’s homicidal.
The Zeros never returned not because they
were all shot down by the valiant enemy, but
because the state of the war eventually plunged
them into tools for kamikaze attacks. In The
Wind Rises, Miyazaki’s strange sort of nationalism
reaches its apex, even moreso than in his
most animist films. He loves Japan, and because
of that, he must criticize it for its faults.
This is notably different from one who believes
it’s corrupt to the core, as I do towards
America.
And what of airplanes, the machine on which
this all hinges? In Conan, planes were tools
of control, maintaining the harmful structures
that came from before the collapse, even as
they needed to die. In Nausicaa, they represented
both freedom and conflict, but ultimately
signalled our ability to, as I’ve said so
many times by this point, fly with the wind.
In Porco Rosso, they became a tool for remembering
the Romantic past, even as fascists threatened
to use their power for ill. Here, they’re
all of these things and more, representing
everything flight has ever meant to Miyazaki.
It’s pure beauty, a freeing phenomenon which
brings wind-swept vistas and the exhilaration
of high-speed travel beyond the clouds. It’s
absolute destruction, the bombing of millions,
the massacre of populations, and the ultimate
conclusion of self-destruction for the sake
of a State which cares nothing for you. Just
like Imperial Japan and the Zeros, modernity
cannot be saved. Only two years before the
film, the flaws of modern society resulted
in the Fukushima disaster, something which
has clearly caused him some great despair.
Yet, as he continues to portray loving renditions
of the very machines that characterize our
time’s worst excesses, it’s impossible
to believe that Miyazaki has truly abandoned
the modern. Instead, he’s simply incorporated
it into a new form.
Following the logic of Naoko, we must live,
as surely as when Nausicaa declared it herself.
We may worry ourselves about the situations
we live within, and it’s certainly noble
to fight for what’s righteous, but those
of us in modernity must simply accept that
and continue. There’s no use appealing too
strongly to some idyllic past, when we’re
never to live in it. Interacting with our
environments, paying attention to the value
of happy, healthy labor, these are all important,
but they must be achieved in the here and
now. For a director who pictures such fantastic
worlds, Miyazaki’s beliefs are quite plain.
The messianic tendencies in his early works
are gone. Redemption is impossible. Jiro ultimately
finds that his engineering led to nothing
positive at all. The Romanticism of his dreams
translates to death in reality. Yet, Naoko
arrives, quick to remind him that there’s
nothing to do but live in those partly Romantic,
partly Modern dreams. Leaving Marxism, Miyazaki
has lost the ability to imagine a truly radical
rupture, a moment where the masses become
messiah and redeem history itself, at last
bringing victory to the oppressed. In short,
he has lost a way out, an actual plan for
anything beyond the most local of causes,
and the utter ambiguity of The Wind Rises
is perhaps the best show of that.
These are the contradictions of a man who
despises what modern technology has led to,
yet whose profession relies fundamentally
on that modern technology. How could he feel
anything but ambiguous? Perhaps, in his upcoming
final film—probably for real this time—a
plan of action, a definitive conclusion on
the topic of Modernity will be discovered
and presented. Ever since leaving Marxism
and joining the ranks of the capitalist class
himself with the ownership of Ghibli, he’s
been unable to present a clear alternative
aside from the most small-scale of actions,
and it would be interesting to see if his
local-focused post-Marxism has a real plan
beyond cleaning rivers. But if not, that’s
fine. Miyazaki’s works contain an unparalleled
richness when it comes to the critique of
our age, particularly as the medium of animation
is concerned. The presence of Joe Hisaishi’s
music in his films gives a Modernist Japanese
aesthetic to all the many time periods he
touches. His occupation with rich vistas and
freedom of movement in animation sets him
apart from any other anime director. Many
are on his level, and claims that he’s the
only man worth looking to in Japan’s animation
industry are myopic but none do what he does
with the skill he does it with. If it’s
up to us to take his anxieties and build a
new society with them, then I’d say he’s
done an excellent job at preparing us, cementing
himself as one of film’s greatest directors
along the way.
Now come on. Let’s fly with the wind.
