Japanese History week 7: Miyazaki’s history and nostalgia reading

The key to understanding Spirited away is Miyazaki’s attitude towards Japanese

history and tradition, especially his idea of “Japaneseness.” Spirited away is an
attempt to use fantasy to establish a link between contemporary and traditional
Japanese culture. As a child, Miyazaki had a basic dislike of Japanese culture. He
was born in the war time, 1941. His family was well-off. His father was an
executive member of Miyazaki aircraft however could not go to mainland China
due to his wife and children. His father’s association with war-related industries
and the family’s relatively high standard of living during the war affected the
young Miyazaki, leaving him with feelings of guilt toward the victims of Japan’s
aggression in Asia.
During the rapid transition from militarism to democracy in the years immediately
after the war, Miyazaki lost confidence in his own country. For Miyazaki,
“Japanese history was the story of oppression and exploitation of the common
people, and the rural villages were representations of poverty, ignorance, and
rejection of basic human rights” However, Miyazaki read the book Saibai
Shokubutsu to Noko no Kigen. This book enabled him to regard Japan as a part of
Asia in terms of both history and culture. Miyazaki was interested in the diversity
of Japanese culture.
The representation of the Taisho period in Spirited Away is an important focal
point. Miyazaki chose this setting as it allowed him to highlight the diversity
inherent in Japaneseness. In addition, his personal affection and longing toward
the Taisho and early Showa eras also had a strong influence. Miyazaki’s affection
is based on personal experience, springing from childhood memories and an
encounter with the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum. All of Miyazaki’s
films set in Japan relate to Japanese history.
Miyazaki’s fantasy is not a mere tool to criticise society, but a powerful weapon
used to merge the past and present. A critical difference between Spirited Aay
and Miyazaki’s other Japan films is the way in which past and present merge and
fantasy and reality coexist. The films before Spirited Away are set I the past, and
fantasy events take place within the ‘real’ world of the film. Those films do not
directly depict contemporary Japan; Spirited away is the first to do so. Thus,
Miyazaki succeeds in establishing a seamless link between Japanese past/
traditions and the present. Spirited away can be read as a critique of
contemporary society. Some argue that Japanese fantasy has been a ‘kind of
mirror image of modern Japanese history’ (Napier) and ‘a mode of social critique’
attached to socially constructed reality ‘while at the same time putting the
foundation of what constitutes the real into question’ (Figal).
Tachibana agrees with Napier and Figal’s belief that anime fantasies are a social
critique of contemporary Japan. Spirited away, for eg, criticises the unhealthy
relationship between mother and children. In Japan, the rapidly declining
birthrate is a long-standing social issue. The average number of children per
household has also declined, and as a result, parents end up spending more time
and money on their children. Tachibana also suggests that the movie is a critique
of the social devastation that was the result of Japan’s bubble economy (an
economic cycle that is characterised by the rapid escalation of market value,
particularly in the price of assets. This fast inflation is followed by a quick
decrease in value) which started in the late 1980s.
The anime is also about the loss of any sense of history or identity. “In spirited
away, loss of history in every possible aspect, which produces the most dramatic
suspense in the film, describes fear of loss, or corruption of cultural identity” and
the most distinctive of all fears “is loss of memory/ identity, or loss of power of
words” (Napier)
“I designed a world where Yubaba dwells as a pseudo-western person. One
reason for that is to give the world an appearance that is somehow recognisable,
but at the same time hard to know whether it is a dream or reality. In addition,
because Japanese traditional art is a treasury full of myriad images”.
By pseudo western, Miyazaki means a style that mixes western and traditional
Japanese features. One of the reasons Miyazaki gives for adopting this style is to
emphasise the rich diversity that makes up traditional Japanese culture. Japanese
historian Testsuro Watsuji argued that Japanese culture consists of multiple layers
that the Japanese people have assimilated. According to Miyazaki, Japanese
culture does not consist of distinctive layers; it fuses diverse cultural elements
into something new. The bathhouse and other buildings in the spirit world are
neither imported Western architecture nor quaint traditional Japanese wooden
townhouses (machiya). They are something new. Miyazaki doubts the existence
of anything could be called uniquely Japanese. He is highly critical of those who
typically point to ‘unique’ icons of the samurai, classic aristocratic lit, or Zen
temple architecture as something ‘uniquely’ and essentially Japanese.
The Taisho period is very popular among anime, manga and video game artists.
It’s mostly a period represented as an imaginary past, replete with nostalgia and
has little to do with the present. For Miyazaki, fantasy is not a mere tool of
nostalgia. The past for Miyazaki is a part of the present, and fantasy describes he
relationship between past and present by virtually resurrecting the past. He is
anxious over the fate of Japanese traditional culture, whose enemies are
globalisation and postmodernity.
The diversity of Japanese tradition is a major theme of Spirited away, howver it is
evident in all of Miyazaki’s films. To understand this theme better, it is important
to comprehend Miyzaki’s peculiar vision of Japan’s past. This vision can be
understood in two senses: the historical past and the personal past. By historical
past, it is meant a distant past that those living in the present cannot access
directly. They can know it through records but have no firsthand experience of it.
Such a ‘historical’ view is usually a macroscopic national history. A personal past,
by contrast, is a past that is experienced either firsthand or secondhand, perhaps
from an artifact from the past. It is based upon an individual’s concrete and
unique experiences. Spirited away manages to merge these pasts into a cinematic
whole; distinctively artistic.
Miyazaki’s historical past
Towards the end of the Jomon period, an evergreen forest culture originally from
the Southeast Asia came to Japan and replaced the earlier hunter-gatherer
culture. In the evergreen culture, people depended on the forest and were
anxious to coexist with it rather than destroy it. But since growing rice requires
flat land from paddies, people had to dominate nature by developing it. My
neighbour Totoro evokes this mythic forest world with Totoro’s den in an
enormous tree of a Shinto shrine. In Monoke, Shishigami’s Forest, with the
mysterious pond at its centre, is an axis mundi that connects the spiritual world to
this world. In both movies, the forest is a source of life power with which human
life must harmonise spiritually.
Because of his guilt over Japan’s wartime atrocities in Asia, Miyazaki was initially
attracted to Western culture, he often chose the West as the setting for his
anime. But Miyazaki soon realised that he could not reject Japan. Miyzaki’s and
Watsuji’s view of Japanese identity is significantly different. Both see Japanese
culture as a part of a larger Asian culture, are concerned about how
Westernisation affects Japanese identity and agree that the historical past
influences the present. However, Watsuji discusses Asian culture to illustrate
Japanese uniqueness and supremacy, while Miyazaki identifies Japanese culture
as an importance of a larger Asian culture.
Watsuji asserts that after 1000 years of assimilation, Chinese culture in Japan has
been transformed into something completely different. He claims Japan preserves
China’s lost heritage. He suggests that Japan’s adaptation of Chinese culture is
superior to the original. On the contrary, Miyazaki views Japanese culture as
linked to Asia. Miyazaki does not like the Heian period, which boasts the refined
aesthetic of aristocratic Japanese culture or the Age of civil wars, which is famous
as the time of the Samurai (such as the great shogun Hideyoshi Toyotomi, who
invaded Korea). Both periods are ‘rubbish’ says Miyazaki, despite the fact that
they are iconic of a Japanese ‘golden age’ for many.

Youth: interest in politics

Miyazaki preferred Western culture over Japanese culture and was into politics.
He was against the Japanese military and was very strongly politically left. He
joined the Labour union when he joined Toei animation and was very active. He is
supportive of article 9, the act the prohibits the seclusion of Japan. However, the
Japanese government wanted to change that act so that Japanese troops could be
sent to foreign countries under Prime minister Abe. Miyazaki was very strongly
opposed to this idea.
Early career:
His first animation that was released was Lupin the III: Castle of Cagliostro 1979.
1986- 1st Studio Ghibli film, Castle in the sky. He received an award for Spirited
Away in 2001, Academy Animation won in 2003. The only animator who received
this.
Focus on Japan:
Miyazaki was interested in his own culture because he disliked it. he had to come
to terms with his Japanese identity when he visited Europe for a research trip. He
had to accept that no matter how much he disliked Japanese, history, culture or
Japan as a country, he had to accept it as he is Japanese. He managed to bypass
all these traditional Japanese cultures such as samurai- evergreen forest culture.
He connected directly with contemporary Japan and primordial Japan, directly
linked with Asia.
Miyazaki announced his retirement in 2014.
He became a national icon of Japan in terms of entertainment, animation and
storytelling. He then decided to retire in 2014. Shortly afterwards, he chose to
come out of retirement. He did this several times. Currently, he is creating a film.

Miyazaki’s personal past-

When Miyazaki created Me Neighbour Totoro, he created a fantasy world of rural
Japan in the 1950s, drawing out his own memories of the countryside in Saitama
prefecture. Miyazaki’s anime also resonates for his audience Yuichiro Oguro, an
editor of an anime magazine, and Risaku Kirotoshi, a popular culture critic, both
identify with the children in Totoro.
“The reason why Hayao Miyazaki’s films appeal to people so much is, I assume,
because they remind people of such thoughts and history” Komatsu 1997, 53.
Totoro is based on Miyazaki’s personal recollections of the Japanese countryside,
while Mononoke is set in a distant past. What makes Spirited Away distinctive
among Miyazaki’s oeuvres is that it fuses past, present and future all into a
fictional whole. The past it recreates derives from Miyazaki’s pw personal
memories, but it is also a fantasy world designed to showcase what he regards as
quintessentially Japanese. This fantasy world in Spirited Away is also fused with
personal memories, particularly those associated with buildings from the Meiji
and early Taisho eras. Miyazaki is motivated to save the past because it contains
the heart of Japaneseness. What Miyazaki does, however, is not literal or
cinemtaic preservation so much as a novel or artistic recreation of the past.
Although the buildings originate from the Meiji/ Taisho period Miyazaki is
attempting to create an imaginary past that affects his audience sentimentally.
Reimagining the past