Miyazakiworld: A Life in Art

342 Pages·2018·19.888 MB·English

by  Susan Napier

Miyazakiworld
This page intentionally left blank
Miyazakiworld

a l i f e i n a r t
Susan Napier
new haven and london
Copyright © 2018 by Susan Napier.
All rights reserved.
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any
form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright
Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from
the publishers.
Yale University Press books may be purchased in quantity for educational, business, or
promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected] (U.S. office) or
[email protected] (U.K. office).
Designed by Sonia L. Shannon.
Set in The Sans type by Integrated Publishing Solutions.
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017958122
ISBN 978-0-300-22685-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Steve: In memory of a snow-splashed angel
This page intentionally left blank
contents
Prologue: In Search of Miyazakiworld ix
1. Hametsu 1
2. Constructing an Animator 16
3. The Joy of Movement 33
4. Ups and Downs: Castle of Cagliostro 55
5. Nausicaä and “the Feminine Principle” 70
6. Orphans of the Sky: Laputa: Castle in the Sky 86
7. Umbrellas in the Haunted Forest: Transcending National and
Personal Trauma in My Neighbor Totoro 101
8. The Witch and the City: Time, Space, and Gender in Kiki’s
Delivery Service 122
9. Porco Rosso Lands in Casablanca 140
10. From Messiah to Shaman: The Nausicaä Manga Seeks Light in the
Darkness 158
11. The Faces of Others: Boundary Crossing in Princess Mononoke 176
12. The Intimate Apocalypse of Spirited Away 195
13. The Castle, the Curse, and the Collectivity: Howl’s Moving Castle 212
14. Rich and Strange: The Apocalypse of the Innocents in Ponyo 229
15. “A Terrible Wind”: The Wind Rises 246
16. Conclusion 260
Notes 265
Bibliography 281
Acknowledgments 289
Index 291
Color illustrations follow page 124
viii Contents
prologue
In Search of Miyazakiworld
On a gray Sunday in February 2014 I drag a little suitcase through rolling
woodland paths outside Nagoya, Japan, to visit the sole remnant of the 2005
Aichi World Expo. The twenty-first century’s first world’s fair (121 nations ex-
hibiting on the theme of humans’ harmonious coexistence with nature)
drew twenty-two million visitors over six months, but its greatest attraction,
and the goal of my journey, wasn’t a 3D ride or a woolly mammoth. Rather, it
was a replica of a modest country house from the 1988 Japanese animated
film My Neighbor Totoro (Tonari no Totoro). The house is known as Satsuki
and Mei’s House in honor of the two young sisters who live in the house with
their father while their mother lies ill in a nearby sanatorium. Although the
girls do encounter natural wonders around their woodland home, it is less
their coexistence with nature that draws so many visitors than their discov-
ery of a large, furry magical being who can fly with the aid of a spinning top
and an umbrella, make plants grow exponentially fast, and find lost children.
This creature, whom the sisters call Totoro, becomes a quiet, benign presence
lending enchantment to their lives.
And, over the years, the lives of tens of millions of animated-film view-
ers. Totoro, Mei, and Satsuki are characters in one of eleven feature-length
animated films directed by Hayao Miyazaki since 1978. Miyazaki officially re-
tired in 2013, at the age of seventy-two, but came out of retirement in 2017
and is now superintending the development of another film, to be released
ix