Celebrating the Ordinary:
The Portrayal of Japanese Children in Studio Ghibli Movies

Beth Sneyd

Animated films generally gravitate towards fantasy or science-fiction in order to bring life to ideas that we would generally see as impossible. Indeed, many live action films rely on animated sequences for just that purpose, with computer-generated effects that have become commonplace. Even the animated genre continues to be an arena of one-up-manship. This competition is certainly not restricted to the North American studios. On the contrary, it is just as strong in Japan, where studios such as Studio Ghibli and Toho share a rivalry as strong as Pixar and Dreamworks.

Some of Studio Ghibli’s greatest and best-known films are based on fantasy. Spirited Away (Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi, 2001) won a well-deserved Best Animated Feature Academy Award for its depiction of a little girl’s adventures in the spirit world. The film is a visual feast, so full of colour and life that you forget you are watching an animated film. But it is the heroine, Chihiro, who is clearly the star of the film. The director of Spirited Away, Hayao Miyazaki, commented in an interview that

it was necessary to have a heroine who was an ordinary girl, not someone who could fly or do something impossible. Just a girl you can encounter everywhere in Japan. Every time I wrote or drew something concerning the character of Chihiro and her actions, I asked myself the question whether my friend’s daughter or her friends would be capable of doing it…Because it’s through surmounting these challenges that this little Japanese girl becomes a capable person. (1)

Unlike the more recent North American animated films which star magical creatures or unusually talented (and attractive) humans, many of the Studio Ghibli films revolve around ordinary children like Chihiro. They find their lives disrupted when they are faced with unusual circumstances, but the results are generally positive. The children at the end of the film end up more mature and well-adjusted than when they started. Above all, though, they are ordinary.

Chihiro starts out as a rather whiny ten-year old who is travelling to her new house with her parents. She is unhappy, clutching onto a card given to her by one of her friends, and generally unresponsive to her parents’ encouraging words. The family gets lost and stumbles on what appears to be an abandoned amusement park. Chihiro soon discovers that it is actually a bathhouse for the inhabitants of the spirit world and that her parents have been turned into pigs. Chihiro is then hired by the witch Yuubaba as one of the bathhouse attendants, although she is given all the menial jobs because she is human.

As a 21st-century Japanese girl, Chihiro is completely out of her element in the spirit world. She does not know the old stories and taboos that used to be so integral to Japanese beliefs, and makes numerous mistakes, including letting a hostile spirit into the bathhouse. With a little help, though, she is able to learn, and to make friends. Even when in the spirit world, Chihiro is able to remain herself and she emerges a more confident (and happier) girl.

Chihiro is not the only Ghibli heroine to have encounters with supernatural creatures. Both The Cat Returns and My Neighbour Totoro have plots based on this concept. The Cat Returns (Neko no ongaeshi, 2002), directed by Hiroyuki Morita also tells the story of a girl trapped in another world. Haru is somewhat older than Chihiro; she is a first-year senior high school student. (2) Like most Japanese teenagers, Haru’s life revolves around school, particularly around her friends and her clubs. She is never on time for class, and she has a crush on a boy who doesn’t return her interest. Life for Haru is pretty dull, and she questions if she will ever fit in. Then she saves a cat from being hit by a truck. The cat thanks her profusely, and that night, Haru is visited by the King of the Cats and his entourage. It turns out that the cat she saved is the King’s son, Prince Lune. The grateful cats give Haru a number of gifts, including mice in her locker at school, and Haru is informed that part of her reward is marriage to Prince Lune. Unwilling to marry a cat, Haru seeks help from the Cat Bureau, headed by a china cat called the Baron. While visiting the Baron, Haru is kidnapped and taken away to the Cat Kingdom. Haru falls in love with the Kingdom, until she begins to turn into a cat herself. Only by believing in herself can she return home. And when she does, she discovers that she’s much happier about herself, and that her crush really wasn’t that strong after all.

Like Chihiro, Haru does not know how to deal with the world she finds herself in. She is dazzled by the Kingdom, and begins to convince herself that cats have much better lives than humans, so staying in the Kingdom wouldn’t be so bad. Unlike Chihiro, who is working to save her parents from being eaten, Haru has no driving motive to leave the Cat Kingdom once she has arrived. It is only until she begins to turn into a cat herself, that she realizes the danger she is in. To be fair to Haru, though, the timeline of her story is much shorter than Chihiro’s. The Cat Returns takes place over three days. Spirited Away takes place over weeks, if not months. Chihiro has much more time to learn about the spirit world, and she is able to use that knowledge herself. Haru does not have that luxury, and has to rely on the Baron and other sympathetic cats for assistance.

In both The Cat Returns and Spirited Away, the heroines find themselves thrust into a magical world, but this is not quite the case in My Neighbour Totoro (Tonari no Totoro, 1988) another film directed by Hayao Miyazaki. In this film, we see the adventures of two children whose ordinary lives occasionally interact with a magical world. Satsuki and Mei Kusakabe move with their father to a new house in the countryside in order to be close to their mother, who is staying at a nearby hospital for treatment of her tuberculosis. They make friends with Granny, the old lady who lives at the next farm, and Satsuki starts to attend the local elementary school. Mei, only five years old, has no friends her age to play with and is too young for school, so she usually plays alone. One day, Mei discovers that the camphor tree next to their house is inhabited by three totoro (magical creatures who look like a cross between a cat and an owl). Eventually, despite some scepticism, Satsuki also meets the totoro, and the two children have a number of fun adventures with the creatures.

It is really the relationship between Satsuki and Mei that is the basis for the film. They spend much of their time discovering their new home, but then Satsuki starts school. Satsuki considers her sister to be a pest in some ways, particularly when Mei insists on joining her at school. Satsuki also has a tendency to be impatient, and to take her emotions out on her sister. Mei has a tantrum when she discovers that their mother is not coming home as planned. Satsuki loses her temper, and Mei disappears. Satsuki is overwhelmed with guilt and fear and literally runs all over the countryside looking for her. It is only with Totoro’s help that the two sisters are reunited.

Not all Studio Ghibli movies have such happy endings. Grave of the Fireflies (Hotaru no haka, 1988), directed by Isao Takahata, also focuses on sibling relationships, but in greatly different circumstances. Based on a true story, the film takes place during the dying days of the Pacific War. It tells the story of Seita, a teenaged boy and his young sister Setsuko. Their father is serving in the Japanese navy, and their mother dies after a firebombing on their city. Initially, the children stay with a relative of their father’s, but they leave when it becomes abundantly clear that they are not welcome. They take up residence in an abandoned air raid shelter, and Seita does everything he can to protect his sister from the horrors of war. In the end, however, Seita’s efforts are futile, and both children die of malnutrition.

Seita has no magical creature to assist him, no magical world for him to escape into. He has the impossible task of trying to shield his baby sister from the horrors of war. (3) He conceals their mother’s death (and her ashes) from Setsuko. He distracts her with music, games, and trips to the beach. When Setsuko discovers a covered corpse on the beach, Seita pulls her away. When she is hungry, he gives her a fruit drop candy. Several times, Seita is derided as a slacker because he is not working in a factory or on fire patrol. But Seita knows that Setsuko is one of the few parts of his pre-war life that still exist, and he will not give it up for anything. Instead, he tries to recreate his “ordinary” life, and even succeeds for a time. The circumstances in which Seita finds himself are by far the most extreme of all Ghibli children. We see him mature, but we already know that he will not survive. Sadly, his circumstances, while extraordinary for him, were not extraordinary for Japan as a whole sixty years ago.

I have already discussed several Studio Ghibli movies in which the protagonist finds her or himself in unusual circumstances. There are two additional films, however, which celebrate ordinary childhoods. Only Yesterday (Omohide poro poro, 1991) tells the story of Taeko, and Whisper of the Heart (Mimi wo sumaseba, 1995) introduces us to Shizuku. (4) Only Yesterday, also directed by Takahata, follows a different format from other Ghibli movies. Taeko, an office lady, travels to the country for a well-earned vacation. While on the journey, she reminisces about her childhood, in a number of flashbacks. Taeko uses these flashbacks to explain herself not only to the audience, but also to her friends. She grew up in 1960s Tokyo, the youngest child in a house shared with her sisters, parents, and her grandmother. Taeko, like Haru or even Chihiro, is an ordinary child. She lives in the shadow of her older sisters ­ one is beautiful, one is brainy, and can be a bit of a brat. But like other Ghibli children, Taeko has her struggles. She is just beginning puberty, and has difficulty adjusting to the changes her body is experiencing. She has also begun to develop an interest in the opposite sex, even though she is humiliated when her name is written up with a boy from another class. Looking back, Taeko realizes that her prejudices were formed during this time, and that it is time to overcome them. Her heart belongs in the country, not in the city where she was raised.

Shizuku, in Whisper of the Heart (directed by Yoshifumi Kondo), is also the youngest child in her family. She is in her final year of junior high school, and is faced with the daunting exams required to enter senior high. Shizuku knows that she really wants to be a writer, and spends her time working on stories rather than studying. Her family does not understand this, particularly her older sister, a university student. Shizuku notices that a boy named Seiji has previously borrowed all of the books she has signed out of the library. Intrigued and annoyed, Shizuku seeks Seiji out. She discovers that he is a young violinist who lives with his grandfather. Shizuku starts to spend a lot of time with Seiji and his grandfather. These visits, in turn, foster her imagination.

Only Yesterday and Whisper of the Heart are more difficult to summarize than the others. There are no overarching stories as there are in the others, no parents that need saving or magical creatures to befriend. Instead, we simply view a crucial period of development in the protagonist’s life. Even then, these periods are not as earth shaking as they could be. Still, we learn more about Taeko and Shizuku than we do about the other children (except perhaps Seita), because their films are so introspective.

The Studio Ghibli films capture Japanese childhood in a unique way. Each film is full of details that merge together to create an overall impression. The protagonists are kindred spirits, in a way. They are all ordinary children, trying to live ordinary lives. That they are Japanese children is abundantly clear in their behaviour and habits. At the same time, these children are faced with universal problems: love, loss, and a quest to discover themselves. This is what makes them so appealing to viewers from Japan and abroad.

Notes:

(1) Tom Mes. “Interview: Hayao Miyazaki”, Midnight Eye: The latest and best in Japanese Cinema. July 1, 2002. Published at http://www.midnighteye.com/interviews/hayao_miyazaki.shtml.

(2) Education for Japanese children consists of elementary school (6 years), junior high school (3 years), and senior high school (3 years). School is mandatory only up to the end of junior high, although most Japanese go on to senior high in order to go to university.

(3) The Italian film Life is Beautiful (1997) shares a similar premise, although unlike Roberto Benigni’s character, Seita never pretends that the war itself is a big game.

(4) Only Yesterday is not yet available with an English dub. Whisper of the Heart is due to be released on DVD in North American this spring.