"Totoro" is a world-renowned classic by animation master Hayao Miyazaki, which has influenced generations of people in the more than 30 years since its release, and the cute big totoro has become a classic image in Japanese animation. Recently, Miyazaki's officially authorized picture book "Totoro" was published for the first time in China, which for the first time included rare pictures in the film that have not been exposed and have never been made public.
"Totoro" has been loved by everyone for more than 30 years, for the present, how do we interpret the meaning behind the heart-warming fairy tale of "Totoro"? Why is it that cute totoro can cross language and cultural barriers and gain love from people all over the world? With the publication of the Chinese edition of the picture book "Totoro", let's review the moral and values behind the wonderful story of "Totoro".
In 1988, at the end of the Showa period, Japan's economic bubble was nearing its peak. That year, the male protagonist of "Seinosuke Yokomichi" was far away from his hometown in rural Kyushu and was a freshman in Tokyo. If the memories and sentiments of the classmates in the film after many years reflect the nostalgia of that generation of Japanese people for the prosperous era through the dream filter, then "Totoro" is just the opposite: the protagonist and sisters of "Totoro", released in 1988, moved from the city to the countryside with their father in the 1950s.
The Japanese countryside of the 1950s was relatively quiet. The war has passed for many years, and the left movement has rarely spread here. "Totoro" also shows a peaceful country life: picking acorns, picking corn, eating cucumbers, feeding chickens, observing tadpoles, collecting firewood for fire, riding on the embankment... The plots are so loose that some consider it to be the weakest work of the Ghibli plot.
Illustration of the picture book "Totoro". Regarding the age of the story, Miyazaki once said that he did not set a specific year. The calendar in the picture reflects the 1950s several times, but the week and date of the calendar are significantly different from the actual situation, and sometimes May is marked as only 30 days, so it can only be inferred from the approximate age, and cannot be regarded as evidence of a presumption of a specific year. In addition, the first Japanese edition of the fairy tale book "Three Goats" read by the two sisters and their mother at the end of the film is 1965.
But if we had had similar experiences to the two sisters in the film as children, it would be easy to empathize with them on top of the seemingly light story. Fear of the dark (unfamiliar, unknown housing spaces), fear of isolation (new relationships after moving, and alienation from the city), and fear of death (both in themselves and relatives) are common psychology in children. In the predicament of childhood, we may imagine the shadow of the tree shaking in the moonlight as a Guanyin who can make a wish, and live to create some kind of god or spirit in the heart to protect ourselves through the difficulties.
"Totoro" does not end in tragedy as some viewers predicted in the middle, but fills the whole process with the warmth of the pulse, reflecting a similar child's psychological mechanism. Coal bugs dissolve the darkness, cat buses connect isolation, and totoro dispels doubts about its mother's imminent death. Except for the two sisters, no one else can see them, so of course the audience can produce an interpretation that they are magical partners imagined in the plight of the two sisters. Because this childlike psychology is universal, Totoro has swept the world, and Totoro has been named one of the greatest cartoon characters of all time by the British newspaper The Independent.
But from another point of view, if totoro is not a product of the brains of the two sisters, how to understand this role?
Written by 丨 Zhang Zhe
"Totoro", by Hayao Miyazaki, translated by Zhao Yujiao, grinding iron with foxes | Beijing United Publishing Company December 2020 edition
Totoro and God
A small detail hides the essence of Japanese culture
Tetsuro Hatano was a film critic who had recently died. Commenting on the migratory bird series, a film starring Asahi Kobayashi and first screened in the late 1950s, he pointed out that each of Kobayashi's films ends in a traditional Shinto festival scene, because his characters are motivated mainly by nostalgia for rural values. No one knows whether the two sisters will follow their father to the city cinema to watch the "Migratory Bird Series" in the virtual world, but the connection between rural values and Shinto that Hatano Tetsuro points out here is helpful in understanding the Japanese culture behind Totoro.
Shinto, also known as Shintoism, is a predominantly animistic polytheistic belief in Japan, based on Japanese terroir. According to the Chronicle of the Three Kingdoms and the Book of Wei, the then Queen of the Uighur Kingdom, Beimi, called out "the way of the ghost". This is the earliest record of Japan in Chinese history books, and the philosopher Umehara Meng lamented that "in the third century AD, there were already emissaries from China who came to Japan, and these Chinese envoys regarded Japan as a country of souls and a country of etiquette, and reported their personal experience in Japan", and concluded that it was the soul and etiquette that were the best parts of Japanese culture.
Illustration of the picture book "Totoro".
What exactly were the souls and rituals of the humble spirits and rituals that the envoys of the State of Wei witnessed in the Kingdom of Wei? Although another chapter of the Book of Three Kingdoms uses the term "ghost way" to refer to Zhang Lu's Wudou Rice Dao, leading cultural historian Shigematsu Akihisa to deduce that It was the Wudou Rice Dao that Beimihu believed in, in fact, the word "ghost road" is more likely to be a generic term for a mysterious religion that Chen Shou and other historians are unfamiliar with, or that are far from Confucian ideology. After all, Zhang Lu had long been divided from Himself in Hanzhong, and his missionary deeds were not obvious after entering Wei. It is unlikely that the Celestial Master Dao will spread to Japan across the sea in a short period of time and have a major impact.
The other side of the argument seems more plausible. After referring to Dr. Pano Oba's research in Shinto archaeology, historian Nishida Nagao points out that the history of the shrine can be traced back not only to the Kofun period, but also to the Yayoi period. The shrine is the most important sacrificial facility in Shinto, and Beimihu happened to live at the end of the Yayoi period (in recent years, some archaeological studies believe that it may be the beginning of the Kofun period). If Nishida's judgment is correct, it is safe to deduce that the early Shinto was probably the ghost way of The Humble, which Umehara called "the best part of Japanese culture."
After the kanji was introduced, the word "神" was used to denote "かみ" in Japanese. The mythological system of the gods of Tianjin and Guojin, together with folk beliefs, not only includes the natural gods who deify the mountains, rivers, winds, fires, animals and plants, but also the ancestral spirit gods who serve as creators and guardians, and even the undead of emperors, generals, samurai and others can be sacrificed as gods by future generations, regardless of whether their careers in life are successful or unsuccessful. For example, Tokugawa Ieyasu, who founded the Edo shogunate, was posthumously given the title of "Tosho Daigun", and his shrines were enshrined throughout Japan; but his main rival, Ishida Sansei, who was defeated and killed in the Battle of Sekigahara, was stigmatized throughout the Edo period, and his hometown of Ishida in Nagahama City still has ishida shrines dedicated to him. There are so many gods that there is a saying in the Ancient Chronicles of "eight million gods."
After its defeat in World War II, Japan abolished the national Shinto that ideologized traditional Shinto during the imperial period. Dutch writer Ian Bruma mentioned in "The Mirror of Japan" that many Japanese intellectuals and artists emerging after the war retreated to the ancient local traditions to pursue their own national identity, and traditional Shinto was marked as the root of the Japanese spirit and became a window for the West to spy on Japanese culture. As of 2020, in the video games "Ghost of Tsushima" and "Cyberpunk 2077" produced by European and American studios, Shinto is still a way of life and iconic symbol of the Japanese nation, whether ancient or future.
The Mirror of Japan, by Ian Bruma, translated by Ni Tao, Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore, April 2018
Looking at Totoro from this perspective, there will be new discoveries. Totoro, whose Japanese name is Totoro, is neither a dragon nor a cat, but the god of the countryside. The shrines and torii gates that appear many times in the film remind the audience that Shinto is everywhere. In addition, the father of the two sisters, Tatsuo, is a professor of archaeology, and among the piles of documents on the desk are "Asuka" and "Kofun", which are titled in the name of the book, and the most eye-catching one is "Entanglement Ruins". Located in Nara, this archaeological discovery is a remnant from the end of the Yayoi period to the beginning of the Kofun period, coinciding with the era when Beimihu was active and Shinto was first emerging.
Great works are rarely written, and the small detail of "Totoro" points to the profound influence of traditional Shinto on Japanese culture.
The gods and demons are inseparable
Can humans be friends with youkai?
In addition to gods, there are also monsters. "The Father of Japanese Folklore" Yanagida Kunio proposed that yokai were the scattered drops of ancient gods. This "zero-drop theory", which had long dominated Japanese anthropology and religion, was gradually challenged. A more direct counterexample is that not all yokai originate from japan, such as flying heads or reed heads, and there are similar yokai legends in Thailand, Malaysia and other countries. In the end, it should be related to the Luotou clan contained in China's "Search for God", and according to the identity and experience of the protagonist of the story, Zhu Huan, it can be speculated that the image of this monster originated from the imagination and demonization of Shanyue by Sun Wu's regime.
As for the relationship between yokai and gods, folklorist Chang Guangche proposed in "Yokai Change" that there is a continuity between the god who gives favors and the yokai that bring misfortune, people sacrifice gods, and it is yokai that are not sacrificed, so yokai can be transformed with gods. Another scholar, Kazuhiko Komatsu, said bluntly in the New Examination of Yokai Studies that "yokai", as a word referring to strange existence and incredible phenomena, was created in modern times, not to contrast with "god".
Indeed, unlike many other countries, the gods and monsters of Japanese culture are often inseparable from each other. The Snow Girl and the Kappa have the identities of gods and monsters in different versions of the legend. Some tengu are gods, some tengu are yokai, and even the same tengu is sometimes a yokai, and when it is kind, it is regarded as a god (paradoxically, god also brings misfortune). It is difficult to define either individually or ethnically.
On the other hand, Yanagida Kunio also emphasizes in "Yokai Talk" that yokai are inherently harmless, only surprising people and benefiting those who recognize their abilities and obey. Historian Takemitsu further added that unlike foreign monsters, which are purely terrifying and irredeemlessly weird, Japanese monsters will repay the favor as long as humans treat them with kindness.
"Monsters Talk about Righteousness", [Japanese] Yanagihara Kunio, translated by Jia Shengxing, Chongqing University Press, March 2014
Now come back to Totoro. Whether it is two sisters or parents, or even neighbors and villagers, they are familiar with "strange things" and have unlimited goodwill. Knowing that they have entered a haunted house (お化け屋敷, お化け is a strange thing, which is a general term for monsters and ghosts, etc.), the two sisters are not only not as scared as young children in other cultures, but also have to endure excitement and pretend to be mysterious to tell their parents. My father's reaction was " That's great, My dad has dreamed of living in a haunted house since I was a child", and my mother replied happily, "I want to be discharged from the hospital quickly and see what a ghost looks like", which is probably also a Japanese feature.
Based on people's concept, the setting of Totoro can be established. The furry neighbor, who originally lived in the forest, had been bumped into by Xiaomei, one of the two sisters, and had always appeared suddenly when they were in trouble, casting magical spells to appease the two dazed hearts. As for its appearance, it is of course cute and cute in terms of animated characters, but the huge size and occasional sly toothy smile can still make people vaguely uneasy. Audiences familiar with Japanese culture can understand that Totoro, like the cat bus and coal bugs in the film, is an out-and-out monster. Together with other yokai from Ghibli's works, together with pokémon (once translated as "Pokemon") and Natsume's Friends, they form an original yokai universe of contemporary Japanese pop culture.
Nature worship
Totoro upholds traditional Japanese values
One more thing has to be mentioned about Totoro. In the Internet age, there has been a mysterious and mysterious urban legend, claiming that "Totoro" is actually a horror animation, and behind the seemingly warm story hides a real murder, the totoro is the embodiment of the god of death, and the cat bus is the messenger of the underworld.
This statement has been circulating for many years, and various details have been cited to support it. For example, the names of Sayama and Tsukamori, some lines that seem to be intended to be outside the words, and the most important point: Xiaomei, who was once missing, has no shadow in the second half, which indicates that she is actually dead. Although Ghibli officials later refuted the rumors, they were unable to stop the spread of the rumors.
Through the analysis of the previous article, it is not difficult to see that this argument is far-fetched and untenable. The role of death in the West and Charon, the ferryman of the Styx, cannot directly correspond to Japanese culture, nor can it be what Ghibli wants to convey in this anime. In fact, if you look closely, you will find that near the end of the film, Xiaomei still has a shadow when she sits on a pine branch and smiles at her mother. In many scenes in the first half, people do not have shadows, and that treatment is only due to the style of painting. That being the case, the above rumors are not worth refuting.
Totoro is certainly not the god of death, on the contrary, it provides and guards the life force. Tatsuo, a professor, believes that the totoro that Xiaomei sees is the owner of the lush forest. Faced with the towering camphor that is hundreds of years old, he told his daughter that "a long time ago, the relationship between the tree and our human beings was very good", and led the two sisters to worship the giant tree, which is actually the worship of the totoro sleeping in the tree.
The closest to death was Yasuko, the mother of the two sisters. She was isolated from the town hospital and could not participate directly in her daughter's rural life. However, after Totoro summons a cat bus to take the two sisters to visit her mother, Yasuko, who was originally sicker, accidentally regains her vitality. These two things may be secretly related. Don't forget how Xiaomei accidentally discovered totoro: passing through a secret narrow road with lush branches. If this can be seen as a metaphor for female sexual characteristics, and considering that totoro has the reproductive magic that makes acorns grow into towering trees overnight (this is of course Xiaomei's dream, but the next scene after waking up from the dream, the crops in the field are ripening, also pointing to female fertility), then the totoro, the forest and field protected by the totoro, and the nature behind it, the land, trees, rocks, rivers and winds, are another mother. It is the spiritual mother of the Japanese people and the original element that formed Japanese culture.
Therefore, Totoro is the god of the forest and a harmless monster. Totoro is also the patron saint of the Xiaomei, guarding innocent children and those who, despite being adults, are still willing to believe that there is pure beauty in the world. It guards their hearts and embraces them in a healing gesture in the face of darkness, isolation and death, creating miracles for them. Totoro is the patron saint of Japan's natural terroir and cultural spirit. It guards the vitality of animals, plants and human beings, the traditional Japanese values, and the survival concept of mutual trust between people and harmonious coexistence between people and the environment. In Totoro, both Japanese and foreign audiences are able to find emotional projection and cultural identity, which is why this anime character has been so popular for more than three decades.
The author | Zhang Zhe
Editor| Xu Yuedong and Li Yongbo
Proofreader | Li Xiangling