Of all the anime characters featured by Studio Ghibli, Totoro is undoubtedly the most popular among children, and the entrance to the Ghibli Museum of Mitaka Noburi, located on the outskirts of Tokyo, Japan, is a pair of large totoro cats, and children who come to play will also cheer the museum as "totoro's home".
At the beginning of 2021, on the occasion of Hayao Miyazaki's eightieth birthday, with the exclusive authorization of Studio Ghibli, the full-color picture book "Totoro" was published and listed in Chinese mainland for the first time, which is the only official Chinese Simplified edition of Ghibli introduced in China for the first time.
Totoro Author: [Japanese] Hayao Miyazaki Translator: Zhao Yujiao Publisher: Beijing United Publishing Company
As a miyazaki film fan, I asked director Rimbaud to write an article to trace the human factors and environmental impact behind Miyazaki's works, and re-read Miyazaki in 2021.
In 1985, when I was just beginning to understand personnel, a cartoon introduced across the ocean made me addicted to it.
The strange things and magnificent natural scenery encountered by the protagonist Marco on the way to find his mother, his bravery and tenacity, especially the sympathetic little white monkey Métio on his shoulder, are still haunting in my heart, which can be said to be my enlightenment lesson for understanding and loving anime.
This anime is the 1974 feature-length tv anime series Michichiri (母をたたずねて三千里) co-produced by Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki.
Although the director of "Three Thousand Miles to Find Mother" is Takahata, because it is adapted from the short chapter of the Italian children's writer Edimonto de Armicis's "The Education of Love", in order to meet the needs of changing the long animation, many original plots and scenes have been added.
Due to the particularity of anime creation, creators often have to construct the space and style settings required for narrative development after completing the story synopsis, and the technical terms are summarized as picture and scene design, and the person responsible for the work of "Three Thousand Miles to Find Mother" is the 32-year-old Miyazaki Hayao.
As a young man, Hayao Miyazaki and Takahata Hoon
In my opinion, the style that will be highlighted in Miyazaki's solo works in the future, "Three Thousand Miles of Motherhood" has begun to appear:
Home and hometown (traditional Japanese culture) behind you, and constantly looking back;
Dreams and challenges (the westernized modern spirit) are in front of us, and they are constantly chased, all these fairy tales about "where are we going", and distress and worry are its eternal driving forces and form a metaphorical labyrinth of constant palindromes.
This is the contradictory mood hidden by Miyazaki under his youthful heart and fantasy magnificent style, and he has been under this motif all his life and has not been able to resolve it so far.
However, from the confusion embodied in the beginning of "Valley of the Wind" to the contradiction of "The Wind Rises" for the first time to open its heart and speak bluntly.
From all these points of view, Miyazaki's true face is not a well-known children's animation master, although his audience is the broadest aspect of children and children's adults, but his painting based on this is not to satisfy the curiosity and imagination of his audience, but in Japan, where reality is deeply constrained, anime is its best carrier, and secondly, it is the best tool to alleviate his confusion and uneasiness.
To put it simply, although Miyazaki and Takahata are also friends and mentors, although the two are lifelong rivals for each other, although the two have a common tone - never accept defeat and good at absorbing the essence of foreign culture, the creative concept is contrary to the same.
Takahata Hoon has carried the Japanese people's own aesthetic experience and traditional consciousness all his life, he is for the Japanese people and challenge more animation forms to create anime, "Fairy Tale of the Years" and "My Neighbor Yamada Jun", two works related to "national memories" are not to be said, to "The Tale of Hui Ye Hime Monogatari", and even ink painting to show the style of the source of Japanese traditional culture, "return to tradition" and "Japanese" This ethnic group is the central purpose of his creation.
So, even though Miyazaki's reputation was even greater, the president of the Japanese television station Kiichiro, who had long supported Ghibli, said, "I hope to watch another Mr. Takahata movie before I die." (Toshio Suzuki, "Ghibli's Friends: This Is How I Sold Miyazaki and Takahata Movies")
Miyazaki is more "modern", he is created to solve the confusion of the self and the contradictions it brings, and the source of confusion is the pain caused by the collision of different civilization systems (agricultural civilization and industrial civilization), and the speculation of the relationship between "man and nature", all of which must be traced back from his growth experience.
Miyazaki was born in 1941, the year of the "Pacific War" that Japan set off.
When Miyazaki was not yet a year old, Japanese militarists brazenly launched the "Pearl Harbor Incident", thus leading the country into a deeper quagmire of war.
After the Battle of Midway, the U.S. Navy gradually gained air supremacy and launched a non-stop bombing campaign against the Japanese mainland.
The two U.S. bombings of Tokyo on March 10 and May 25, 1945, caused Miyazaki a nightmare that would never heal for a lifetime, and the destruction of the Tokyo metropolitan area made the childhood Miyazaki wonder:
"Such a beautiful airplane has brought such terrible destruction to people's lives."
At the same time, because his factory produces aircraft parts, he is naturally fond of beautiful aircraft shapes, but japan is on the verge of defeat when the madness - let the kamikaze fighters take zero fighters to carry out suicide attacks, and the human plane crashes, like a cherry blossom floating in zero.
This image made him feel sad about the fragility of beauty, this contradictory mood, the dual attribute of beauty's fragility and destruction, which was forever repeated in his films, forever sung.
Under the brushstrokes of Miyazaki's fame, the plane can be a Leviathan-like behemoth, owned by the strong, bombarding the unarmed weak creatures;
It can also be a light spirit plane driven by Porco Rosso, Nausicaa's gliding wings, and Horikoshi Jiro's folded wing model, challenging the sky and power, and shouting his dreams.
The contradiction of this "two-law reversal" is not only reflected in his obsession with airplanes and the sky, but also in his attitude towards "the sky and the earth".
After the end of World War II, Japan began to usher in a recovery in the 1950s, and the inland countryside of Japan, which could not be eroded by industrial civilization before, also ushered in changes in the world because the economy was about to take off, Miyazaki's youth grew up in this era, seemingly peaceful and tranquil, but there was a torrent lurking in it, which was also another impression that lingered in his life, that is, the "malignant tumor" of environmental pollution caused by industrial civilization began to erode into the daily life of ordinary Japanese.
Post-war Japan
In 1956, a strange disease found in Minamata Bay in Japan shook Japanese society, when Miyazaki was 15 years old, almost the same age as the heroine of "Totoro", Kusanagi Moon.
In his adolescence, he is full of disgust for Japanese society, which first comes from the guilt brought about by Japan's aggression in World War II;
Secondly, the hatred of Japan after the defeat of the war is full of "soft bones", and this sense of shame and hatred is combined with the rapid growth of teenagers and the mentality of entangled ethnic identity, and they have been depressed and unable to be discharged, eager to find a certain balance.
Fortunately, he did find out later, that is, the "Teruba Wood Culture", and it was only then that he was able to reach some kind of reconciliation with Japan.
In a way, for Miyazaki, the "Teruhashu culture" is the symbol of Japan, "if the terroir is destroyed, then I will lose the last layer of self-awareness with the Japanese." (Hayao Miyazaki, "The Departure Point (1979-1996)")
The environmental problems brought about by Japan's post-war full industrialization have raised his "identity crisis" to his thinking about "man and nature", and this speculation is also full of his sorrows and contradictions.
From the rotten sea of "Valley of the Wind" to the large camphor tree in "Totoro", nature has always been the good place on which human beings depend in Miyazaki's heart, no matter how industrial civilization takes off, no matter how human beings have soared in the sky, but the earth and the forest it nurtures are the premise for human beings to take off, in order to dissolve the sins of mankind, but for human beings to take off, transforming nature is an indispensable stage and premise, and how the two coexist harmoniously has become the top priority in Miyazaki's creation.
On the one hand, Miyazaki acknowledges the tyrannical side of human beings, such as the "Seven Days of Fire" in "Valley of the Wind" as a metaphor for the consequences of the Cold War nuclear threat, the global nuclear war launched by mankind completely destroyed the natural environment, the forest forced human beings to surrender their land, and purified everything human pollution with the sea of decay;
On the other hand, Miyazaki also sympathizes with human beings who are trapped by insufficient resources, such as the underground miners in "Castle in the Sky", and also has a ruthless side of nature, but the key is that first of all, people must learn to respect nature, and there will be an opportunity for the two to coexist, otherwise, blind conquest will only be exchanged for the regurgitation of nature.
Therefore, the emergence of "Totoro" is a work created by Miyazaki Hayao's long-term absorption and thinking of "Teruba Woods Culture", giving up the large-scale scene depiction that he was best at before, and did not consider catering to the box office, creating another juvenile adventure story, and even the love drama was omitted, telling a sketch-style warm and whimsical story in a telling way, which can be described as the purest and most peaceful creative motivation, but it brought unexpected success.
In the 1980s, Japan's social problems became increasingly prominent, and while wage earners and middle- and low-level Japanese people were enjoying the great material wealth brought about by economic development, various social problems surfaced with the process of industrialization, and high-intensity work exhausted the entire society.
Miyazaki was sensitive to this and turned into a totoro in his pen, adding a strong stroke to the end of the 1980s - when the entire Japanese society, whether it is Tong Soo, sits in the cinema with a smile and feels the simple touch of a long absence, Miyazaki uses the most kind arrangement in his heart to allow himself and the audience to achieve the purification of life in the silence of summer.
Miyazaki has never tried to incorporate the real life of Japanese society into his work before, and Totoro is a successful and daring attempt.
After this, Totoro was known as "the pressure relief valve for adults, the pistachio for children", which can be described as suitable for all ages;
Since then, Ghibli's cartoons have really penetrated the hearts of the people, and more importantly, for Miyazaki's artistic life, it has created a new style, that is, "injecting fantasy into daily life and healing it", and I see "Totoro" as a node for Miyazaki's creation.
In his previous works, whether it was "Future Boy Conan", "Lupin III Cariostro City", "Valley of the Wind" or "Castle in the Sky", it was full of the most popular adventure and whimsical elements of teenagers, which he had previously been influenced by many masters, especially from Osamu Tezuka and Takahata.
However, in the creation of "Totoro", Miyazaki completely took a different path, he interpreted the fantasy style of "the wardrobe is a gateway to another world" that was used in Europe and the United States, injected elements of Japanese local yokai legends, and added the metaphor of "Teruha Wood Culture" as a background stage, truly forming a personal style.
At the same time, he is more and more cautious about the "Drama" routine commonly used in Japanese comics, sensational, hot-blooded, preachy, almost all abandoned, the mother in "Totoro" is seriously ill and does not interpret it as "life and death parting", the moon's search for Mei has not played a cliché of the final rescue, everything is with a childlike heart to look at the contradiction and resolve the contradiction, the only emphasis is only on goodwill.
Beginning with Totoro, in Miyazaki's increasingly subsequent sequences of works, fables and allegories have gradually become absolute masters, and the technique of using dramatic conflict as the theme of the story has gradually given way to the contemplation of events and life.
It can be said that without "Totoro", there would be no later "Spirited Away" and "Boji on the Cliff".
In Totoro, Miyazaki combines the growth of a teenager (a young girl) with the mutual help of man and nature.
Totoro with the grass wall moon and grass wall plum sisters in the dream planting a tree is the most brilliant part of the whole film, the trees planted to achieve the towering trees, in turn, the forest and watch the sisters grow, here, man and nature are not only harmonious coexistence, but also mutual cause and effect.
Miyazaki tries to use such passages to subtly imperceptibly his ideas to his audience, especially children and teenagers, and uses interesting pictures to tell the audience that the relationship between man and nature should be like this.
In "Boji on the Cliff", Miyazaki even spent a lot of ink to make Boji transform into a human being as he wished, what made Miyazaki change the view of youth and even middle age in his twilight years? Is he the one who values human beings more?
No, he did not fully believe in human beings, but he believed that the interaction and choice of individuals in their surroundings lay in the beliefs and choices of individuals at critical junctures, and Miyazaki gradually abandoned the collective consciousness of the Japanese people and approached "human modernity" in concepts, which is why his works are more popular than Takahata in the world.
Even in the bubble economy of the 1980s, Miyazaki had a completely different sobriety from japanese society at that time, and the economic frenzy of the 1980s put Japanese society at an unprecedented level of self-confidence and even pride, but Miyazaki offered advice at the right time: the ambition to control the world will only fall from the sky.
One such work is Castle in the Sky (1986), in which Miyazaki cuts into the satire of social fanaticism from a unique perspective, while at the same time launching a mockery of "utopia" and "destiny".
Castle in the Sky is the perfect counterpart to the idea of "technological progressivism".
It is not only beautiful and extraordinary, but also carries a lot of strange high-tech attributes, compared to the hustle and bustle of the world, almost the embodiment of the ideal society of mankind, but it is such a "utopia".
Miyazaki portrays it as a lifeless world where only a few robots are still functioning, while the humans on it have long since become extinct, with only a few descendants scattered around the world.
The sky city of Laputa disappears into the sea of clouds like a fantasy version of "Atlantis".
What happened in between? Why did the Laputans perish? Miyazaki cleverly and implicitly pointed to "detachment from the land".
The ballad in the film is sung like this: "Rooted in the soil, symbiotic with the wind, wintering with the seeds, singing the spring light with the birds."
Miyazaki, who has always loved the sky and dreams, solemnly stated for the first time the essence of the earth, that is, to be down-to-earth.
As we all know, the left-wing movement that swept the world in the 1960s was vigorously unfolded in Japan for a while, and countless people were deeply moved by it, including famous Japanese writers and filmmakers such as Haruki Murakami and Nagisa Oshima, and Miyazaki was also influenced to a considerable extent.
He and Takahata also participated in the union movement of Toei Animation when they were fledgling, and in the 2013 documentary "Kingdom of Dreams and Rhapsody", Miyazaki also showed a photo of his participation in the union movement at the time, and joked about Takahata.
In his self-description of "The Winds of the Times", he also admitted that he was greatly influenced by socialist ideas when he was a student, so much so that his famous work "Future Boy Conan" used the metaphor of "industrial island" as a metaphor for the camp of socialist countries.
But at the end of the Cold War in the 1980s, Miyazaki began to reflect on this trend, even in a bitter tone.
"Castle in the Sky" is a major change in his view of history and world view, since then, he has faded the color of innocence, and more spontaneous and sincere, "Porco Rosso" is his self-portrait of "doing my own thing, dashing in the world".
In addition to being a little touched by love and dreams, the Porco Rosso in the film does not show his true face at other times, he remembers the past, but does not think about the future, free and straightforward, he knows that everything may be a distant dream, but still feels the beauty of life.
At this time, Miyazaki became famous, and the world knew that Studio Ghibli won the Japanese box office championship for several consecutive films, but he was going to put on a "everyone is drunk and I woke up", Shi Shiran was unmoved in the Japanese bubble economy, and became a "not of the same kind" of Red Pig.
In such a personal and social context, he still insists on condemning violence and the fascist right, "Porco Rosso" has a paragraph directly denouncing Italian fascism, "Princess Mononoke" has repelled the local forces of totalitarian self-reliance, and "Hal's Moving Castle" alludes to the war in the Balkans and Iraq, simply hiding the name of the country and directly condemning the warring sides.
His firm anti-war and anti-fascist and anti-militarism stance made him suffer from right-wing attacks in Japan, and many people called him a traitor to the Japanese, so he replied with a paintbrush, showing the tyrannical acts in the war, the evil of human nature, and the difficulties of the survival of the world.
He may not have directly used the theme of "Grave of the Fireflies" to expose the evil deeds and consequences of war, but he used the role of goodness and justice to evoke deep resonance among the audience, and his beauty spread his wings.
This period was also the era of great success in the promotion of his works overseas, starting with "Princess Mononoke", Disney, which had a common idea, vigorously promoted Miyazaki's works to the world, and its whimsical world with elements of Japanese national culture conquered the world.
Spirited Away won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, the first time the three major film festivals have awarded the highest honor to an animated film, and the Oscars have simply given the best animated film of the year to Spirited Away regardless of nationality, but Miyazaki did not indulge in external accolades, but continued to explore his personal style and artistic philosophy.
In Spirited Away and its subsequent works, there is no truly heinous villain, only arrogance, stupidity and prejudice, avoiding direct depictions of death, and on the basis of mutual understanding of positions, at the expense of self-sacrifice, elimination of misunderstandings, consensus and redemption.
Miyazaki's attitude towards human beings is becoming more and more tolerant, and he is increasingly valued for his social responsibilities.
Throughout the first decade of the 21st century, Miyazaki's overall attitude towards human civilizational society was relatively optimistic, but all this was quickly disrupted by the financial turmoil of 2008, and the various social events that occurred in Japan after that were enough to prove that Miyazaki's worries never became obsolete, and finally became his latest work, "The Wind Rises".
"The Wind Rises" is an absolute outlier in Miyazaki's work, and Miyazaki, who has always opposed the direct expression of his chest in his works, bluntly expressed his concerns with the usual eye-catching title of "The times are going to change greatly": "This country forces us to turn to the right."
The Fukushima nuclear crisis and japan's post-war constitution revisions, coupled with the 3.11 earthquake in Japan, the superposition of natural disasters and political shifts made the keen Miyazaki smell strange.
"The Wind Rises" uses the historical lessons of Japan's overall society toward militarism after the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 as a reflection of today's comparison, bluntly saying how important it is for individuals to persevere in the turn of the times, and that Jiro Horikoshi's tragic life and cursed dreams are all because Japan's overall society was kidnapped by the "dream of a strong country" and gradually slid into the abyss of war, thus destroying countless lives.
Lessons from the past, miyazaki hayao emphasized this point, but also did not forget to remind people: no matter what happens, the important thing is to live, the end of the dish Spike waved goodbye Tojiro, how many words condensed into a sentence "live" scene, the first time to see Miyazaki Hayao who has never shed tears for his own hard work, how sad is his heart?
Interestingly, in the 11 works released on miyazaki's big screen, there are as many as 6 that emphasize living and living, and in addition to "Totoro" and "Witch House Emergency", the other 9 works are more worried than optimistic, and it cannot be said that Miyazaki May have a pessimistic view of the world in general, so it is necessary to emphasize that the best way for everyone to cope with great changes and tribulations is to "live well"?
Looking back, "Totoro", which was born 33 years ago, is lucky, and Miyazaki, who is most worried about the fate of the world, has created the world's "pressure relief valve", which is called fate.
Totoro, as the representative of the healing department in Miyazaki's animation, in the era of great changes, wind and rain, perhaps, can inject more warmth and courage into our hearts, to resist the unknown wind and rain of the road ahead of life.
Author: Rimbaud
This article was first published in the Adventure Movie: Cinematik
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