Blog Post 3: Anime Cinema

The compusory reading this week asked us as readers to consider the ways that Miyazaki invokes a feeling of nostalgia in his work (Swale, 2015). Though he does not depict a past that exists, but rather a conception of the past that likely did not occur, Myazaki's films consistently evoke these feelings. In the case of Spirited Away (Miyazaki, 2001), it can be argued that "natsukashii" (nostalgia) (Swale, 2015) is being induced through the use of traditional Japanese Yokai and Kami (monsters and spirits) (Boyd, 2016). The characters and beings in the bath house are as familiar to the Japanese viewer as Little Red Riding Hood and Santa Clause would be to the Western child. It reconnects the viewer with the psychological drives of childhood (Tatar, 1992, pg. 92). But this sense of nostalgia occurs for Western viewers as well, because the architecture of the bath house invokes both Western and Eastern traditional styles. The characters, too, dress in both traditional Japanese and Western forms of dress (Swale, 2015). These may seem like superficial features, but the combination of these visual styles along side the use of mythological characters and supernatural situations act as signals to the audience; it offers them constant reminders that the world they are viewing is not the world they exist within, but rather a world where tradition and fairy tales are the norm.

There is an unspoken cultural hierarchy between these world's. While Chihiro is initially astonished at everything she sees in the world of the bath house, no one is impressed by her at all. Instead, they complain about her smell and her laziness. They don't notice that her clothes are post-industrial, though the world of the bath house, if Komaji's work room is any indication, is still steam-based. This prioritises the values of the bath house and the past above the values of Chihiro's world.

(Miyazaki, Hayao. 2001) Spirited Away constantly reminds us that Chihiro is one small [modern] element in a larger, more traditional vision.

Were Spirited Away simply a story about comparing the past and the present, one might imagine that denizens of the bath house would learn something from Chihiro; they might learn something about modern values or maybe at least about technological advancements. The film might have included a coda of Chihiro being relieved at being home and finally being able to use modern conveniences. The film does not. Chihiro looks back at the tunnel after she has passed through it and doesn't seem to be in a hurry to return to her family. It is Chihiro that must learn from the bath house, and the lessons she learns in that world are ones that she takes with her back to her own world. All of this points to the idea that the past was better than the present, encouraging natsukashii. The characters themselves exist within a state of nostalgia and "mono no aware", or sweet sadness (Redmond, 2013), similar to the characters in Takeshi Kitano's Hana-Bi (2007). Some of the characters are very old and seem to have a long, distant past behind them. At some point, Yubaba and Zeniba were young women growing up together and finding out they were very different. At some point, Komaji was buying his train tickets and dreaming of travels away from his work. At some point the river spirit Chihiro helps clean was young and pure. All the mysterious figures that appear on the train seem to have had a past behind them. But in each case, it is a history the character can never return to. It is the very fact that some of these histories can no longer be accessed that renders the story so nostalgic. None of the characters are who they were in the stories they tell. They have settled in to their lives of living in a cottage, running a bath house or being slave to the boiler room.

It should come as no surprise that a fictional world can provoke nostalgia. Nostalgia is made possible through a romanticised view of the past, where only positive impressions are retained, and the negative details are subsumed by better memories.

Sources:

Swale, Alistair. "Miyazaki Hayao and the Aesthetics of Imagination: Nostalgia and Memory in Spirited Away." Asian Studies Review 39.3 (2015): 413-429.

Spirited Away. Dir. Hayao Miyazaki. Madman Entertainment, 2001. Film.

Boyd, James W., and Tetsuya Nishimura. "Shinto Perspectives in Miyazaki's Anime Film" Spirited Away"." Journal of Religion & Film8.3 (2016): 4. Tatar, Maria. Off with their heads!: Fairy tales and the culture of childhood. Princeton University Press, 1992.

Redmond, Sean. The cinema of Takeshi Kitano: flowering blood. Columbia University Press, 2013.

Hana-Bi. Dir. Takeshi Kitano. Madman Entertainment, 1997. Film.

Comments I have made: https://s3562677.wordpress.com/2017/09/25/anime-gangster-genre-2-worlds-with-some-collision/ https://harleypahn.wordpress.com/2017/09/20/family-in-japanese-cinema/

(Requested) https://alisasparks.wordpress.com/2017/09/28/connecting-with-the-self-via-anime-and-gangster-genre/#respond