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Miyazaki's Beautiful Anti-War Dreams
- shadowmoses 11y agoAugust 6th and 9th 2015 marked the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan in WWII; Thought this was an appropriate time to post this
- smegel 11y agoHow does portraying a criminal war aggressor as a victim support an anti-war message?
- ectoplasm 11y agoIt's common enough to be both abuser and victim.
- smegel 11y agoThe many millions of victims of Japan were just victims, so maybe it would be better to focus on them?
- rwallace 11y agoIf the author had portrayed the Imperial Japanese government as an innocent victim, I would be the first to despise the article. But he didn't. He mentioned the campaign of mass murder in China, the insane stupidity of the decision to attack Pearl Harbor and then to fight the war to the bitter end. In no way does he suggest any of these things are excusable. The people he portrays as innocent victims are the civilians of every nationality who are burned to death in bombing raids or starved by blockades - 'economic sanctions' if you want to use the current euphemism. And he's right. The economic sanctions against Iraq that condemned hundreds of thousands of children to starve to death were an atrocity just about exactly as bad as the rape of Nanking. Just about exactly as inexcusable. We need to get to the point where we stop looking for excuses for such actions.
- smegel 11y ago> Nobody is more familiar with what a curse airplanes can be when deployed for evil than the Japanese. Airplanes dropped the canisters that burned their cities, the mines that starved their children, and the nukes that instantly made vast irradiated graveyards out of Hiroshima and Nagasaki — for the first time in history visiting solar-temperature hell upon human habitations, and hinting at mankind’s full capacity for suicidal madness. But their intimate familiarity with the “cursed dream” of airplanes also stems from the Japanese state’s own misuse of the great invention for its imperial dreams. So the bombing of Japan was "evil", Japan's own bombings were just a "misuse" in pursuit of a "dream". How very neutral. > The economic sanctions against Iraq that condemned hundreds of thousands of children to starve to death were an atrocity just about exactly as bad as the rape of Nanking. Just about exactly as inexcusable. We need to get to the point where we stop looking for excuses for such actions. Economic sanctions are an alternative to war. Are you suggesting we should have bombed Iraq instead at the time? Or just let Saddam do what he pleased? Ironically, when the USA does nothing (Rwanda, Pol Pot, North Korea, Srebrenica) they are accused of complicity in inaction, yet when they do something, they are war criminals. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
- rwallace 11y ago> Economic sanctions are an alternative to war. And frankly one of the reasons I think they should be taken off the table entirely is because they are far too easy an alternative. At least in war, some of the victims have their faces broadcast on television. The victims of economic sanctions are never heard of except as dry statistics. > Are you suggesting we should have bombed Iraq instead at the time? Or just let Saddam do what he pleased? Saddam had already been stopped from doing what he pleased. He had been comprehensively kicked out of Kuwait. It should have stopped there. > Ironically, when the USA does nothing (Rwanda, Pol Pot, North Korea, Srebrenica) they are accused of complicity in inaction, yet when they do something, they are war criminals. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. This is only a contradiction if the two kinds of accusations come from the same people.
- pekk 11y ago
- delinka 11y agoI'm disappointed that what could have been a review of an excellent film contained so much anti-"US Warmongering." War is terrible. Sanctions have negative effects. How would this author propose convincing leaders who commit human rights violations to stop those violations? Asking nicely? "Thus, the starvation of little Setsuko/Keiko was not 'collateral damage,' but a premeditated murder. [...] Of course elite war-bringers [...] do not themselves pay the 'prices' they decide are acceptable." This author needs to remember that Japan was the war-bringer in WW2. Brought it right to Pearl Harbor.
- panic 11y agoI don't think the parent comment should be downvoted. It makes some good points, even if you disagree with them. I think you're misunderstanding what "war-bringer" means in this case. It's not America vs. Japan: it's the governments vs. the people. Both the American government and the Japanese government brought war, but the people of the countries (especially Japan) were forced to suffer for their governments' decisions.
- AdeptusAquinas 11y agoIt should be down voted because it seems obvious the poster didn't read the whole article. There are later sections, for example those covering Jiro Horikoshi, that address how Japan brought much of their pain on themselves. Also, the comment missed the entire point of the article, as you established. Just because Japan attacked Pearl harbour doesn't mean an unnamed mother deserved to burn to death, nor that her child deserved to starve to death. Neither victim, nor many of the other civilians in WW2 or Iraq, had a say in the politicking that led to their destruction, which is the true horror of war.
- happyscrappy 11y agoThe Japanese were in many ways more brutal and ruthless than the Nazis but have done a great job whitewashing their despicable past. Wiped away with mushroom clouds that they invited.
- grownseed 11y agoIt makes me deeply happy to see this here. Miyazaki's mind is truly unique (and by extension most Ghibli films too), nothing else quite compares (and as the author points out, certainly not Disney & co. despite being Ghibli's distributors in the West). I've introduced many people to Ghibli, a lot of whom would have never even considered watching an animated film (even less so a foreign one), and most came away truly touched. Miyazaki is anti-war, but he's also extremely pro-ecology as is obvious in most of his films (Nausicaa is an obvious one, but perhaps more obvious would be Pom Poko or Totoro). Broadly speaking, he advocates balance in all its forms. A lot of his main protagonists are strong female characters, and not the "overly girly unicorn princess with magical powers" kind. Violence, like greed, is a disease as opposed to an end (in fact those two concepts are often expressed together in his films, e.g. Spirited Away). But maybe the best accomplishment in most, if not all, of Miyazaki's work, is his ability to capture the interest and the imagination of the viewers without resorting to cheesy gimmicks, gratuitous violence or sexual innuendos, which seem to be the go-to for a lot of cinema (animation and otherwise, Western and Eastern).
- shadowmoses 11y agoIn his own words, “You must see with eyes unclouded by hate. See the good in that which is evil, and the evil in that which is good. Pledge yourself to neither side, but vow instead to preserve the balance that exists between the two.”
- JoshTriplett 11y ago> You must see with eyes unclouded by hate. See the good in that which is evil, and the evil in that which is good. Pledge yourself to neither side, but vow instead to preserve the balance that exists between the two. As a statement, it sounds poetic at first, and the first two sentences are absolutely perfect; however, there's something very wrong about the notion of "preserving the balance", and I've seen that notion show up elsewhere as well. Evil should not persist out of any sense of balance, and nothing goes horribly wrong with the world if evil ceases altogether.
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- netcan 11y agoTwo points: One is that I'm tired of both the congratulatory and the flagellative uses of "Western." Feminism is no more a western tradition than it is an Arab, Chinese or Congolese one. It's a modern cultural movement. Similarly, simple good vs evil plot settings are not western. They exist everywhere. They're often from propaganda, naturally occurring hero worship, morality tales and depictions of a culture's own history. GRRM (mentioned here) is as western as Tolkien and is definitely a modern example western literature. The complicated moral depictions in Game of Thrones are not new, but they are definitely strong in the current zetgeist. It comes and goes and has often reached the point of cliche. Hercules (and his analogues like Samson and Cuchulainn) are often depicted with character flaws, often involving women and madness in some way. We've been through a period when it was out of fashion. I think hollywood film tradition is very largely to blame, their perfect hero classics. The awesome comedic writer like Adams, Pratchet, Joseph Heller or even Franz Kafka earlier on mock this constantly. Humour is great for this kind of thing, satirising the current literary cliches. That brings me to my second point. Today's storytelling is taking this stuff to a whole new level. The complex morality tales and decompacting of group decision making dynamics that we see in everything today is really awesome, in my opinion. I think it's great art, or at least to my taste. Playing with moral perspective and depicting the complexity of people acting in groups is an awesome thing to explore. There's a ton of depth there and a ton of artistic flair required to bite into it. In my opinion, it hits the best notes when you have been wrenched so much that your sheltered sense of morality breaks down. It still exists, but its grim rather than fiery. Evil gets demystified, banal and sad. When a bad guy gets a just end you take on the role of a reluctant but dutiful executioner rather than a hot blooded cheerleader at the gallows. Walter White is awesome because he's complex like a real person. His angst isn't just a flat "he's angsty because X." That's very hard to do. I think the only way to get that stuff across is the moral grey areas and the "shit happens" unfolding of a person. Long format TV series give writers time to do it. This stuff is really fantastic in modern art. TV shows, books...
- hacktavist 11y agoThis is really an awesome article, thanks for sharing!
- everyone 11y agoMAJOR SPOILERS!!! wtf! no spoiler warning at all. Grave of the fireflies was one of the few Ghibli films I hadnt got around to seeing yet. Plot is totally spoiled in the first few sentences. fuck you author!!
- hajile 11y agoFor what it's worth, that "spoiler" is a known fact less than 2 minutes into the film. As with all Ghibli films, the greatness is in the watching.
- JoshTriplett 11y agoI agree; some stories are more damaged by spoilers than others. If the primary appeal of a story is a shocking surprise, the spoiler takes much of the fun out of it. But some stories aren't particularly hurt even if you know the details. However, in this case, the spoiler (which I read long ago) told me that it's a film I want to skip; I don't enjoy stories with bad endings, no matter what message they're trying to convey or point they're trying to make. There's too much of that in reality already to seek it out in fiction.
- ekianjo 11y agoThe beginning does not tell you how they die, though. so yeah, there is a spoiler.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- mynameisvlad 11y agoI mean, it's an 18-year old movie. What did you expect? That nobody ever talks about the plot of movies forever and all time? There's a time when we have to say "okay, people have probably watched it, it's safe to talk about it freely now", and 18 years is definitely more than enough time for that to be the case.
- ekianjo 11y ago
- bracewel 11y agoThe post seems a little confusing, Howl's Moving Castle was in fact written by Diana Wynne Jones 18 years before the Studio Ghibli adaptation.
- mayoff 11y agoThere are major differences between the book and the movie.
- fitzwatermellow 11y agoMight be in the minority, but I strongly disagree with the assessment that Miyazaki-san's final film "The Wind Rises" was not amongst his greatest. I re-view it every few months for inspiration and find it holds up quite powerfully with each repetition. Japanese anime does Italian neo-realism in epic scale. The engineer as the manifestor of dreams. War as a terrible catalyst of progress. Surreally creepy voice acting by Werner Herzog as the mysterious Castorp in an homage to Thomas Mann. What's not to love? For more on the controversy here's a link to the Chicago Reader review that sums up why some perceived it as being sympathetic to fascism: http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-wind-rises-hayao-miyazaki-jiro-horikoshi/Content?oid=12535079 http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/the-wind-rises-hayao-mi...
- ekianjo 11y agoThis is a terrible article. > LeMay also oversaw and championed the enforcement of the total blockade of Japan by filling the waters around its port cities with aerial-dropped mines, which, for example, caused shipping through Kobe to plummet by 85%. This campaign was dubbed, with a refreshing lack of hypocrisy, “Operation Starvation.” Thus, the starvation of little Setsuko/Keiko was not “collateral damage,” but a premeditated murder. Newsflash: people kill other people in wars. Including civilians. Wow, I would have never imagined. And yes, you try to kill as many people as you can, because that's how wars stop, when the losses are big enough that you consider capitulation. Japan's military indoctrination gave the US not much choice anyway, since they were ready to fight till the last man. > LeMay was instrumental in the US shift from high-altitude bombing with general purpose explosives to the low-altitude incendiary bombing of Japanese cities that resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and the famine-inducing ruination of the economy. He later became a tireless advocate for bombing Vietnam, as he put it, “back to the Stone Age,” and for bombing the whole world back to the Ice Age by launching a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union. That's a complete misunderstanding of the thinking of LeMay. There are many documentaries/books about him, and you can read "Command and Control" if you want to get a good view of LeMay and why he acted like that during that period. Whether you liked him or not, he was a rational person. His idea of nuking the Soviets first came from the fact that for some time, the US had clear superior nuclear power vs the Soviets, and that one should not wait until the Soviets develop enough bombs to be able to destroy the US if they decide to strike first. If the Soviets had decided to strike first, it would have destroyed the US chain of command and left nothing for retaliation - that is why LeMay started the SAC program to have bombers constantly in the skies with nuclear weapons, "just in case". That program lasted until after the fall of the Soviet Union. And bombing the Soviets first when the US had a clear advantage (in the early 50s basically) would not have resulted in the whole world being destroyed, most likely only the Soviet Union would have paid a hefty price while the losses in Europe/US would have been less. Seriously, don't write about History if you know nothing about it.
- losvedir 11y ago> And bombing the Soviets first when the US had a clear advantage (in the early 50s basically) would not have resulted in the whole world being destroyed, most likely only the Soviet Union would have paid a hefty price while the losses in Europe/US would have been less. And this is a better outcome than what _actually_ happened how...?
- stavrogin 11y agoThis article rightfully praises the Ghibli movies for their non-Manichean stories, especially when compared to Disney or Hollywood blockbusters. Yet I'm surprised it missed an important example: in the first film entirely directed by Hayao Miyazaki, Nausicäa is far from an angel. In my eyes, she is Miyazaki's most ambiguous character. Warning, spoiler ahead. When her valley is invaded, the peaceful Nausicäa runs to the room of her ill and bedridden father. He's dead, surrounded by soldiers. She screams, seizes her father's sword, and enters a killing rage. Truly, even a young and sweet girl can feel hate and killing intent, and she may even act accordingly. Nobody's born an angel nor a demon, but we can all become insensitive or cruel. Just read Primo Levi or Herman Langbein to see how most people transform in a few weeks. Anyway, that sequence made me cry. I'd also like to mention the opening of this movie, inspired from the medieval "tapisserie de Bayeux" that relates England's invasion in the XIth century. The ballet of robots along a burning city is incredibly beautiful and moving. How stunning that Miyazaki starts his first film with the artistic beauty of a war scene!
- duaneb 11y agoThat entire movie is probably the most beautiful one I've ever seen.