My Neighbour Totoro (1988), from Japanās Studio Ghibli, is one of the few genuinely child centred films in existence. In contrast, most films out of DreamWorks and Pixar contain dual levels of meaning, including jokes only the adult co-viewer will understand, or emotional layers inaccessible to children.
For instance, in Toy Story 3 Andy says goodbye to his childhood when he says goodbye to his toys. This evokes the emotion of nostalgia and sadness in adults. Test audiences revealed that children under about 13 have a completely different reaction to this scene ā they identify with the toys and feel happy, probably wondering why the adults are tearing up. Nostalgia is one of the few specifically adult emotions.
In contrast, The Good Dinosaur (2015) didnāt garner great reviews. Some critics suggested itās a fine story for kids, but adult viewers expected a layer aimed specifically at them. But there is no āadult layerā to The Good Dinosaur, which ranks as Pixarās second-worst rated movie (above Cars 2). In the West adults have been trained to expect kidsā films with separate layers just for us.
My Neighbour Totoro is different altogether.
WhenĀ My Neighbor TotoroĀ , directed by Hayao Miyazaki, came out in 1988, the public treated it only as a āchild pleaserā.Ā Yet Japanese people soon realized thatĀ My Neighbor TotoroĀ was something more; it is actually a thought-provoking film. It is now considered one of the most acclaimed films for children and adults.
Reiko Okuhara
Hereās my thesis: Studio Ghibli achieves what Pixar and DreamWorks have thus far not managed:
- A film which appeals to all ages
- without alienating the preschool viewer from any single part of it.
- Adults and children will be laughing at the same moments
- experiencing very similar emotions simultaneously.
I first watched Totoro in 1995 as a 17-year-old exchange student in Japan, where it was aired on national TV one wintry Sunday afternoon. The air time suggests family viewing ā a film for all ages. Iād be surprised if I ever met a Japanese person who hadnāt seen this film, regardless of age or whether they have children of their own.
Fast forward a sociological generation, My Neighbour Totoro was one of the first films I showed my Australian daughter. As I expected, she was captivated as a toddler.
We rewatched it last night. When she first saw it she was the age of Mei; now she is the age of Satsuki. Although it had been years since last viewing, her delight showed me the imagery remains deeply etched in her memory. Revisiting the world of Totoro felt like revisiting a holiday destination from early childhood.
Ponyo is another Studio Ghibli film aimed squarely at a very young audience.
SETTING OF MY NEIGHBOUR TOTORO
JAPAN
I much prefer the Studio Ghibli films set unambiguously in Japan. The European-inspired Japan as depicted in films like Kikiās Delivery Service fall into uncanny valley for me. Totoro is set in Japan.
The story is meant to be set in Tokorozawa. If youāre using Chrome as your browser, here it is on Google Earth. This is where Miyazaki lives.
If you visit Japan you can explore a replica of Satsuki and Meiās house.
If you would like to visit the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, make sure to book your tickets from outside Japan, because overseas bookings are given preference. Perhaps unfairly, Japanese people booking from within their own country must book many more months in advance.
ERA
Itās not easy to guess at the era of My Neighbour Totoro unless you watch it very closely and can read Japanese. (Bear in mind that the main audience ā Japanese toddlers ā also cannot read Japanese.) The story could be set anytime from Miyazakiās own boyhood until the 1980s when it was released.
Adult fans have looked really closely and realised it could be set in any number of years within the 1950s. Hayao Miyazaki has been pressed to divulge when, exactly, itās meant to be set. He replied, āItās supposed to be 1955, but we werenāt terribly thorough in our research. What came to mind was āa recent pastā that everyone can relate to.ā
Note that Miyazaki uses the word āeveryoneā. That includes children. He hasnāt created any part of this world that 1980s children would be unable to understand without explanation.
Apart from the minor calendar clues within the intratext of the film, My Neighbour Totoro could easily have been set when it was made, in the 1980s. We donāt get a glimpse of life in the cities because the story arena is contained to a very small part of Japan.
The second year I went to Japan (1999) I stayed in a dormitory attached to a university. This dorms were nestled under a mountain, which sounds lovely, except it hadnāt benefitted from a single bit of maintenance since it was constructed at the end of the second world war. If I hadnāt ever visited the city, I might as well have been living in post-wartime Japan. This was a hugely different experience from my high school exchange student year in Yokohama, one train ride from Tokyo, tech mecca setting of futuristic fantasy. I recognise the house from My Neighbour Totoro ā the tiled sink, the wooden items, the country manners.
Country Japan has always been bifurcated from urban Japan ā a point of pride and also a point of ridicule. The word āinakaā might loosely translate as ārural/countryā in English, but it sounds pejorative and insulting as well. (Imagine ābumpkinā on the end of it.)
However, this is not Miyazakiās view of rural Japan. For Miyazaki, the natural parts of Japan contain ancient magic, and a visit into wilderness afford a trip into the deep subconscious. The forests which surround this old homestead of My Neighbour Totoro function as a forest functions in a fairytale.
IS THIS A UTOPIA?
Does the setting of My Neighbour Totoro count as a genuine utopia? According to Maria Nikolajeva, there are seven requirements of a utopian setting and Totoro almost fits, except for number six: Absence of death or sexuality. The sick mother in hospital is a constant reminder that loved ones can die. Satsuki and Mei are terribly worried about their mother and this drives their actions.
Miyazaki adapted Mary Nortonās The Borrowers (released as The Secret World of Arrietty), which also includes the spectre of death with the child sick in bed. Perhaps Miyazaki wants to avoid sentimentality, which is a danger in creating genuine utopias. Genuine utopias are also quite difficult to set a film-length story in, because suspense must come from somewhere. Perhaps āuneaseā is a better word than āsuspenseā.
Helen McCarthy is the author of Hayao Miyazaki: Master of Japanese Animation and has said that Death in Totoro is simply āthereā. Death is presented as part of being alive.
Miyazaki does two very difficult things in this film with considerable delicacy and grace: he makes a film at a childās pace and on a childās level; and he allows death to assume a major role in the movie without demonising or personalising death.
Hayao Miyazaki: Master of Japanese Animation
The house itself might be considered a bit of a death trap. Our own pergola fell down a few years ago and it was a mission keeping everyone away from it for their own safety. But here, the girls come closer to calamity than they realise when they use the rotting post as a play thing:
This traditional old homestead also has a well ā another common death trap, though it exists only as part of the background scenery.
The soot gremlins may or may not indicate the presence of evil. The girls no longer have a safe home. I believe young children will find this house as creepy as the characters do.
However, we might put forward the argument that any Hayao Miyazaki film is a moral utopia:
[T]hose who are familiar with Miyazaki can trace the filmās modern success to his stubborn moral mind. Reluctant to put his characters into straightforward āgoodā and āevilā boxes, the Ghibli stalwart nevertheless rewards the pure of heart and punishes greed and gluttony. Itās a trait that wasnāt missed by Roger Ebert, who described Totoroās small kingdom as, āthe world we should live in, not the one that we occupy.ā
Little White Lies
THE MEANING OF TONARI
Despite the English translation of the title, ātonariā does not just mean āneighbourā as in āthose who live in the place next doorā. Tonari is a wider word than English āneighbourā suggests, and can mean ānext toā, or āalongsideā. Imaginary creature Totoro is āalongsideā the girls at every step of their journey (as well as dwelling ānearbyā.)
PORTAL FANTASY
One rule of portal fantasy ā there is a transition between the āreal worldā and the āfantasy worldā. The audience must be allowed to linger in this transitional space for a little while. Ideally, a scene or two will be set inside the transition, or right beside it. In this case, itās the tunnel made of branches. The father even joins the girls there, blurring for them the sensible, rational adult world and the fantasy play world they have created.
It appears as if someoneāprobably Big Totoro himselfāhas invited Mei into the fantasy world. Awakened by the little girl, he appears to be startled not by her presence but by her audacity. Meiās seclusion has led to Totoroās invitation to his world; the child archetype acquires the protection of nature, alone and away from motherly care. Meiās entrance into the fantasy world reminds the audience of the beauty and splendor of nature, which the present generation seems to have forgotten.
Reiko Okuhara
MYTHOLOGY AND INTERTEXTUALITY
One of the first games we see the Kusakabe girls playing is a Cowboys and Indians fantasy. I havenāt seen modern children mimic the war cries of Native Americans ā Westerns have evolved into anti-Westerns, we are a little more enlightened. There is no longer the romance of American expansionism ā we no longer buy toy cowboy costumes for our boys as par for the course. This childhood game does plant the story quite firmly in the 1950s when, even in Japan, American culture was having a big influence on childrenās fantasy lives (as well as in every other way).
Later the girls are disappointed to find their acorns wonāt sprout. But in a fantasy scene quite clearly inspired by English tales such as āJack and the Beanstalkā, they use arm movements to create a magical force. The trees grow huge in an instant.
MY NEIGHBOUR TOTORO: THE JAPANESE WIZARD OF OZ?
We Westerners like to view non-Western art through the lens of Western art. It has been suggested that My Neighbour Totoro is āThe Japanese Wizard of Ozā. This may be useful as a hook for a Western viewer otherwise disinclined to watch anime on its own terms.
Perhaps one of the biggestĀ reasonsĀ forĀ Totoroās success is that everyone has their own interpretation of what it means. While the physical appearance of the title character has been compared to everything from an owl to a seal to a giant mouse troll, on a metaphysical level the theories run even deeper. In Miyazakiās book of essays āStarting Point: 1979-1996ā, Totoro is described as a creation of Mei and Satsukiās imagination, a gentle giantĀ who guides them through their motherās illness.
Some believe Totoro to be a Kami (a spirit tied to nature) belonging to the camphor treeĀ which Mei falls into the belly of while sheās out playing. The tagline on the original Japanese poster translates as, āThese strange creatures still exist in Japan. Supposedly,ā which summons thoughts of old souls and endless wisdom. Ultimately, you can project whatever youĀ want onto Totoro.
Little White Lies
THE THREE BILLY GOATS GRUFF
If you grew up in non-Scandinavian country, what was your first introduction to trolls?
Near the end of the film, Satsuki and Mae are shown reading The Three Billy Goats Gruff on a futon with their mother. The creature on the book looks like the creature Totoro, which suggests Mei imagines him up, inspired by the Norwegian folktale.
When Mei āmeetsā him, she knows exactly who he is. āYouāre Totoro!ā
In Japanese Three Billy Goats Gruff translates to äøć³ćć®ććć®ććććć©ć (Sanbiki no yagi no gara gara don) in which the āgara gara donā is onomatopoeia for the tripp trapp, tripp trapp of the first written Norwegian version (modified only slightly for English, without the double ātās.)
But maybe Mei read a European version ā the ātrot trotā of the goats sounds a little like Totoro. Itās significant that Japanese is a heavily onomatopoeic language. Children are excellent at making up their own, original onomatopoeia and I put it to you that Japanese children are excellent at i. Is Totoro Meiās phonetic rendition of trotting?
Alternatively, ātrollā is transcribed as ātororuā in Japanese. A small Japanese speaking child could easily pronounce the word wrongly and come up with Totoro, because Totoro is easier to say than Tororu.
STORY STRUCTURE OF MY NEIGHBOUR TOTORO
At first glance, My Neighbour Totoro does not follow The Rules Of Story as described by numerous (Western) story gurus. It just feelsā¦ different, somehow.
The story [of Totoro] is made up of a series of incidents or episodes, almost none of which Iād classify as a plot point, per se. The only truly tense moment comes late in the film, when Mei runs off to the hospital by herself, worried her mother is in danger. This turns out to have been a false alarm, and everyone is soon reunited. The whole thing is resolutely low-stakes and gentle, its narrative lumpy and relaxed.
Bright Wall, Dark Room
Iāve been thinking about how much Western storytelling trains us to expect that writers show the audience where theyāre going right up front. Main characters have to be introduced right away. Twists have to be foreshadowed. Inciting incident in the first 10% etc. BUT Many of my favorite stories, especially Asian ones, donāt adhere to these ārules.ā In My Neighbor Totoro, Totoro doesnāt appear until 30 mins into a 90 min film. The slow sense of discovery makes the film enchanting. Can you imagine any American film waiting until the 33% mark?
@FondaJLee
But look a little deeper and My Neighbour Totoro is a tightly plotted fantasy with a classic mythic structure.
I have no trouble doing my usual breakdown of it, but hereās the thing we need to understand about My Neighbour Totoro: It is much more like a picture book plot than a Pixar plot, and itās important to understand the concept of the Carnivalesque. (This is why My Neighbour Totoro has been compared to Where The Wild Things Are ā the stand out Western example of carnivalesque childrenās literature.)
SHORTCOMING
Satsuki and Mei are enduring an upheaval ā in common with the beginning of many childrenās stories, they are at the tail end of having been moved from some unknown prior location to a creepy big house in the country.
Before they can feel at home here they must face their fears of the unknown.
Thereās a much bigger unknown which the girls are initially able to put to the back of their minds, distracted by the newness of the creepy house: Their mother is ill. Like Satsuki and Mei, the audience doesnāt know the nature of this illness. We are kept in a state of ignorance, which may be worse than actually knowing. This is the common experience of childhood ā even when children are told things, we donāt know what it means. Not really. This makes childhood scary.
Miyazaki also gets rid of the mother by making her too sick to care for them ā a very common plot device in childrenās literature, especially in America.
But Mei in particular is the Divine Child archetype, both vulnerable and invincible at once. (Jungian.) The audience understands this contract from the beginning, even if we donāt know Jungās word for it ā nothing really bad will happen to Mei.
The sibling duo in which the younger child is at one with fantasy and imagination while the older child is on the cusp of adulthood, is common in storytelling:
Unlike Mei, who fully enjoys her childhood, her elder sister is about to enter womanhood. Satsuki resembles Wendy inĀ Peter Pan, who must work to believe in Peter, while her younger brothers have no problem believing in Neverland.
Rieko Okuhara
DESIRE
At the deepest level, Satsuki and Mei want their mother to get better and to join them in their new house. But this doesnāt make for a story. There needs to be a more specific desire, one that the characters might actually achieve.
This is where the story turns carnivalesque. Started by the younger and therefore more imaginative Mei (in a sequence reminiscent of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe), they invent (or discover) a magical world as proxy for their subconscious. By entering into this world they will:
- Have heaps of fun (carnivalesque)
- Face their deepest fears (mythic)
OPPONENT
In a carnivalesque childrenās story, supernatural/mythic creatures appear and they may appear scary. In this case, it is the large Totoroās size. Notice how Mei at first encounters small, rabbit-sized Totoros ā this correlates to how her fears intensify over the course of the story. In Japan, these totoros are known as Big Totoro, Medium-sized Totoro and Little Totoro. (This reminds me of The Three Bears.)
But Totoro is also furry like a welcoming great bed.
Despite this, Totoro has an element of danger. Iām thinking, if the creature rolls over, Mei could easily be squashed. The scene with Mei and Totoro contains a minor āBattleā of a big sneeze, as Mei fiddles with Totoroās whiskers. Many childrenās picture books feature an outsized bodily function as the climax, most notably in fairytales such as The Three Little Pigs, but also in Yertle The Turtle and Julia Donaldsonās Wake Up Do, Lydia Lou!
In a cosy story like My Neighbour Totoro, the main characters will meet allies (helpers) along their mythic journey.
First thereās the father.
The fatherāalmost like a Wise Old Man, another archetype figureāseems to understand the rules of the godsā world and explains them to his children.
Rieko Okuhara
Then there is Granny. Mei is scared of her at first, perhaps because she is new, perhaps because she is old, perhaps because she is associated with a scary house. The Granny, like many elderly characters in childrenās stories, lives in her own version of a fantasy world. She tells the girls quite confidently that if their mother ate her fresh homegrown vegetables, her illness will clear right up. This is not an especially responsible thing to tell a child, and it is what sets Mei off on her journey to deliver the corn cob to her mother. (This has been foreshadowed by Mei telling her father that she is a big girl now and is off to do āerrandsā. The father thinks nothing of this at the time.)
The boy next door (Grannyās real grandson) is positioned as a natural opponent because he is a boy. Satsuki declares that she does not like boys. However, Kanta reveals his kindness by offering the girls his umbrella ā a well-known trope in Japan, where people will indeed share their umbrellas with you if you are caught in a downpour. (Downpours are common during rainy season ā when Kanta is chastised by his mother for failing to take an umbrella, there was a surefire bet it would rain heavily.)
Totoro turns up at the bus stop at night ā a scary prospect for the girls, whose deeper fear is: āWhat has happened to Dad?ā Dad hasnāt turned up when expected. Without their father, the girls would be utterly alone in the world. So once again, Totoro turns up as a proxy for their fear, and the girls transform him (or her ā where did those mini Totoros come from?) into a non-threatening, childlike creature who is so unassuming he is startled by heavy raindrops falling onto the umbrella lent to him by the girls.
PLAN
Satsuki and Mei first explore their new house. If they explore every nook and cranny they will understand its mysteries. Ergo, they will not feel scared. Exploration of the scary house occupies a good chunk of the beginning. They find āsoot gremlinsā ā very much in line with the sort of creature found throughout traditional Japanese folklore, but actually invented by Miyazaki himself. In the West we have dust bunnies, which are more hairy than sooty.
In a suspenseful story for adults (say, anything from the thriller/detective genres), there will be a chase sequence. Here, too, there is a chase: Mei chases after the intriguing little creatures. In other words, it is Mei who drives the action, not the other way round. The utopian, cosy atmosphere would have been punctured had the Totoros been chasing Mei instead.
Mei also drives the action by visiting Satsuki at school.
Finally, she takes off on a one-girl mission to save her mother. Notice that before she does so, the sisters have an argument.
BIG STRUGGLE
The Battle sequence, in which the village searches for Mei, is similar to cross-genre ālost childā sequences. We wonder if Mei is dead when a childās sandal is found. (I wonder who it belonged to?)
Satsuki finds Mei by visiting Totoro. Totoro is able to fly, and can also summon the cat bus. Satsuki saves Mei by making use of forest magic. At least, thatās the fantasy layer of the story.
More literally, Satsuki may summon the courage to find Mei of her own accord, imagining that she has the protection of mysterious, fantasy companions that she and Mei both conjured up, thereby leading her to Mei. By entering Meiās imaginary Totoro world, Satsuki is also able to deduce that Mei has gone to the hospital with a āmagicā vegetable.
ANAGNORISIS
Ultimately, this is a story about two children who overcome their fears. They do this with the discovery that they are an integral part of the natural world. This discovery is proxy for the more mature insight they will develop later: That in order to be alive, we must also die. For now, though, their mother is not facing imminent death.
When Satsuki and Mei see their parents through the hospital window, they get the feeling everything with their mother is going to be all right. Often in visual storytelling, when characters come to some sort of realisation they are positioned at an elevated altitude. In this case they are up a tree ā ostensibly so they can see through the window ā symbolically because they now have a broader view on the situation and can put their motherās illness in perspective.
This variety of Anagnorisis combines well with a Child Archetype such as Mei:
The child comes in the very beginning of life. Yet the child also symbolizes the rebirth of a new child; before the rebirth, death must come. The child archetype is an initial and a terminal creature, and represents the process of death and rebirth. When Mei sets out to the hospital to heal her mother, her family loses her for a period of time. The finding of the lost child symbolizes the rebirth of Mei. For Satsuki, finding Mei also means the rediscovery of her childhood. In the embrace of Satsuki and Mei, one witnesses the outcome of Meiās death and rebirth. The child has combined the opposites, and the spirits are the witnesses to the event. The film ends with the happy smiles of people holding and hugging Mei and the spirits of nature looking over the cheerful scene from the top of the big camphor tree. Meiās coming home completes a stage in the progression of human beings.
Reiko Okuhara
NEW SITUATION
No matter what happens to the mother, Mei and Satsuki are now emotionally equipped to handle whatever cards they are dealt. They have learnt resilience by means of the power of imagination.
Worth mentioning: The original tagline was āWe brought what you left behind.ā Clearly this refers to Meiās delivery of the corn cob, but also works at the symbolic level ā Mei reunites her family and village with the wonder of nature around them.
THE ART OF MY NEIGHBOUR TOTORO
There is much to be said on this topic ā Iāll focus on just a few things.
COLOURS
Taking a condense snapshot of main colours (depicted in the poster below), itās clear how much of this film is set in the rural outdoors (green). The blue band takes the Kusakabe girls into the sky on a flight fantasy in the cat bus. Another green band takes them further into nature. Disregarding the light orange (which indicates the credits) notice the film is bookended by browns ā the brown is the home, at first new and scary, by the end a true home.
PERSPECTIVE
More recently Iāve been following a discussion about how scenes in Totoro break the rules of perspective, as it is traditionally taught. At first glance scenes look like cartoonified versions of photographs, but thatās not the case. People have whipped their rulers out and discovered that the animators/background artists have broken traditional ārulesā (made in the West) to include more information in a single scene.
This, too, is more in line with the off-kilter perspective found in childrenās picture books than in animation aimed at older audiences, in which case scenes tend to be beautiful for their technical prowess.
CHARACTER DESIGN
In a film aimed squarely at children, it is perhaps unusual that Miyazakiās characters donāt have that big-eyed, anime look. Ā On the other hand, the character designs are very much in line with picture books ā an art form which has so far rejected the āanime lookā. In fact, Iāve heard agents and publishers advise illustrators to steer well clear of manga-esque characterisation if the aim is to illustrate picture books. Ā The movements of Totoroās characters are beautifully accurate impressions of how children actually move ā in common with how the best childrenās book illustrators are able to depict realistic movement in their picture books. The scene in which Mei scoots forward on Totoroās belly could not have been achieved without close observation of young children. Hayao Miyazaki is well-known for his attention to detail. If he needs to depict water flowing over rocks in a stream, he will go and watch water flowing over rocks in a stream.
FOR FURTHER INVESTIGATION
Verbal Diorama podcast discuss My Neighbour Totoro.
Joe Hisaishiās Soundtrack for My Neighbor Totoro Soundtrack
A beloved Japanese anime move released in 1988,Ā My Neighbor TotoroĀ tells the story of two sisters, Satsuki and Mei, as they deal with the separation from their mother who is in the hospital, and their adventures with the forest creatures they meet called the Totoro. InĀ Joe Hisaishiās Soundtrack for My Neighbor Totoro SoundtrackĀ (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), Kunio Hara analyzes the filmās score and image song collection composed by Joe Hisaishi. The movieās catchy theme song, along with the rest of the music, contribute to the filmās nostalgic exploration of childrenās inner lives and the power of imagination to combat the very real traumas of childhood. Part of the 33 1/3 Japan Series, this short book explores the collaboration between Hisaishi and Miyazaki Hayao, the filmās creator and director. Hara considers his subject from a variety of perspectives, from a musical analysis of key sections of the score and image album to an investigation of the filmās importance as an icon of Japanese pop culture.Ā Kunio HaraĀ is an Associate Professor of Music History in the School of Music at the University of South Carolina. His research centers on nostalgia, exoticism, and Orientalism in late Romantic opera and music in post-war Japan.
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