Subversion in Miyazaki Films

Hayao Miyazaki, today fêted as perhaps the greatest living director of animation, is one of very few Japanese directors to have reached huge domestic popularity, while also achieving a global following. His films manage to be accessible to an international audience, but simultaneously possess layers of Japanese cultural and political criticism rarely obvious to a Western viewer.

Unlike many animation studios, particularly in the West, which continue to impart contemporary attitudes, slang and humour onto international settings and characters, Miyazaki has always been critical of contemporary culture, choosing to distort and subvert Japanese history and cultural values. His recurring use of female protagonists and antagonists is one clear example of this in a society which traditionally stresses the Confucian ideal of ‘Ryousai Kenbo’ or Good-Wife, Wise Mother. Today, the average Japanese woman still earns 40% less than the average man, and in government only 3.5% of senior jobs are held by women. Perhaps more troubling, according to the National Survey on Family, the number of married women in their 20’s who think women should remain at home as housewives rose from 35.7% in 2003 to 41.6% in 2013, and in 2016 a study found almost one-third of women had been sexually harassed in the workplace. However, Miyazaki always counters patriarchal attitudes, putting female competence and strength at the forefront of his stories.

One illustration of this can be seen in the film, Princess Mononoke, in the multi-layered character of Lady Eboshi. The most prominent figure in Iron Town, throughout the film her ruthlessness towards the Kami is balanced by her care for the lepers and women, both social outcasts in their own way with the women previously employed in the city as prostitutes. Set in the late Muromachi era of Japan this level of female social standing never existed but Miyazaki seeks to rewrite ancient Japan, re-imagining high female status to highlight the capabilities of women.

In Japanese cinema, films such as The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums, by Kenji Mizoguchi, focused on the long history of female self-sacrifice at the hands of the Japanese patriarchy. Miyazaki, however, is uninterested in portraying the realities of Japanese gender politics, instead presenting an idealist world where women are valued as much, if not more, than men. This rewriting of Japanese gender history is also seen in Spirited Away where the bath house is ruled over by the powerful Yubaba and at a lower level by the hard-working, intelligent Lin, in an environment that has a deep taboo connection with prostitution.

In one interview Miyazaki even supposedly said:

“I think the most appropriate way to symbolize the modern world is the sex industry. Hasn’t Japanese society become like the sex industry?”

Even his less overtly critical films such as Kiki’s Delivery Service, Ponyo, My Neighbour Totoro and Nausicaa all feature head-strong, admirable female characters, in no way inferior or submissive to a male protagonist. In fact, of the eleven films directed by Miyazaki only Porco Rosso, The Wind Rises and his debut, The Castle of Cagliostro, could be argued to contain no female leads, and even these have their memorable feisty female characters, such as in Porco Rosso, where Marco is consistently surprised by the wilful mechanic Fio, and his plane rebuilt entirely by women.

Besides gender politics there is also strong criticism of Meiji era (1868–1912) industrialisation and modern era Showa (1926–1989) and Heisei (1989- present) environment degradation in his films. His most blatant example of this environmentalism and deepest criticism of the Japanese royalty can be seen in the Kurosawa-esque epic Princess Mononoke. In this film we see the rise of the Japanese Yamato state at the expense of the environment and native Kami, with the emperor himself even demanding the head of the Forest Spirit or Shishigami.

In contrast to the destruction at the hands of the emperor and the Japanese people, the primary protagonist is Ashitaka, an Emishi similar to modern day Ainu, both traditionally depicted as a barbaric uncivilised people in Japanese history. However, Miyazaki celebrates the virtues of Ashitaka, inverting the historical narrative commonly associated with the emergence of the Yamato imperial state and the conquest of the ‘barbarians’ by the mythical divine warrior, Yamato-Takeru. Ashitaka himself even takes his name from the ancient chieftain, Nagasunehiko (Prince Longshanks), who attempted to prevent the Yamato conquest but was killed by the first emperor, Jinmu. Ashitaka translated literally carries the same meaning: ashi-leg and taka-tall, or Prince Longlegs. Interestingly, the story of Nagasunehiko is also referenced in Spirited Away, in the form of Haku, the servant of the Bath Witch, Yubaba. In the film, Haku has forgotten his name which has been signed away to Yubaba, but through Chihiro’s intervention he finally remembers his name: Nigihayami kohakunushi and his identity as a river spirit. In the Nihongi tales, Nigihayami was married to Nagasunehiko’s sister but abandoned his brother-in-law by joining the side of the emperor, much as Haku joins Yubaba as her henchman.

Allusions to this founding myth of Yamato-Takeru and the Yamato court are depicted throughout Ashitaka’s journey to the West. In the story of Yamato-Takeru, his father the Emperor Keiko sent him away to the lands of Kyushu, partly through fear of patricide, but mainly because of his violent and rough nature to subdue the Kumaso and later Emishi tribes. As the legend tells, before leaving he first visited his aunt, the High Priestess of the Great Shrine of Ise, who gave him the sword Kusanagi no Tsurugi, or the ‘grass-slaying sword’, handed down from Susanoo no Mikoto, the brother of the Sun Goddess Amaterasu. Ashitaka, however, only receives a good luck crystal knife from a girl in the village, Kaya, Miyazaki’s ideology of breaking convention exemplified by her breaking the taboo to say her last goodbye.

This symbolic parting highlights the difference in the goals of Yamato-Takeru and Ashitaka. The divine connection of the Yamato court lends sovereignty and justification to their imperial expansion, while Ashitaka only receives a symbolic gift to remember his Emishi tribal sister by, demonstrating above all his humanity.

The direction of their journeys is also satirised and obvious to anyone familiar with the story. Emperor Keiko sent his son to the East to subdue the Emishi ‘for living among malignant deities in the mountains who beset the highways and barred the roads’. Ashitaka, however, is sent on his journey to the Southwest, the Yamato homeland, to discover the root of hatred and evil, ‘to see through eyes unclouded by hate’. Rather than celebrate the pacification and subordination of the mountain, river and sea deities by man, as in the story of Yamato-Takeru, Ashitaka only engages in self-defence as a last resort, killing the Tatarigami boar and Samurai when left with no other option. Instead of imperial conquest, Ashitaka represents the Buddhist and Shinto ideal of spiritual and ecological harmony, something that Miyazaki appears to suggest has been corrupted by the influence of the Yamato state.

This re-working of ancient imperial myth and legend also insinuates not only the birth and expansion of the Japanese imperial state and its destruction of the natural world, but also the spread of Japanese colonialism and the warring foreign policy of the Emperor State-Shinto in the twentieth century. Miyazaki, instead, through the actions of Ashitaka, seems to endorse the Japanese post-War military stance of self-defence. This position can be further supported by the recent proposed change to the Japanese constitution. In an article published in response to the possibility of removing the war-renouncing article 9, Miyazaki wrote:

“I am taken aback by the lack of knowledge among government and political party leaders on historical facts. To take advantage of the low voter turnout and to change the constitution without giving it serious thought is unacceptable. I am clearly against it.”

This response was met by many nationalist right-wingers to be un-Japanese and he was even called a traitor, with online critics calling on Miyazaki to repay Korean ‘comfort women’ with the profits from his most recent film, The Wind Rises. This was ironic because in South Korea the film had been heavily criticised for spreading right-wing Japanese war propaganda.

The Wind Rises is perhaps his most ambiguous and clearly most autobiographical films of his career. Based in pre-Second World War Japan, it tells the true story of Japanese airplane engineer, Jiro Horikoshi, the designer of the fearsome Mitsubishi A6M ‘Zero’ fighter plane and his journey to design and build his aircraft. Miyazaki’s own father had himself worked at Miyazaki Airplane which designed parts for Mitsubishi, including Zero fighter planes.

The film faced criticism for its focus on Jiro’s ambitions and dreams, which if read one way appeared to mitigate the terrible results of his creations during the Second World War. However, the film is clearly a critique of the pursuit of perfection, beauty and creation. While his boyhood dreams of flying and designing aircraft were motivated by wonder, his creations are now being used to send pilots and civilians to their death. It questions the purpose of creation and the selfishness of pursuing one’s dreams, especially when they can be perverted for some other destructive aim, bringing to mind Oppenheimer and those involved in the creation of the atomic bomb. It is also mediation on Miyazaki’s own life in the pursuit of the beauty of animation, a pursuit which like Jiro’s perfectionism took time away from his family, and was always compromised by the need to balance creativity with commercialism.

However, one critique that can hardly be avoided is the treatment of Jiro as a figure of tragedy. He is never blamed or condemned, but like all the scientists, artists and people indirectly involved during the Second World War in Japan, Miyazaki seeks to show how ordinary people’s ignorance allowed them to become complicit in the atrocities of the war effort. This lack of condemnation has led many to believe Miyazaki trivialises the seriousness of Jiro’s actions and impact during the second world war, only caring about the beauty of the aircraft he helped design.

This was problematised further by interviews Miyazaki had previously given when stating the Zero ‘represented one of the few things we Japanese could be proud of- they were a truly formidable presence, and so were the pilots that flew them,’ as well as, ‘Jiro Horikoshi was the most gifted man of his time in Japan. He wasn’t thinking about weapons- really all he desired was to make exquisite planes.’ This attitude is most conspicuous in the film by the absence of any scenes involving the Zeros in ‘action’.

The ambiguousness of the film, coupled with the criticism from both sides of the political spectrum, makes one wonder why he chose to set, perhaps his last feature film, in such a hotbed of controversy. However, Miyazaki has always cast his cultural and political criticism with a degree of subtleness and ambiguity.

In his earlier film, My Neighbour Totoro, the film is laden with nostalgia harkening back to the old Japan of Miyazaki’s youth, when the traditional Satoyama countryside still covered much of the nation’s landscape. The ecological message and regret for its loss is not always obvious to the non-Japanese viewer, and likewise many Western viewers struggled with the non-committal ending of Princess Mononoke. The mono no aware philosophy of the film recognised the impermanence of all things, but equally the ability of nature to be reborn and the potential for people to make the world a better place. Rather than present simple answers to complex questions, Miyazaki takes an interest in the ambiguity of life. Likewise, while the story of Jiro Horikoshi might have been a controversial topic to attempt, Miyazaki has always been interested in subverting and questioning what is acceptable in Japanese society, in this case searching for ambiguity in the most controversial of all topics, World War II.