Something comes to my mind when thinking about the relationship between humans and plants is the animated feature Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, my first and favorite Miyazaki’s film of all time. The film sets in an apoplectic world where the spread of the toxic jungle known as “Sea of Decay’’ indiscriminately engulfs all human civilization with destructive force. When facing the expansion of the Sea of Decay, most of people in the film naively adopt a self-centered attitude, arbitrarily believing that its existence is solely as an absolute threat to human survival, unaware of its higher-above, redemptive mission to restore and purify nature polluted by humankind. In contrast, different from others, Princess Nausicaa — the protagonist, also a rarely seen female Messiah — does not see nature as an enemy even when it seems to be threatening and dangerous; her affection towards nature, the plants, and her belief that these plants live beyond humans are vividly displayed throughout the film. In the film, Nausicaa has a secret garden in the deepest cellars of the Castle, where she grows the spores she takes from the “Sea of Decay’’ in clean water and clean soil. Through planting these spores, Nausicaa finds that the spores are not themselves poisonous but are only so when raised in a polluted environment. Nausicaa’s relationship with the plants is a manifestation of the shintoistic ideas that, unlike the humancentric idea in which plants are evaluated based on its human-oriented service, emphasizes the harmony between the good and the evil (embracing both the “good” and the “bad” aspects of plants) and the reverence for the “sacred” (in this case, nature as the sacred). Inspired by this idea, I think it is important not to treat plants as “objects” but instead as “things,” a notion borrowed from Heidegger’s thingness. In other words, plants exist not as something “for” humans, but they are self-contained things that stand alone.
From Nausicaa to his later films such as Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, Miyazaki dedicates to convey this shintoistic philosophy he advocates in the form of animation. While building his intricate imagined worlds, Miyazaki promotes the audience to see a different picture he imagined, encouraging them to delve deeper and further — — corresponding to Civic Imagination’s commitment to “to think of alternatives, to imagine a different world.” In Nausicaa, for example, there are several fantasy creatures such as Ohmu, which can be seen as representing the spirit of plants. Through creating these imagined plant-based creatures, Miyazaki allows the audience to forgo the humancentric idea of the plants, see plants more holistically as plants themselves, and consequently evoke respect for the plants, making the audience realize that plants exist beyond human existence.
