Miyazaki's Beautiful Anti-War Dreams

https://medium.com/dan-sanchez/miyazaki-s-beautiful-antiwar-dreams-44951be1be11

by shadowmoses • 11 years ago

179 101 11 years ago

shadowmoses3• 11 years ago

August 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

smegel6• 11 years ago

How does portraying a criminal war aggressor as a victim support an anti-war message?

ectoplasm4• 11 years ago

It's common enough to be both abuser and victim.

rwallace5• 11 years ago

If 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.

delinka• 11 years ago

I'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• 11 years ago

I 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• 11 years ago

It 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.

scott_karana3• 11 years ago

Is the knowing, willful firebombing of solely civilian targets ever justifiable, regardless of who brings the fire against whom?

From TFA:

  “Is it the enemy’s or one of ours?”

  “What difference does it make? Stupid murderers.”

3pt141592• 11 years ago

I'm extremely pro-peace, but in total war elimination of civilians is necessary to reduce production capacity.

marcosdumay• 11 years ago

How would this author propose convincing leaders who commit human rights violations to stop those violations?

You kill several of those victims, of course, and make sure the rest won't ever escape from poverty. I'm pretty sure that'll teach a dictator to not victimize them.

Or, just maybe, a dictator oppressing its own people isn't good enough reason to start a war. But I'll not insist on such radical ideas.

DanSanchezV2• 11 years ago

More along the lines of your excellent point: https://medium.com/dan-sanchez/a-foreign-enemy-is-a-tyrant-s...

ameza• 11 years ago

If the label, "US Warmongering", upsets you so much, please consider joining anti-war efforts. There's a reason why we have that label. Since WW2, our military has been active throughout the world to protect our interests from Latin America to the Middle East and of course, even Europe with the Cold War. Our current president promised an end to the war in the Middle East but it has yet to materialize. The Republican Party wants to launch a full-on campaign against ISIS. That label will remain with us unless we, as citizens, get involved with our government.

With regards to your point into human rights violations, I'd strongly suggest you look deeper into the conflict itself as "human right violations" is smoke and mirrors. If "human right violations" were a reason to start a conflict, Russia and/or China should have invaded us by now for all the human rights violations our police force are committing against our citizens, for all human right violations at Guantanamo Bay, etc.

happyscrappy4• 11 years ago

ISIS makes the Nazis seem reasonable but for some people anyone that opposes the West is good.

rosser2• 11 years ago

This author needs to remember that Japan was the war-bringer in WW2. Brought it right to Pearl Harbor.

And that justifies the murder — yes, murder — of hundreds of thousands of non-combatants ... how, again?

smegel6• 11 years ago

When an entire nation becomes a support system for a war machine ravaging an entire region and killing tens of millions of innocent people, the notion of "innocent civilians" becomes a bit tenuous.

Japan was in the wrong. It was a criminal aggressor. The idea that the Japanese people should be able to sit back in their admittedly lovely gardens and sip sencha tea while their armies were committing massive crimes against humanity is a grotesque notion. The best way to show the Japanese people the horrific nature of war and occupation was to bring it to their doorstep. If they want to portray themselves of victims, it should be of their own leadership, not the countries that needed to defeat them.

hajile2• 11 years ago

There is much more to the story. The history of the United States is full of wilful violence against others. Everything from theft of the south-west from Mexico (a war the US instigated and started) because "God has given us a 'manifest destiny'" to the barbaric atrocities we unleashed during the Spanish-American and later Philippine-American wars (the US has tried very hard to whitewash the concentration camps, rape, and wholesale butchering of men, women, and children).

America forced Japan to open it's borders (because the US wanted to use their lower islands to establish a more efficient trans-Pacific trade route). At that point, Japan realized that the game in Asia and the South Pacific was colonize or be colonized. Had we not invaded Japan for US trade route profits, had we not been demonstrating that colonial imperialism was the way forward, then Japan would have been far less likely to be pressured to behave similarly (the actions of all sides leading to an inevitable war no matter who fired the first shot).

I have no rose-colored view of Japan's actions (my adoptive grandmother and her parents spent most of the war being terribly mistreated and starved in a Japanese concentration camp). At the end of the war, most of these men were executed for their crimes, but despite all the well-known American war crimes, not even one American soldier was charged for crimes committed and everything was hidden behind the American flag.

In 'Grave of the Fireflies' a war is occurring, but is not the focus. It didn't matter to those children who the 'enemy' was and it didn't matter who the 'friendlies' were (neither side was willing to help them when they were incapable of helping themselves). It didn't even matter that the war ended exactly one week before Setsuko died.

I agree with the author that it was premeditated murder, but the murderer was not the US or even Japan. It is every one of us who are unwilling to stop this from happening in the here and now. WW2 is a fading memory, but the innocent casualties of war are not.

throwaway12309• 11 years ago

FUCKING SPOILER ALERT next time

grownseed• 11 years ago

It 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).

shadowmoses3• 11 years ago

In 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.”

JoshTriplett8• 11 years 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.

MichaelGG3• 11 years ago

How does one "preserve the balance"? Could you provide an example action you might take that is preserving this balance? I'm having trouble turning this into anything useful, other than a generic, general sort of "don't be hateful and rash; think things through; sides aren't perfect" kinda thing.

shadowmoses3• 11 years ago

Here is the full quote, "When I say 'hero' do not picture someone with the strength to fight and conquer Evil -because Evil is not something that can ever be conquered or defeated, Evil is natural. It is innate in all humans. But while it can't be defeated, it can be controlled. In order to control it, and live the life of a true hero, you must learn to 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."

Source: "The Whisper Within: Zen and Self" (p. 150)

bane• 11 years ago

Spirited away is probably one of the most creative, beautiful films I've ever seen. Part of what makes it so rewarding are the fantastic landscapes it paints and the amazing adventure it portrays, but there's also an entire other level of symbolism in it that you don't have to know to thoroughly enjoy it.

http://www.unomaha.edu/jrf/Vol8No2/boydShinto.htm

glandium• 11 years ago

Please note that Pompoko is not a Miyazaki movie. It is Takahata's.

netcan• 11 years ago

Two 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• 11 years ago

This is really an awesome article, thanks for sharing!

everyone• 11 years ago

MAJOR 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!!

hajile2• 11 years ago

For 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.

JoshTriplett8• 11 years ago

I 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.

ekianjo6• 11 years ago

The beginning does not tell you how they die, though. so yeah, there is a spoiler.

mynameisvlad4• 11 years ago

I 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.

ekianjo6• 11 years ago

I mean, it's an 18-year old movie. What did you expect?

Huh, like people who are 15 years old who would not have watched it yet ? Do you think people watch all movies that came before them ?

I mean, it's an 18-year old movie.

It's a 27 years old movie actually. Get your facts right.

bracewel• 11 years ago

The 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• 11 years ago

There are major differences between the book and the movie.

fitzwatermellow• 11 years ago

Might 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-mi...

Sven7• 11 years ago

Fully agree. Not to mention the fantastic artwork.

NovaS1X• 11 years ago

Definitely agree. Fantastic film.

ekianjo6• 11 years ago

This 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• 11 years 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...?

ekianjo6• 11 years ago

Not saying this is better or worse. Just explaining the way he was thinking - and noting that we were on the brink of nuclear war in two times in the 60s and the 80s, with actual total annihilation being very close - if it had happened you would not be there to pass that judgment in the first place, and LeMay may have been proven right.

Most observers agree that it was "mere luck" that we did not annihilate each other at those precise time points.

stavrogin• 11 years ago

This 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• 11 years ago

That entire movie is probably the most beautiful one I've ever seen.

Miyazaki's Beautiful Anti-War Dreams

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