Original Article

Fantasy and reality in Miyazakis animated world

Michael Rustina,* and Margaret Rustinb
a

School of Law and Social Sciences, University of East London, Docklands Campus, London E16 2RD, UK. E-mail: m.j.rustin@uel.ac.uk

Child and Family Department, Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, 120 Belsize Lane, London NW3 5BA, UK. E-mail: MRustin@tavi-port.nhs.uk
*Corresponding author.

Abstract This article explores the Japanese animated films of Hayao Miyazaki and
Studio Ghibli, which are outstanding contributions to contemporary popular culture. It describes their representation of developmental experiences of children and adolescents and compares them with work in the British and American traditions of childrens fiction. It deploys psychoanalytic perspectives to suggest that one of their many admirable qualities is their sensitivity to the unconscious anxieties of normal children. While the films belong broadly in the genre of fantasy, they nevertheless convey a subtle awareness of social differences and changes. Their traditional method of hand-drawn animation is shown to make possible a great diversity and delicacy of visual representation. The films provide many beautiful animated representations of natural, man-made, and imagined environments and express deep concerns. After an overview of Miyazakis work, the article gives a more detailed consideration of Our Neighbour Totoro, Ponyo, and Porco Rosso. Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society (2012) 17, 169184. doi:10.1057/pcs.2012.21 Keywords: Miyazaki; animated films; Japan; childhood; emotional development

Introduction
The animated films of Hayao Miyazaki and his associates at Studio Ghibli in Japan are classics of their genre, more than equal in quality to the work of the leading American and British animated film studios (Pixar and Dreamworks) over the last three decades. A series of films including

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Nausicaa, Laputa Castle in the Sky, My Neighbour Totoro, Kikis Delivery Service, Porco Rosso, Whisper of the Heart, Princess Monokoke, Spirited Away, Howls Moving Castle, Ponyo, and Arietty have achieved enormous success in Japan, and a high reputation in the US and Europe. (All these films, except Whisper of the Heart and Arietty, were directed by Miyazaki. Studio Ghibli has produced many animated films by other directors, although they are mostly not held in the same esteem.) In our earlier work (Rustin and Rustin, 2001, 2003), we developed readings of classic works of fiction for children that focused on their symbolisation of crucial moments of emotional development. We argued that finding symbolic equivalents for the normal anxieties and transitions of childhood was a major achievement of this tradition, enabling one to understand the imaginative impact on adult as well as child readers of such stories as E.B. Whites Charlottes Web and Phillippa Pearces Toms Midnight Garden. We noted that child characters often find themselves separated from their parents, not as in earlier writing for children such as Frances Hodgsons Burnetts The Secret Garden through suffering the death of parents, but more often through the milder separations caused by holidays or family illnesses. Through this device, the stories explore the idea that separation from parents is a normal experience of childhood, beginning with the days of infancy, when no mother can be fully available. Living with the pains of separateness but also with its compensating joys and opportunities is part of the emotional experience of being a child. D.W. Winnicotts famous transitional objects in-between objects, like the special blankets or teddies to which small children become deeply attached refer to how children fashion ways of keeping in touch with internal representations of a mother-figure in her absence. We focused on the idea that development depends on intense unconscious relationships to internal objects symbolisations of the parental and sibling figures that are at the centre of early emotional life. Fictional works offer points of identification for children for example, a clever spider mother and a na ve piglet child in Charlottes Web and thereby make possible explorations of their feelings, both positive and negative, towards their primary objects. Some of the best fiction engages with profound issues of loss and enables readers to see that a relationship with a loved object can remain alive in the mind even after a separation has taken place. This is the meaning of the death of Charlotte at the end of her story (as her tiny spider children float away on their filaments of web) and of Toms imaginary encounter with Hatty, whom he now knows as an old lady, as a child of a long-ago time in Toms Midnight Garden. In this article, we explore some of Miyazakis animated films from a similar perspective. We argue that their appeal comes from their makers understanding of central emotional experiences of childhood and adolescence. In My Neighbour Totoro, the depiction of two little girls suffering the absence of their mother, who is ill in hospital, shows a film maker deeply in touch with
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the anxieties of small children. In Whisper of the Heart, Miyazaki portrays a prepubertal schoolgirl heroine who is just beginning, as exams approach, to worry about how she is going to live her life. This film shows Shizuku forming new identifications as she meets a boy with a real commitment to learning (he wants, against resistance from his parents, to train as a violin maker). The film depicts the awakening of a first presexual love between two adolescents, but it also shows that Shizukus encounter with another family, with different assumptions and expectations from her own, is at this moment as valuable to her as a first boyfriend. The sympathetic interest of the boys grandfather in her idea of becoming a writer, just as he has supported his grandsons wish to make violins, gives her something her own parents cannot provide. This is a film about the young heroines cultural awakening, as well as her emotional development. I had no idea that places like this existed, she says as she is led by a mysterious cat into a hilltop neighbourhood of graceful old houses, quite unlike the milieu of cramped modern flats where her family lives. Fantasy writing for children induces intense identifications, yet also holds at some distance the traumatic experience that might follow from more naturalistic representations of pain. It is one thing for a five-year-old to be moved to weep at the death of a beloved spider-heroine like Charlotte, and another to read about the death of a mother just like ones own. Fantasy can have a more powerful impact, in writing for children, than does naturalism. Young children identify with delight with Peter Rabbits spontaneous greed, naughtiness, and vulnerability to punishment, from which, of course, he escapes.1 Animated films are often an art of fantasy par excellence, and Miyazakis work brings extraordinary imagination to this genre. To tell a story, Umberto Eco (1985) wrote, you must first of all construct a world, furnished as much as possible, down to the slightest details (p. 22). Animation has given great scope to Miyazaki to create such worlds. Studio Ghibli remains committed to hand-drawn animation, in contrast to the now standard technology of computer graphical imaging (CGI). It is on this practice hat the great variety and subtlety of visual styles in its films depends. Of course, even this method involves an industrial scale of production. (The animation of Ponyo required 170,000 drawings, and its production team had 420 members.) But routinisation does not seem to be Studio Ghiblis way. Miyazaki has a core group of colleagues producers, artists, animators, colourists, composer who have worked with him for many years. He is responsible for many of the leading ideas of his Studios films and is exceptionally attentive to detail at every stage of the production process. But the method of production seems to be an unusually cooperative and enabling one.2 Studio Ghibli was set up in 1986, following the large success in Japan of Nausicaa, to establish conditions of production (including those of secure employment Miyazaki was formerly an active trade unionist) that could
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maintain quality and counter the tendency to degradation. Miyazaki has criticised that tendency as characteristic of late Disney films and mass television programming, which, in Japan, has relied heavily on animation. The connection in the Studio between hand-crafted work and distinctive quality is similar to that found in Aardmans work (Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep), although the Studio uses a quite different animation technology.3 Miyazaki has combined the role of studio director and hands-on film maker over many years. There is considerable variation, in Studio Ghiblis films, between genres of imaginative fantasy and near-naturalism. Whisper of the Heart, for example, is set in a typical Tokyo location, depicting an ordinary high-school, two homes in different neighbourhoods, and everyday streets. One could almost be watching a live-action film, with elements of fantasy slipping in. For example, a mysterious cat becomes a guardian angel to Shizuku the heroine, leads her where she needs to go and brings about a meeting with Seita, her admirer. A handsome statuette of a bigger cat, the Baron, in the grandfathers antique shop intrigues Shizuku, but it is also an important object for the grandfather. We learn that his lover of earlier years has been searching for his Baroness partner since she disappeared from his life in prewar Vienna. Whereas Whisper of the Heart is predominantly naturalistic in its approach, Laputa, The Castle in the Sky belongs more fully in the genre of fantasy. This adventure has as its main character Sheeta, a girl of about 14, who was, after the death of her parents, given a special stone by her grandmother. This stone is made of a rare element, etherium, whose power sustains but also protects Laputa, a mysterious island in the sky. Sinister agents and soldiers of the state, as well as a gang of airborne pirates consisting of an aged grandmother and her sons, seek to steal Sheetas magical stone, and with it to gain access to Laputa, either to despoil it of its riches or to use its immense power to gain control of planet Earth. This film moves rapidly between genres. There is a great deal of fighting, drawing on the explosive imagery of boys action comics. (There is a close link between manga comics and anime animation films in Japan.) Baroque flying machines are featured, the largest of them called Goliath, in homage to Jules Verne, one of the two inspirations for the film (the other was Jonathan Swift.) But when Sheeta falls to earth after her plane has been multiply attacked and she has been thrown from it, she lands in a mining village, reminiscent in its terraced cottages and green hills of South Wales, which Miyazaki visited while preparing the film. Sheeta meets Pazu, a boy from the village, who looks after her. It turns out that they share, through their memory of parents each has lost, a link with Laputa, the lost planet they long to find. The animation of the mining village and its railway lovingly shows artisanal machinery, in whose maintenance Pazu is expert. (Miyazaki likes to depict craftspeople of both sexes.) This part of the film is an homage to a lost world of
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miners even to a disappearing working class. It was made just after the defeat of the British miners strike of 19841985, whose sad consequences of deserted landscapes Miyazaki (1996) has mentioned in print. The imagery including its railway and music recalls Postgate and Firmins animated portrayal of this world, Ivor the Engine, from the 1950s. The white doves, which Pazu cares for, evoke another element of the miners culture. The pursuit of Sheeta and Pazu by the old ladys gang of pirate sons in a locomotive chase recalls scenes from Buster Keatons film The General. The images of this film for example, the strangely graceful Laputa robots, with small heads and large bodies like Henry Moore sculptures follow one another on-screen in a cascade of inventions. These amaze their audiences at the variety of things that can be imagined to exist. They bring to mind what Melanie Klein referred to as the epistemophilic instinct, the desire for understanding central to the pleasures to be gained from art. In the psychoanalytic view, at the heart of the desire to know lie the facts of life, in particular those concerning parenthood and sexuality. Laputa, the island in the sky the children are seeking, is where Sheetas parents came from. Pazus link with the island is through his dead father, who, when he described and drew it, was dismissed as a liar. The grandmotherly feelings for the two children, which are evoked in the apparently villainous old pirate woman, lead her to warm to their quest. At first her prisoners, they soon become valuable members of her crew, as she realises that nothing is more important to them than finding a link to their lost parents. This reminds us of the image we earlier saw of the weeping Sheeta as a little girl being comforted by her real grandmother with a gift that will bring her protection whenever she needs it. While this protection is to be secured with a destructive spell, its deeper meaning lies in the memory of a grandmother who loves her. Having set out this background to Miyazakis work, and our own perspective on fiction for children, we will now discuss three of his films in greater detail.

My Neighbour Totoro
Many of Miyazakis animations have children as principal characters and are intended for children, who often view them with their parents. My Neighbour Totoro has as its central characters two little girls, aged four and seven. It is about their experiences as they move into a new house with their father to await the return of their mother, who is in hospital. At first they all seem to manage the move happily, and father capably combines his university work and looking after the girls, with the help of a neighbour who offers to be a substitute granny. But as the story unfolds we realise how much the children miss their mother and are worried by her illness. They become distressed when they go to meet their father at a bus stop, after dark and in the rain, and he is not on the bus.
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Later, a telegram arrives from the hospital when father is at work, and they are frightened. Satsuki, who until then has tried hard to be a responsible big sister, cannot bear little Meis need for her mother and the fear this arouses that mother may die, and she shouts at Mei. Mei is heartbroken to have been rejected by her beloved sister. She decides to walk to the hospital (a three-hour walk for grown-ups) to take her mother a sweetcorn, which granny has told her will help to make mother better. She gets lost, and the neighbours are called to look for her. Granny has seen a sandal floating on the local pond, and, until Satsuki can tell them that the sandal is not Meis, they fear that Mei has drowned. Throughout the story, strange creatures appear to the children. First, soot sprites (animated round, ball-like creatures with eyes), which granny explains live in empty houses but do no harm. Then Mei, playing alone, discovers Totoro, a large, magical, bearlike creature, with two small companions, and follows him to his home in a big tree. She wakes him up by jumping on him, as she earlier awakened her father. Totoro befriends her. Later, while Satsuki and Mei wait at the bus stop for father, Totoro joins them. Catbus (just what its name suggests) arrives for him, and, as if by magic, their fathers regular bus then appears out of the gloom. Totoro has given Mei a present of some acorns in a packet of leaves, and she plants them in the garden. She is lonely while her sister is at school, and she spends hours watching to see if they have sprouted. (Will there be any life?). Mei then sees Totoro in the garden very early one morning, and the two girls go outside and see him turn the acorns into a little oak forest. This is a dream, for when father comes to see what is happening, the acorns have indeed sprouted into seedlings, but there is no forest. Satsuki, very guilty for having shouted at her now-lost sister, searches for her. In desperation she finds Totoro and asks for help. He understands that Mei is missing, and, with a roar, summons Catbus. Mei appears on its destination board, and it locates her. Then its sign changes to Hospital, and it takes the children there. They sit on a tree, observing through the window their parents talking together in mothers room. She is getting better. Mother tells father that her absence has been especially hard for Satsuki, who has tried so hard to be grown-up. Mother sees the children looking down at her from outside the window, and father, calm as usual, finds the sweetcorn on the windowsill, with its written message from the children. After they have left the hospital, granny finds Satsuki and Mei. The closing frames of the film show them walking home together, Mei between granny and her sister, holding their hands. This film is like an illustrated bedtime story, in which both real and magical events are described. The idea that little girls might crawl through a passage, fall down a hole (like Alice) and find a large, friendly bear would not be untoward in such a story; nor would the magical appearance of a catbus that bounds over the land, takes children inside its body, and carries them to their mother. We can think of Totoro and Catbus as internal objects (in Kleinian terms) that sustain
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the children while they endure their parents absence. Young children might like to think that there are such comforting but mysterious creatures around to help them in time of need. The films images and music provide the containment given by a writers style and perhaps by the voice of a grown-up reader. Because the film is about, and largely for, young children, one can understand why it seems so benign. Nevertheless anxiety about the imagined loss of a parent (and at one moment both parents) is pervasive. The pictures and sounds of Mei crying in despair after her sister has lost her temper with her are heart rending. Another theme explored by the film is the relation between humankind and nature. Throughout, the children eagerly make relationships with the living world around them. Father points out a large camphor tree looming over the house and in a little ceremony offers it thanks for looking after their house. Mei is passionate for her acorns to sprout into seedlings. A large frog enjoys the rain at the bus stop. When raindrops fall from a tree on the umbrella Satsuki has lent to him, Totoro jumps hard on the ground to release a torrent of drops, just as when a real tree is shaken in the rain. The films credit illustrations beautiful miniatures of varieties of mushrooms and insects are a delight of natural history animation. The image of Totoro has become an icon of forest-protection campaigns in Japan. Awe at the beauty of the natural world is everywhere. The emotional force of Totoro lies in its understanding of the intertwining of internal and external worlds and, indeed, of the human and the natural. The opening frames, as father and the children drive towards their new home, invite the question, Where is mother? Miyazaki is subtle about such matters. Fathers way of reassuring the children is to carry on as if everything will be all right. (The children run through a passage of green to get their first view of the neglected and mysterious house. Their first discovery is that some of the wooden pillars supporting the house are rotten. Apparently unaware of the danger, they laugh at the crumbling wood. But what is evoked here is an inner preoccupation with another precarious situation, that of mothers illness. The sense of the houses becoming a place where they can explore their unconscious phantasies about mothers body is suggested as they encounter the hundreds of scuttling little black creatures within. Their father and the friendly neighbour explain that these are not nasty things to be afraid of but simply soot sprites that one sometimes sees when one goes from a light to a dark place. What a marvellous allusion this is to the glimpses of unfamiliar things in the darker, unknown regions of the mind, to which the children are vulnerable in their separation from a mother whose body might be feared to be full of nasty little gremlins of some sort. The sprites might be a childs visualisation of germs or, at a deeper level, of a horrid, small baby inside mother that might steal her away. Come out, come out, wherever you are! the children shout, but the sprites remain hidden. The children leave the house when father creates an atmosphere of rumbustious cheerfulness for them,
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which leaves no space for their worries. But the soot sprites reappear, clustering around Totoro at the bus-stop, when the children feel anxious in the darkness, and again when Satsuki seeks Totoros help. As they move into the house, it becomes free of fear as father helps to let in the light, both literally and metaphorically, and their furniture is brought in. But early hints of anxiety give an inkling of the story to come. Outside there is also a world to explore. It becomes an enchanted world, with the camphor tree as its deity and the discovery of the magical Totoro. The softness of Totoros body is like a comforting, wondrous link to the tenderness of mothers lap for Mei. But Totoro is also a combined parent, soft like mother, but also sometimes loud and bouncy like father. Closer to the human world is the granny neighbour, with her marvellous vegetable garden, reminding them of the fertility of Mother Earth and her generosity. Miyazaki shows us that the emotional experience of each the youths is different. Satsuki, the older child, goes to school and has made a friend there. Mei is left at home all day with father, who is preoccupied with his work. Miyazaki shows fathers relative lack of emotional intimacy with them, while mother cuddles Mei and brushes Saetsukis hair when they visit her in hospital. Later, the fantasy animals become a substitute parental couple for the children. When Mei is lost, Satsuki, in her despair, goes to find Totoro, who summons Catbus to find Mei. Catbus seems rather feminine, compared with the burly grey bear Totoro. Catbus and Totoro, combining to sustain Mei and Satsuki through their time of great worry, represent good internal parent figures for each of them. When Mei is lost, Satsuki, in guilty panic, alerts all the neighbours to search for her. Thus she finds external support when she feels she has momentarily betrayed her internal good objects by leaving her sister. The gentle quality of the country people alleviates her self-reproach by their sharing her anxious search for Mei and by their absence of accusation or at least an absence of accusation of Satsuki. When it turns out that the sandal floating on the pond was not Meis after all, the old lady is unjustly blamed for her silliness in raising the alarm. Miyazaki thus quietly observes that, when people have been made anxious, the impulse to accuse someone is strong. The reunited children can join in what is most important to them, the secret gift to mother that signifies their longing for her to get better and to be with them.

Ponyo
Ponyo is a love story, whose protagonists are a five-year-old boy, Sosuke, and a goldfish that turns into a little girl. Because it is about a goldfish from the sea and the little boy from a house on a cliff who befriends her, it brings two separate worlds into juxtaposition. One of these is in the ocean, where
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Fujimoto, Ponyos father, lives, though he makes several forays above the waves and onto land. He is like a hippy sorcerer, with magical powers. He says he was formerly human but now believes that mankind is contaminating the planet. He seems to be separated from his beautiful mermaid wife, Ponyos mother. The liveliest of their many goldfish daughters, whom they have named (not without reason) Brunhilde, swims off to explore the world. She is released by Sosuke from a jam-jar in which she has got stuck on the beach near his house. Swimming around in a little bucket and looking up at Sosuke, she falls for him at first sight. But her father sends magical, dolphinlike waves, with prominent eyes,4 to reclaim her. Recaptured, and back at their exotic palace under the sea, Brunhilde/Ponyo passionately insists that she wants to become human. She begins to grow arms and legs, hands and feet. Fujimoto is horrified as he learns that she has already eaten human food and even touched human blood, when she healed the cut Sosuke had suffered rescuing her from the jar. Fujimoto uses his magical powers to turn her back into a goldfish, but he knows that his powers cannot hold her for long, and he sends for Ponyos mother to help. With the help of a large shoal of her sisters, she escapes from the bubble in which she was imprisoned, seizes some of her fathers magical powers, and sets out to rejoin Sosuke, amidst the magic waves she now calls up. She brings about a huge storm, and there is a wonderful sequence in which Ponyo changed from goldfish into a little girl in a red dress is seen running on top of the dark blue waves, following the car in which Sosuke and his mother, Lisa, speed through the storm. The accompanying music is Wagnerian,5 in keeping with Brunhilde/Ponyos given name and passionate nature. Ponyo comes ashore and runs beneath Lisas outstretched arms to Sosuke. Fujimoto then unleashes even stronger magical powers to recapture his daughter, whose defection to humanity he believes threatens the balance of nature. He brings about a tsunami (a resonant theme for a Japanese audience), and the whole coast is submerged under water, including the old peoples centre where Lisa works, next door to Sosukes nursery school. (While making this film, Miyazaki created a real nursery at Studio Ghibli.) However, the tsunami, being Fujimotos magical creation, does no harm to anyone. Ponyos beautiful mother does not share Fujimotos dread of her daughters desire to be human and in a long conversation with Lisa satisfies herself that Ponyo will be safe if she joins this human family, since Lisa recognises that she will always belong in two worlds. (On the idea that this is a fact of life in any adoption, see Rustin, 1999). Ponyo has to accept that she will lose her magical powers if she becomes human. Sosuke promises that he will always love her. The floods subside, and the balance of nature that is, the ordinary world is restored by this demonstration of the innocence of childhood and the power of love. Even the women from the old peoples centre are reinvigorated by what they have seen and leave their wheelchairs to rejoice.
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The films dual worlds are the sea and the land. On land are Sosukes house on a cliff, the old peoples centre, and Sosukes school next door. But Sosukes father works at sea, as the captain of a ship, which sometimes sails past their house. Thus Lisa often has to look after herself and Sosuke alone. Miyazaki has said that he admires her resourcefulness, for example, being able to cope with the standby generator. In one scene, her husband phones to say he has agreed to another voyage and will not be home for the weekend as promised. She is furious with him and slams down the phone. As his boat passes by in the evening, there is an exchange of signals sent by flash light between ship and shore, in which father sends greetings and love and mother replies with insults. Showing delightful invention, father brightly illuminates his ship for his family, which thrills Sosuke but fails to reconcile his enraged mother. Sosuke is preoccupied with his absent father and his safety at sea. Can ships survive great storms? he asks his mother, as the huge waves surge. He sometimes wears a naval officers cap, like his fathers. When Lisa decides she must go to the seniors centre to help out in the storm, she says he must today be very grown-up and help her by staying at home to look after the house and Ponyo. The intersections of land and sea and Ponyos transition from sea-baby to land-child allow the film metaphorically to explore the meaning of moments of change in childrens lives and the conflict that development brings. Ponyos desire to escape from life as an enclosed baby in a bubble is an image of birth she leaves the bubble/uterus and thrusts her way down a birth canal, out of the watery inside world into the airy and stormy world beyond. Her possessive father, quite unready for his daughters drive towards separateness, tries to squeeze her back again to her smaller size. But as she escapes she grows exponentially to the size of a child of 4 or 5. Here is a father unable to face his childs growth (with adolescence to come!) until helped by the sea queens intervention to see that he has in her a partner and does not have to cling to an imprisoned favourite daughter. Thus his reverse oedipal crisis is resolved. For Sosuke, it is as if Ponyo, this little goldfish girl from the ocean, appears in response to his need for someone of his own age, whom he can love as he needs to be loved himself. Of course, he is loved by his parents, but perhaps there is a hint that being mothers everyday companion is too much for him, with father so much away. It is less complicated for his feelings to be directed towards this magical little girl. He can love and look after her, but she also loves him. Furthermore she is amazing and lively, like his feisty mother, and shows him his own world in a new way. One might conjecture that Ponyo is the little sister that the only-child Sosuke would love to have. Her appearance, from another world, and perhaps her longing to belong to a family like Sosukes, lead one to see this film as an adoption story. Ponyos goldfish sisters are very numerous and their father very controlling. (Miyazaki is amusing about people who say they cannot understand
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Fujimoto. Have you ever seen modern fathers with their daughters? he asks. The more they try to hold on to them, the more they want to get away!) Their helping Ponyo to escape is generous, as if they want at least one of their number to have a free life. Lisa accepts the strangeness of this little girl arriving from the sea and just carries on, scooping up the two children from the storm and giving them their supper. She knows what they need. Miyazakis empathy with young children is displayed movingly in this film. He has said that children under five see and understand much more than they can say, just as we see so much through his drawings. Perhaps that young child-actors cannot be expected to perform with the skills of grown-ups gives animation a distinctive capacity to represent childhood, when it is undertaken with this integrity. Miyazakis figures seem to be choreographed and directed as if he imagines them as virtual actors. The storms in the film are a representation of dangerous conflicts. On one hand, both children are vulnerable to the turbulence that follows from parental discord, even if in Sosukes case this seems more fantasy than reality. Although he has witnessed his mothers rage with his father, we see that father is devoted to them. But there are also the anxieties about purity and impurity among fundamentalists, of which Fujimoto is one. This film is subtle about environmental questions. The sea is pictured as a place of immense beauty, with marvellous creatures large and small. In contrast, we see the pollution that comes from disturbing the sea-bed, for example by the trawl-fishing, which causes Ponyo to be trapped in a jar. But Fujimotos anxieties about blood-purity are obsessional, and in creating a tsunami to exert his will he upsets the balance of nature he wants to protect. Early in the film, Lisa tells off Fujimoto for, as she believes, spraying pesticide in their neighbourhood. He indignantly tells her this is pure ocean water that he is spraying to keep himself from drying out. But the liberal-minded Lisa is very intolerant of this stranger in her neighbourhood. Miyazaki here shows that even beliefs in green causes can lead their adherents into contradictions. Miyazaki makes this film a wonderful variation on Hans Christian Andersens Little Mermaid. Andersens tragic heroine loses everything by leaving the sea for her prince on land, since he does not love her for who she is, as Sosuke promises he will love Ponyo. Sosuke consents to love the little girl who gives up her magic powers because he knows the value of her love. The happy ending, brought about by the two mothers lengthy conclave, also represents a vision that man and the natural world can live harmoniously if they respect and trust each others natures.

Porco Rosso
Porco Rosso (Crimson Pig) is a genre of animation film very different from Our Neighbour Totoro and Ponyo. It is a fantasy action movie for children,
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which features beautiful flying machines and episodes of spectacular aerial combat. It is also an affectionate spoof of adult film genres, including film noir and Hollywood romances. But beneath its playful surface, it has a serious and moving aspect because it is a film about loss and mourning, from which its hero only just recovers. Porco Rosso, the films hero, is preoccupied with the memory of friends and comrades who have died in war and suffers from guilt and melancholy at their loss. The destruction of war is a point of reference of several Studio Ghibli films, reminding us of the devastation suffered by Japan in World War II. Porco Rosso is a pig; that is, he is a man with a face that has turned into that of a pig. He is a professional bounty-hunter, combating piracy in the Adriatic (the film is set in the 1920s) in his bright red, comic-book seaplane, in which he performs as an ace. His enemies also fly seaplanes and attack cruise ships to steal from the passengers and to take hostages. Porco has a hard-boiled attitude reminiscent of the private detectives of film noir. He says he works only for himself and for money, though like many figures in that genre he has a hidden sense of decency. The film opens with his receiving a phone call at his private beach hideaway asking him to go to the rescue of a ship being attacked by the Mama Aiuto pirate gang. He says no. Then, when he is told that a party of children are to be taken as hostages, he relents, but only, he says, because the bounty will be bigger. We then see the aerial attack by the pirate gang and the exuberant behaviour of the little children whom they take hostage. They make it into an exciting adventure and, when captured, show the pirates to be softies at heart. Next, Porco arrives at a spectacular island hotel. He enters the restaurant, like a hero coming into the saloon in a Western, to find his pirate enemies seated in the corner. A beautiful woman, Gina, is singing (in French) and seems to have the gang completely charmed. You can eat in my restaurant, she says, but not fight. The gang is planning revenge on Porco, for depriving them of their spoils and decide to recruit the Texan ace-pilot and would-be film star, Curtis, to fight Porco for them. Curtis is impressed by Gina, imagines her potential value to him in America (but she will have to stop singing in French) and proposes to her. She rejects him. ` -te Porco and Gina have a te te-a te. They are old friends. She is grateful to him for protecting her for three years. She has already lost three pilot husbands, one of whom (Porcos best friend, Berlini) was killed in the previous war. Porco asks why she displays a picture of him as he was before he became a pig. Those days are finished, he says. What can be done to lift this strange curse which has been placed on you? she tenderly asks him. In psychoanalytic terms, the strange curse is persecutory guilt, as, in Freuds (1917) words, the shadow of the object fell upon the ego (p. 249). He cannot allow himself to love this woman whom he has sworn to look after for his friend. Porco decides he must go to Milan to have his plane repaired. There, he says, will be food, wine and women. On the way, he is shot down by Curtis, although
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only because his engine fails. With help from Gina, he transports his plane to his old friend Piccolo, an engineer, to fix in his Milan workshop. Piccolo tells him it is damaged beyond repair and that he needs a new one. Piccolos granddaughter Fio appears, having come back from America. It is she that Piccolo has in mind as the designer of Porcos new plane. Porco is sceptical. What do you have against me, that I am a woman or that I am only 17? she asks him. Both, he replies. But he sees that she is talented, and relents. Piccolos large family of female relatives formally introduced they include three old ladies. Porco learns that it is this traditional Italian family who are going to build his plane. Why are there no men here? he asks. They have all had to go away to find work, replies Piccolo.6 Porco seems to fancy Fio, who is less than half his age, and is told by her grandfather (incidentally the only figure of Japanese appearance in the movie) to keep off. But Fio insists on flying back with him when he leaves for his return dogfight with Curtis, and she builds a cockpit in the plane for herself. At Porcos hideaway, in the evening, Fio asks Porco to tell her a bedtime story. The story he tells is of a terrible dogfight in World War I, when many of his friends were shot down and he barely escaped with his life. He describes falling asleep in his cockpit and dreaming, as his plane flew by itself in the clouds. In a beautiful scene, we see planes rising up all around him into what, at first, seems like the Milky Way. But it becomes clear that these stars are the planes of his dead comrades and enemies, ascending into the next world. We realise that Porco is suffering from deep survivor guilt, in particular for the loss of his friend Berlini, at whose marriage to Gina he had been best man only days before his death and whom he had promised he would protect. It is because of this guilt that he has turned into a pig, now bereft, as he sees it, of feeling and conscience. As a pig, he is a creature of mere appetites and can neither love nor be loved. Fio, however, admires Porco and is fond of him. She kisses him sweetly before she goes to sleep. In the morning, they are surrounded by pirate gangs seeking revenge. The pirates threaten to kill Porco. Fio comes to his rescue, telling the pirate gangsters that they are cowards. She appeals to their sense of honour as seaplane pilots! If Porco is to be fought, it must be in single combat. This appeal is unexpected perhaps it amusingly evokes for a Japanese audience the ancient honour code of samurai warriors, from the movies at least. The pirates are swayed by Fios words and realise that only Curtis is capable of defeating Porco. At this point Curtis descends, superman-style, down a cliff-face onto the beach. An aerial contest is arranged for the following morning. If Curtis wins, he will have Fio as his bride (he has fallen for her as suddenly as he did for Gina). If Porco wins, Curtis and the pirates will pay the debt he owes Piccolo for his new plane. By the following morning, the impending contest has turned into a raucous spectacle, like a prize-fight or race-meeting. As Porco explains to Fio, all the riffraff in the area have shown up. Curtiss blue plane and Porcos red one take to
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the air, and their dogfight begins. When Porco gains the advantage but refuses to strike, the pirates realise that he is willing to shoot up Curtiss engine, but not to kill a fellow-pilot. However, they exchange fire from their cockpits with pistols until they jam. They land their planes and continue to fight in the sea with their fists. Both sustain heavy blows and sink below the surface. The first one to surface will be the winner, the pirate boss declares. Porco comes up first and claims his prize. Fio kisses Porco in his triumph, and we learn, this being a fairy story among other things, that he has been transformed back into a human being. Gina now arrives in her plane, to warn everyone that the Italian air force has learned of the contest and is about to capture everyone. She offers them sanctuary in her hotel it appears there is solidarity, even among the pirates and bounty-hunters, against the Italian fascists. Porco hands a reluctant Fio to Gina in her plane, asking Gina to keep Fio safe in respectable society. Porco and Curtis agree to divert the enemy air force so that everyone else can escape. There are echoes of the end of Casablanca in this scene, as Porco renounces Fio, and his true love Gina, too, as they fly away to escape from the fascists, whom Porco remains to fight. In the closing voice-over set against an aerial view of Ginas beautiful island, Fio explains that she and Gina became friends, which they have remained long after Fio returned home to Milan to become the President of Piccolo SPA. As for Ginas earlier prediction (and wish) that if Porco came to Gina not in the evening at her restaurant as he sometimes did, but in the daytime in her garden, they would marry, Fio says that this remains our secret, an intimation of a happy ending. Porco Rosso has a great sense of style. There is hardly a moment without some gem of animation, whether of the colourful seaplanes, the evocation of traditional Italian (and, by association, Japanese) family life, the glamorous but sad night-club singer, or Porcos laconic character. This film brings together several classic genres of popular cinema with the Japanese tradition of manga/ anime. But the film is also unexpectedly moving. Porco and Gina have both suffered from war. Porco tells Fio that being a pig the outcome of war for him is a kind of hell. He suffers from melancholia, masked by cynicism, from which he recovers during the story as he is able to mourn his lost comrades. These are corrupt times, with the Italian fascists in power. Friendship and his vocation as a seaplane pilot are all that are left to sustain him. The captured children, of whom Miyazaki gives us a glimpse, are as enchanting as small children always are in his films. And Fio, the courageous aircraft designer, only 17 years old, shows us again how Miyazakis hopes for the future are centred on the young. There is gentle mockery of the United States in the film for example, in Curtiss narcissism, which goes as far as his ambition to become US President. But Fio, just back from the States, represents the positive example that America has also been for old countries, Italy in this film, but by implication Japan too. Lisa, in
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Ponyo, and Fio in Porco Rosso are recognisably American in their independence of spirit. And this film, which in the lightest way portrays a spiritual recovery from the trauma of war, does this by evoking many of the traditions and pleasures of cinema itself.

Conclusion
The predominant genre of Studio Ghiblis work is fantasy, intended for audiences of children and adults alike. The films explore many aspects of postwar experience. Their focus on childhood parallels a similar emphasis in childrens fiction in Britain, each a positive response to the destruction of war. These films are respectful of old people in a way that seems distinctively Japanese. They value craftsmanship (central to Studio Ghiblis own work) and display curiosity and openness towards the wider world, with perceptive and appreciative renderings of place. Concern for the natural environment and mankinds relation to it are powerful themes. Finally, one notes the psychological subtlety of many of Miyazakis films and his deep understanding of unconscious anxieties. Studio Ghiblis animations are a major achievement of contemporary popular culture.

About the Author

Michael Rustin is Professor of Sociology at the University of East London, and a Visiting Professor at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust. Margaret Rustin is a Consultant Child Psychotherapist who works at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust and in private practice. They are joint authors of Narratives of Love and Loss: Studies in Modern Childrens Fiction, and Mirror to Nature: Drama, Pschoanalysis and Society.

Notes
1 Our renewed interest in fiction and films for children, and especially very young children, owes much to our four grandchildren, Gloria (5), Madeleine (4), Rosemary (2), and Gilbert (1), whose enjoyment we have been able to share. 2 On the DVD of Ponyo, Miyazaki is seen late at night, drawing picture credits for the 420 members of the production team, which appear as beautiful pictograms as the credits roll. 3 On an earlier connection between an artisanal animation technology and anti-materialist values see Esther Leslie (1997). 4 In a DVD-interview, Miyazaki mentions his doubt about putting eyes on the waves. Wondering if this would be going too far, he sought advice from colleagues, who said do it! Miyazakis boldness in going wherever his imagination leads him is part of his greatness. Spirited Away, set in an exotic bathhouse, is his most extraordinary creation, and is perhaps the most Japanese of his films in its connotations. See Osmond (2008); and on Studio Ghibli more generally, Odell and Le Blanc (2009).
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5 Miyazakis films have outstanding scores, the outcome of a career-long collaboration with composer Joe Hisaishi. 6 The dialogue and the voice-acting in this film are particularly fine. Its genre is well suited to Englishlanguage voice-over, as if American English were its natural tongue. We have not seen the Japaneselanguage versions of these films.

References
Eco, E. (1985) Reflections on the Name of the Rose. London: Secker and Warburg. Freud, S. (1917, 1957) Mourning and melancholia. Standard Edition, 14. London: Hogarth Press, pp. 243259. Leslie, E. (1997) Wallace and Gromit: An animating love. Soundings 5(spring): 149156. Miyazaki, H. (1996) Starting Point 19791996. San Francisco: Viz Media. Odell, C. and Le Blanc, M. (2009) Studio Ghibli: The Films of Hayao Miyazaki and Iseo Takahata. Harpenden: Kamera Books. Osmond, A. (2008) Spirited Away. London: BFI Film Classics. Rustin, M.E. (1999) Multiple families in mind. Clinical Child Psychology and Child Psychiatry 4(1): 5162. Rustin, M.E. and Rustin, M.J. (2001) Narratives of Love and Loss: Studies in Modern Childrens Fiction, 2nd edn. London: Karnac Books. Rustin, M.E. and Rustin, M.J. (2003) Where is home?; A new kind of friendship; Learning how to say goodbye: Essays on Philip Pullmans. His Dark Materials. Journal of Child Psychotherapy 29(13): 227242, 415428.

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