My Neighbour Mephistopheles
By Dania Sonin
January 31, 2011
I’ve always been one to make weird associations. It took me forever to get it into my head that “puffy” did not mean “pastel” to other people just because clouds are puffy and often pastel coloured in my mind. It probably helped immensely with my writing, as I tend to use words that are sometimes a little off, or maybe too specific, if there is such a thing. And it most definitely helped with English class since profs are apt to praise even an iota of creativity, accidental or not. There are, however, some odd associations that defy even my convoluted logic, and one of my favourite ones has to do with one of the best artists and directors to come out of Japan, Hayao Miyazaki.
Anime has permeated Western culture (come back for Angela’s review of Evangelion next Monday if you heart Japan :3), but for the most part has been relegated to subcultures and shunned by popular media. A handful of merch-oriented shows have made it to the mainstream, if only because of their potential to turn a profit for toy companies, but for the most part, the real art has been overlooked. The Japanese have truly made animation into a form of art and what they produce tends to be leaps and bounds above the kid-friendly, Western cartoons destined for young consumers’ eyes.
So, don’t worry if the name Miyazaki doesn’t sound familiar, his movies will. He’s responsible for many beautiful films, his most renowned being My Neighbour Totoro, Princess Mononoke, and Spirited Away. His films are beautiful and vibrant and delve far deeper into social and personal issues than one would think. They’re mature films under the guise of fairy tales, and they are animated with love.
I don’t want to talk about how great a director Miyazaki is – I think his work can speak for itself. A few years ago, a really weird association started circulating: Totoro had somehow become the Angel of Death. The original plot, in a nutshell, is that two little girls and their father move to a peaceful, little village and, in the process of cleaning out their house and exploring the surrounding area, the girls wander into a strange spirit world. The story is perfectly innocent, with only benevolent spirits who want nothing more than to eat, play, and sleep. It has to be one of the cutest stories ever told, and yet, bafflingly, came to be associated with the murder and suicide of two Japanese sisters. The case, known as the Sayama Incident, involved two sisters living in the same region as the girls in the movie. The youngest of the two, unfortunately, was kidnapped one night, raped, and murdered. Upon hearing the news, the elder sister grew increasingly depressed before eventually taking her own life. The whole thing happened around 1963, which would seem to fit the timeframe of the film as well.
The climax has the youngest daughter, Mei, going missing after being worried about her mother, who is ill and in the hospital. Satsuki, the older girl, searches frantically for her, calling on her neighbours to help. They find a wet, lonely shoe by the edge of a pond and begin searching the water, desperately hoping not to find a water-logged corpse. The audience knows, though, that Mei is fine, being watched over by her friend Totoro and his fellow forest spirits. However, those familiar with the Sayama Incident point out that the poor girl’s body was found in a similar sort of spot, on a farm, near water. Coincidence? Homage? Memorial? If Mei is meant to be the Sayama girl, re-imagined, then Totoro is certainly the Angel of Death ushering her through to the afterlife. And when Satsuki, the older sister finds her, they both ride along on the Nekobus spirit to visit their mother miles away, where they leave her a memento: an ear of corn. Very strange, but also very telling. Though I cannot read Japanese, supposedly the characters displayed as the Catbus’ destination, mean Road to the Grave, and at this point, the wary viewer is to assume that Satsuki has ended her own life and that is how she found little Mei and Totoro.
But of course you’ve seen the movie, and you’ve seen everybody rejoice happily when little Mei is found, and you’ve seen the father and the mother interact with the two girls. Surely, they don’t die. It’s a happy movie with a happy ending. Unless, of course, Miyazaki is a sly fox and is not telling a linear story. Some people believe that, in fact, Mei and Satsuki have passed on quite soon into the film, as soon as they see Totoro, and any interactions we see after that are just flashbacks to happier times.
If this all sounds ridiculous, it ought to. After hearing about My Angel of Death Totoro, I immediately set myself up for another viewing of the film. While it does take place in the same region as the Sayama Incident, it’s a pretty tenuous link. Not every story about two sisters from a certain place need be related, and probably aren’t. As far as I’ve ever known, populated areas tend to be populous and family patterns tend to repeat the more populous an area gets. So, cross that off the list.
Totoro and his friends are not angels or spirits of death, but Miyazaki’s take on the forest spirits that are pretty well entrenched into Japanese culture. They all even have specific names; the dust spirits are called susuwatari and make appearances in Spirited Away, where they may be the tell-tale signs of an infestation of ghosts, but not of death. Totoro is just the keeper of the forest, and again, we find a similar character in Princess Mononoke, the forest spirit who guards the land around the settlement and who is actually dynamic, not good or evil, but a reaction to his surroundings.
And finally, the flashbacks. I have watched this movie a bunch of times and there is not a shred of evidence to support any lack of linear, forward momentum. All the rest is pretty open to interpretation if you haven’t seen the movie in awhile. It sounds about right that Totoro might be a little more sinister than initially thought, or that the story might be deeper than two girls getting lost in the woods. It is Miyazaki after all. But as soon as you watch the film and look for discrepancies in the chronology, you realise there just aren’t any. The characters never act like the girls aren’t there, and everybody is quite happy to have found Mei at the end. There are scenes where the father could be reminiscing, but whether he was or wasn’t, it wouldn’t actually affect the timeline. Mostly, it just looks like he hears his girls having fun while he’s stuck working and is satisfied that they’re comfortable after being uprooted and having worried about their sick mother for so long.
Still, I like the idea. I like the imagination that went into the rumour and the research that went into trying to prove it. The Sayama Incident was a terrible tragedy, and maybe, in a way, Miyazaki was trying to give the girls a better ending if he was thinking about them at all. But I think it’s all just a coincidence. I also think it’s a great example of creative association and proof that sometimes, inspiration lies in misinterpretation and weird associations. And last but not least, I’m just as guilty of making terribly sinister associations to perfectly benign Miyazaki characters. This is what I think of kodamas. Truly terrifying.
If you want a more in depth look at why the rumour might be true, check out this BLOG.