What Western Art Can Learn from Hayao Miyazaki’s Radical Portrayals of Childhood

Imagine a children’s animated film that has none of the following:

A villain

Any real conflict

Sibling rivalry

Adults who “just don’t understand”

Parents who need to be taught a life lesson by their children

Characters who change or grow

A central self-esteem theme.

Sounds like box-office poison, right? Well, apparently, the legendary and Oscar-winning filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki didn’t get that memo when he made the beloved film My Neighbor Totoro.

Many of Miyazaki’s films ditch elements that Western audiences consider as universal requirements for satisfying storytelling, including a prominent self-esteem arc. The contrast demonstrates how such elements are particularly Western obsessions that are far from universal across cultures.

Western animated films for children often seem manically insecure. They lack confidence in the ability of young audiences to pay attention so they overcaffeinate the films with noisy, busy action sequences that have no emotional component or pivotal plot function. Further, they lack confidence in the artistry or depth of telling stories for children, so they feel compelled to cram in lessons—shoehorned bromides about “growing up” and finding one’s self-esteem.

What My Neighbor Totoro has that is precious and that many Western stories seem to lack is a deep confidence in childhood and in making stories for children.

My Neighbor Totoro is built on the East Asian four-act structure, also known as kishōtenketsu. In the first two acts, the film creates a world that is wholly benevolent around the two young sisters, Satsuki and Mei. Their father, their new house, the forest, and the strange creatures in them all encourage exploration and discovery. Conflict and danger have no place in this world.

In act three, a very minor glimpse of adulthood is introduced in the form of fear about their convalescing mother. Although it is obvious as only a minor health event to adult viewers, to Satsuki and Mei, it feels like a fiery asteroid has slammed into their safe world.

At this point, a Western story would have felt obligated to ram the girls into some sobering lesson about adulthood and loss. It would have begun pounding into the viewer the idea that such life lessons build the girls’ sense of self-esteem.

However, Miyazaki turns the steering wheel away from this expected course. He instead has the girls appealing to the elements of childhood for help. When adulthood threatens their childhood, the girls turn to the forest and the magical creatures in it that only children can see, who help the girls visit their mother in the hospital.

The girls see that their mother just has a cold. The girls are allowed to remain children at the end of the film, even if just for one last summer.

Miyazaki suggests that the foundation for a truly strong sense of self is to be found in childhood, in allowing children to be children. The four acts could be further reduced thus:

Childhood

More childhood

Adulthood threatens childhood

Childhood prevails.

For Miyazaki, childhood is the answer.

However, childhood doesn’t necessarily mean idleness or lack of responsibility. Miyazaki expands upon the theme of what truly helps a child’s self-esteem in Spirited Away. Miyazaki has talked about how he observed that many modern children in Japan seemed apathetic, listless, and unengaged, feeling neither great highs nor lows. He said that he modeled Chiriko, the heroine of Spirited Away, on the daughter of a colleague who was this type of personality.

Where a Western story would probably have the heroine build her self-esteem by defying her parents, striking out on her own to find herself, or “speaking her truth,” Miyazaki, instead, seemed to say, “Let’s put that lazy girl to work!”

The film is entirely about work. Complacent, detached Chiriko is thrust into a psychedelic bathhouse resort for spirits. High stakes are slapped on her securing work in the bathhouse and succeeding at it because she will be turned into a ghost if she doesn’t find a job here and do it well.

That, in turn, would mean she won’t be able to find and free her parents, who have been turned into pigs, before they are slaughtered. Everything depends on her work.

And the work is grueling. It’s scary. It’s gross. And it’s so deeply satisfying, so unexpectedly transformative for Chiriko. In the process of work, she discovers things to care about, to fear, to strive and struggle for. She finds meaning through work.

She also ends up finding her own self-esteem, but only because she was not fixed on looking for it—she was absorbed in the work at hand. A beautiful, ironic subtext shimmers underneath this: the by-product of not being overly focused on yourself is that you end up finding yourself.

Miyazaki’s unusual treatment of the theme of self-esteem is also on display in The Boy and the Heron, which for one shining week was the number one box office champion in America. The young boy Mahito faced multiple potential enemies: a stepmother (actually, his mother’s sister who married his father after Mahito’s mother died), the creepy heron, the giant carnivorous parakeets.

A Western film might have plotted a path to the boy’s self-esteem by having him defeat these enemies. However, Mahito doesn’t try to defeat any of them. He tries to save his stepmother, and help the heron. Mahito helps release the giant carnivorous parakeets from their enchantment, turning back into sweet, small, herbivorous parakeets.

By the end, Mahito has developed a relationship with all these supposed enemies. His path to self-esteem was through finding connection with seeming obstacles, not defeating them.

Parents are accustomed to urging their children to try new foods—just one bite! And storytelling tastes are like dietary tastes. They are learned and transmitted. Food the world over might have the same basic nutrients. However, the execution is everything, and results in the rich variety of the worlds’ cuisines.

The same is true for stories, even stories about something as seemingly fundamental as self-esteem. There are many different flavors.

Why would we want to only ever taste one flavor?

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Spring, Summer, Asteroid, Bird: The Art of Eastern Storytelling by Henry Lien is available via Norton.