open the back door. It is bright outside, dark inside. As the door swings open, we see tiny black creatures and hear a high-pitched sort of “squittering” as they flee the light. We are reminded of both bats and cockroaches, but these are neither.
The girls scream but then, without reference to each other, square their shoulders and march forward, an action that not only strengthens the drama, but also commences an architectural tour. By freezing the frame at any point, we could have had a tutorial on the Japanese house, but let us move forward to the bathroom. “Father, Father,” the girls call. “There’s something in here.”
“What?”
“We don’t know. Squirrels? Not cockroaches. Not mice.”
The father peers inside the bath and there, rendered in loving detail, is a Japanese soaking tub (the history of which might be a book in itself), where later we will see the family bathe together. Kenji will point out that the bathroom is illuminated solely by light “stolen” from the kitchen nextdoor, which is not only architecturally ingenious, but perfectly revealing of how Japanese families traditionally bathed, with no shred of shame or immodesty.
Meanwhile, the girls are still excited about these spooky little black things they have seen.
“Ah so,” says the father (yes, really, that is what he says). “It must be makkuro kurosuke.”
“Makkuro kurosuke?”
“The black spots that appear in front of your eyes,” he explains, “when you come inside on a bright day.”
The girls laugh. “Come on out, makkuro kurosuke. Come out or we’ll pull your eyes out.”
Miyazaki then undercuts this rational explanation, showing us these black dust bunnies scuttling into a drainpipe by the children’s feet.
“Okay,” the father says, “now we need to find the stairs to the second floor. Can you do this for me? We need to open the windows.” The children run off and our architectural tour continues, as fine a tour as you could find in any museum. This is at once a real house and a vividly imagined one, filled everywhere with particular detail: shoji with two transparent panels in each; a circular window between rooms; tatami over which the children, shoes still on their feet, must walk on their knees.
Very soon there will be more drama, nuts falling and strange little black spirits rustling, skittering from the light. Mei catches one and carries it downstairs, trapped like a mosquito in her hands, and from here the story moves relentlessly forward to her meeting with the Totoro, the spirit of the woods, and introduces us to the sick mother, who unlike the stock figure in an American movie neither dies nor returns home.
That night in Minato-ku, Charley fell asleep quite early. He had, after all, seen the film many times already and the purpose of this particular viewing was not to annotate it to death but to understand that this beautiful entertainment contained a whole history and culture hidden between the frames.
We then arrived, however, at the most exciting example of hidden signs. High in the ceiling of the attic, where Mei caught the dust bunny, there is an ornament, no more commented on than the red gate to the shrine or the simple rope around the camphor tree indicating that it’s sacred. Though the director does nothing to draw our attention to it, I recall the paper decoration hanging from the ridgepole looked something like a bird. It would have existed, Kenji explained, from the time construction on the house began. We were now talking not of figments made ofpixels but of actual substances. During construction the ornament on the ridgepole would have been blown by the wind and drenched by rain until it was torn and tattered. Once there was a roof to shelter it, this weathered talisman would have been tucked down into the attic and kept there, protected, for good luck. All this Charley would learn in the morning; for now, at his father’s favourite part, he was emitting a sweet adenoidal snore.
Kenji
The girls scream but then, without reference to each other, square their shoulders and march forward, an action that not only strengthens the drama, but also commences an architectural tour. By freezing the frame at any point, we could have had a tutorial on the Japanese house, but let us move forward to the bathroom. “Father, Father,” the girls call. “There’s something in here.”
“What?”
“We don’t know. Squirrels? Not cockroaches. Not mice.”
The father peers inside the bath and there, rendered in loving detail, is a Japanese soaking tub (the history of which might be a book in itself), where later we will see the family bathe together. Kenji will point out that the bathroom is illuminated solely by light “stolen” from the kitchen nextdoor, which is not only architecturally ingenious, but perfectly revealing of how Japanese families traditionally bathed, with no shred of shame or immodesty.
Meanwhile, the girls are still excited about these spooky little black things they have seen.
“Ah so,” says the father (yes, really, that is what he says). “It must be makkuro kurosuke.”
“Makkuro kurosuke?”
“The black spots that appear in front of your eyes,” he explains, “when you come inside on a bright day.”
The girls laugh. “Come on out, makkuro kurosuke. Come out or we’ll pull your eyes out.”
Miyazaki then undercuts this rational explanation, showing us these black dust bunnies scuttling into a drainpipe by the children’s feet.
“Okay,” the father says, “now we need to find the stairs to the second floor. Can you do this for me? We need to open the windows.” The children run off and our architectural tour continues, as fine a tour as you could find in any museum. This is at once a real house and a vividly imagined one, filled everywhere with particular detail: shoji with two transparent panels in each; a circular window between rooms; tatami over which the children, shoes still on their feet, must walk on their knees.
Very soon there will be more drama, nuts falling and strange little black spirits rustling, skittering from the light. Mei catches one and carries it downstairs, trapped like a mosquito in her hands, and from here the story moves relentlessly forward to her meeting with the Totoro, the spirit of the woods, and introduces us to the sick mother, who unlike the stock figure in an American movie neither dies nor returns home.
That night in Minato-ku, Charley fell asleep quite early. He had, after all, seen the film many times already and the purpose of this particular viewing was not to annotate it to death but to understand that this beautiful entertainment contained a whole history and culture hidden between the frames.
We then arrived, however, at the most exciting example of hidden signs. High in the ceiling of the attic, where Mei caught the dust bunny, there is an ornament, no more commented on than the red gate to the shrine or the simple rope around the camphor tree indicating that it’s sacred. Though the director does nothing to draw our attention to it, I recall the paper decoration hanging from the ridgepole looked something like a bird. It would have existed, Kenji explained, from the time construction on the house began. We were now talking not of figments made ofpixels but of actual substances. During construction the ornament on the ridgepole would have been blown by the wind and drenched by rain until it was torn and tattered. Once there was a roof to shelter it, this weathered talisman would have been tucked down into the attic and kept there, protected, for good luck. All this Charley would learn in the morning; for now, at his father’s favourite part, he was emitting a sweet adenoidal snore.
Kenji
Similar Books
