I have a poor memory for formative moments, but I do remember my life changing one rainy summer day when, aged nine or ten, I saw three Japanese animated films with my father. My parents had separated shortly after my first birthday; my father lived abroad, and we rarely shared each other’s company. So we watched alone, the two of us, until the room disappeared, lit only by the illumination of the television screen.
Like any child of the ‘90s, I was raised on Saturday morning cartoons and comic strips. But here was something altogether different, almost painful, and which reached me in a place I had not felt before.
Princess Mononoke follows Prince Ashitaka, fatally cursed by a corrupted, dying god, on his search for the forest spirit Shishigami who can cure his affliction. On his journey he discovers a world where humankind and nature live out of balance, and compassion on either side has yielded to indifference and violence. In Spirited Away, an elemental film about belonging, isolation, and the vulnerability and wisdom of youth, young Chihiro’s growing dissociation from her parents materialises in a situation where she is separated from them and trapped in a spirit world, forced to toil in a bathhouse owned by the witch Yubaba. Our last film, , was based on the 1967 short story by Akiyuki Nosaka. Set in the aftermath of the 1945 bombing of Kobe, it follows Seita and his little sister Setsuko, orphaned by the war and struggling to survive in distressing circumstances. It is the most beautiful film you will never want to see again: an agonising film, suffused with splendour and anger and joy and sadness, and ultimately with the spirit of love in times of unbearable strife.
