In the traditional culture of China people, "death" is actually a taboo topic, which is often outside the table and cannot be said publicly.
It is more mysterious, obscure, dark, taboo, and the combination of ghosts and gods.
It is also because of the mystery, irreversibility and unknowability of death and the horrible rendering of the world after death by traditional religious ethics.
Coupled with the painful expression of the dying person and the "ferocious" face after death, people are always full of instinctive fear of death.
But in the neighboring island country of Japan, the concept of "death" has been infinitely promoted to an extreme position.
In the eyes of the Japanese, death is not terrible, but worthy of awe and belief.
They are full of fanatical worship of death, and even gave birth to the so-called "death aesthetics".
Perhaps many people don't understand, even our familiar old gentleman Miyazaki Hayao once discussed the meaning of "death" in My Neighbor Totoro.
My Neighbor Totoro and 1988 were released in Japan. The story tells roughly that for the sake of the writer Kusebi Dalang and taking care of his sick wife, he decided to take his two daughters to the countryside near his wife's hospital, and the father and daughter moved into an old house that was in disrepair.
During this period, the two sisters met the giant forest owner Totoro and the magical civet bus, from which a series of beautiful and warm stories happened.
Although it is called My Neighbor Totoro, there are not many scenes about my neighbor totoro in the animation.
In Miyazaki Hayao's world, those romantic and quiet summers, the gentle evening breeze in the Woods and the countryside where insects and frogs alternate, everything is so gentle.
With the moving background music, you don't even need to think, and some flickering emotions in your heart will sing along with it, and you can't help but feel tremors.
Anyone who has seen My Neighbor Totoro will be impressed. There is a clip in which the second daughter Xiaomei got lost while visiting her mother in the hospital.
The villagers found one of her shoes in the lotus pond. At that time, many people thought that Xiaomei had suffered misfortune and shed tears for it.
However, Xiaomei's safe and sound appearance later dispelled the audience's doubts, and because the story itself is good, there is no deep meaning.
However, Miyazaki Hayao's works are kind and beautiful, and will not tell you everything behind them. So today, let's explore the Japanese values of "death" from the voiceover of the movie My Neighbor Totoro.
Miyazaki Hayao once said that her favorite Japanese writer is Kenji Miyazawa, and among Kenji Miyazawa's works, Miyazaki Hayao's favorite is a fairy tale called Acorn and Bobcat, which tells the story of a little boy meeting a bobcat in the jungle.
Acorns and bobcats
In the initial setting, my neighbor totoro should be a huge cat-like creature about two meters long, which will always stand in the distance and sleep in the depths of the forest.
All the chinchillas in the movie are huge and like to eat oak fruit, which comes from the story of "oak fruit and bobcats".
However, there is another saying. According to textual research, in the folklore of Central America, my neighbor totoro is the spokesman of death, and my neighbor totoro bus represents the ferry between hades and the world.
At this point, many details in animation have also been answered.
In the second half of the film, Xiaomei suddenly disappeared on the way to find her mother.
Gao Yue found the Totoro car and ordered to find Mei.
However, before the departure, the name of the station appeared on the front of the Totoro bus:
Zinsen
Nagasawa
Mitsuka
The road to the grave
After that, I found May.
Mei Mei's body, but there is no shadow.
There is no such setting in My Neighbor Totoro. My neighbor totoro is a god of death, and Mei is dead.
As for "there is no shadow at the end of the film", it is omitted only because we think it is unnecessary.
-Ghibli Magazine (May 2007)
Jumping out of my Totoro, in the short film "Mei and Kitten Bus" released in Japan in 2002, the image of my Totoro bus and my Totoro family in the forest was more comprehensively portrayed.
From here, my neighbor totoro is even less likely to be the image of death.
Although the rumor has been refuted, it still caused a heated discussion on the Internet. The original intention of My Neighbor Totoro animation was distorted by this topic and described as a horrible dark fairy tale.
In this regard, it is necessary to talk about the death culture in Japan.
First of all, I don't deny that my neighbor totoro has the concept of this image. Unlike most ethnic groups in the world, the Japanese believe that it is a virtue to face the danger of death calmly.
Death itself is a spiritual victory, and they prefer the liberation of "death" to a world full of strict requirements and restrictions.
Moreover, no matter what evil or good you do after death, you can eventually become a Buddha.
And "death" is the compensation for everything he has done. Therefore, the Japanese believe that death is beautiful, full of appreciation for death, and at the same time there is a kind of liberation or nirvana-like joy.
This view of death has a direct impact on Japanese animation works, which makes almost all Japanese animation works have a tragic and even gloomy tone that is incompatible with animation, a relaxed entertainment form.
This has also formed a major feature of Japanese animation works.
Therefore, even if the image of my neighbor totoro is really a symbol of death and a yellow carriage that takes away the souls of Xiaomei and Xiaoyue, it is by no means synonymous with terror and evil.
I believe that in grandpa Miyazaki Hayao's heart, my neighbor totoro is still a lovely plush animal, bearing the childhood fantasies of countless people.
It also places people's infinite yearning for a better and happier life.
Although there are many rumors about Xiaomei and her mother, it is undeniable that My Neighbor Totoro's works may really be inspired by a shocking real event.
In the 1960s, there was a "narrow mountain incident" in Japan. A girl suddenly disappeared and was later found kidnapped.
The girl's sister took the ransom to the place designated by the kidnapper, but found her body.
When taking notes at the police station, my sister looked in a trance and repeatedly said vague words such as "cat monster" and "saw a big cat monster"
The Zhaishan incident occurred on May 1 day.
In My Neighbor Totoro, my sister's name is Gao (gāo) Yue, which means May in the summer calendar.
My sister's name is May, which means May.
This has to make us guess the meaning. If it's just a coincidence, we can also find in a clip at the beginning of the animation that there is a paper sticker with "Narrow Mountain" on the cabinet behind grandma who helps organize the furniture.
Of course, all this only shows that Miyazaki Hayao used some relevant inspiration, but it doesn't mean that My Neighbor Totoro is a horror film.
Similarly, in the animation, the Qiguoshan Hospital where my mother is sick is a tuberculosis sanatorium, and the prototype is the Johor Bahru Handicraft Hospital next to the green space of Qiguoshan in Japan.
Miyazaki Hayao himself once said that My Neighbor Totoro's story was set in "the era before the birth of television", and in that era, tuberculosis was the highest mortality disease in Japan.
In fact, Miyazaki Hayao's mother died of tuberculosis, which can be found in his works.
My Neighbor Totoro's two sisters' mothers, like Naoko in the wind, are the projections of Miyazaki Hayao's heart on their mothers.
The wind is blowing straight.
It's not only the deep yearning for my mother, but also the meaning of death-even if life disappears, it will bring happiness and healing to people around me, which contains a fear of death and praise for love.
In Japanese cartoons obsessed with death, similar concepts are repeatedly mentioned. Therefore, death, whether it is the death of others or one's own, is inevitable to some extent, and proper death is noble and admirable.
The Japanese people have never stopped thinking about life and death. In Japanese, the Chinese character "death" is pronounced as "しぬ", and the pronunciation of "し" comes from the Chinese character "death".
1 But unlike the appearance of China people's "death", the real root of "しぬ" is "しなぬ" (withering), that is, the decline of life like hay. Therefore, in Japanese culture, death is not the opposite of life, but the continuation of another kind of life.
okuribito
Like My Neighbor Totoro, death is a door, and passing away is not the end, but transcendence.
Japanese poetry always praises the new green in spring, the green in summer, the red leaves in autumn and the trees in winter, but only praises the beauty of youth in our life, and thinks that aging is ugly, taboo and disgusting to death.
I used to be like that, but my mind gradually changed. I feel that youth is beautiful, so is aging and death.
Reading Kenji Miyazawa's poems is the beginning of the transformation.
No longer afraid of death, considerate of the dead, thus producing real compassion. Moreover, since we can transcend death, what else can't we surpass?
These meanings can also be seen in Japanese literature masters, and Kawabata Yasunari's "death aesthetics" is more manifested as "mourning for things".
As a truly qualified artist, he believes that "death is the highest art, and death is life", and he also expressed this view by setting an example.
Besides, Yukio Mishima and Osamu Dazai, whom we are most familiar with, chose suicide to express their understanding of death.
Just like the process of disqualification and suicide on earth, it is more like a commemoration of Japanese death culture-writing a script, performing it in person, and finally ending it. Everything is logical and perfect.
Back to the movie itself, there is a scene in My Neighbor Totoro where Xiaomei gets lost while looking for her mother. She sits beside a row of Tibetan bodhisattvas and cries.
The Tibetan Bodhisattva stands for "great wish". According to the Buddhist classics, the Tibetan Bodhisattva saved her mother, and her mother suffered in hell several times in the past. This is an explanation of death by faith.
Jizo
Similarly, Miyazaki Hayao said to the portrait surrounded by flowers at the memorial ceremony of Gao Tianxun's death that this is not an altar, he is just surrounded by warm flowers and plants.
From this perspective, in the eyes of the Japanese, death is just another form of life.
Conclusion Life and death are the ultimate topics of human beings. Life and death are always relative, and everything is endless and cyclical.
As Lao Tzu once said, people enter the door of death at birth, which is the so-called risk one's life and forget one's death. Almost all ancient peoples have illusions about the world after death, in order to pin their reluctance and nostalgia for this world.
Among the values that Japan is inferior to death, death has the spirit of harmony, greatness and calmness, which endows it with extremely lofty significance and makes it a symbol of rebirth.
As the poem says: flowers are like flowers, flowers are like flowers, flowers are like flowers, flowers are like flowers, flowers are like flowers, flowers are like flowers, flowers are like flowers.
The most beautiful moment of cherry blossoms is not when they bloom, but when they fall.