The biggest domestic movie hit of all in Japan was the 1997 "Princess Mononoke," an animated film created by Hayao Miyazaki and his Studio Ghibli. It was the most successful of a group of highly successful "anime," among them "My Neighbor Totoro" and "Porco Rosso," works that had defined the genre. All the films made a lot of money, some of it abroad, and attracted an amount of attention, some of it scholarly.
Many critical works have appeared on Japanese animated films. Among the sources in English are books and essays by Frederick Schodt, Mark Schilling, Gilles Poitras, Trish Ledoux, Susan Napier and Helen McCarthy.
McCarthy, author of the book under review, has already written three works devoted to anime and in this one has created a very handsome tribute to Miyazaki and his work.
Everything one might have wanted to know about him and his seven animated films is included, along with an overview of the industry and some information on its audience. There are design and technical data, story synopses, character sketches and a complete filmography spanning Miyazaki's entire career.
The approach is hagiographic, and McCarthy's enthusiasm will undoubtedly win Miyazaki more admirers and his pictures more viewers. She does not, given her aims, address questions about the genre, nor seek reasons to explain its extraordinary popularity.
Indeed, few critics do. The prevalent approach is congratulatory, and questions as to what it all means are not common. And yet there are reasons behind the overwhelming acceptance of animation's lack of visual realism, its plain purveying of fantasy.
"For animation to push aside live-action films, a growing number of people had to prefer the thin, insubstantial reality of animation to the flesh-and-blood world of live-action." The quote is from Kenji Sato, one of the few critics to question the genre. His aim is not to criticize it, but to look behind its ornate facade and discover reasons for the form it takes, and his full argument is to be found in his essay in the current (No. 41) "Kyoto Journal," an issue that also contains a piece by Helen McCarthy on "Princess Mononoke."
Anime are often more thoughtful and ambitious than Japanese live-action films. The production values are often higher, and these products sometimes address questions of identity. At the same time, they can do this without the often uncomfortable intimacy of live action.
Like electronic games and the various virtual-reality entertainments, anime experiences life from one step away, as it were. Like virtual reality, it is not real enough to threaten. Nor does it make extraordinary emotional demands of the spectator. Furthermore, it can satisfy even inchoate desires.
Sato's example is the "de-Japanized" look in animated characters. Those in "Princess Mononoke" are intended to be pure Japanese, yet their features are identical to those in such "Caucasian" entertainments as "Nausicaa."
Sato connects this fact with the often-heard "nihonjin-banare," a generally complimentary term implying that one looks and acts more Caucasian than Mongol -- more Euro-American than Japanese. This "ethnic self-denial" he finds inevitable in a people bent on achieving the twin goals of modernization and Westernization.
This aim, if it can so be called, cannot be satisfied in live-action film. "Only anime and its cousin manga can convincingly meld Japanese and Caucasian attributes into a natural-looking human being," he writes, ". . . and this is why manga and anime have attained such a high status in the popular culture of Japan compared to that of other countries."
In addition, the display of feelings, or dramatic personification, is a problem in Japan. If a film portrays emotion in a traditional Japanese framework it is now felt to be antiquated. If it uses a Western framework, it is felt to be overacted. Many live-action films end up antiquated or unconvincing or both.
Anime, which lacks visual realism and features de-Japanized characters, can thus, paradoxically, express acceptable signs of emotion. The backdrops may be painted, but the emotions -- no longer either old-fashioned or over the top -- can be accepted as "real." Increasingly, anime embodies the Japanese consciousness of reality. Or, as Sato adds, "the Japanese conception of reality is undergoing a process of animation."
Furthermore, a medium that can fuse elements of both East and West lacks a clear national identity and can thus be considered international. "Princess Mononoke" has now been dubbed by Disney and has opened to good reviews in the United States. A part of the advertising strategy ( as with the popular "Shall We Dance?") has been to nowhere indicate that the product is actually Japanese. That it seemingly comes from nowhere makes it all the more international.
In the West too, the viewing of "the thin, insubstantial reality of animation" is fast turning into a preference. The gap between physical reality and the audience's image of that reality is widening everywhere (whatever this might impart) but it is Japan that still best embodies that aim -- if that is what it is.
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