Legitimacy of Dark Side of My Neighbor Totoro

Dark undertones are not unique to My Neighbor Totoro; another Miyazaki film known as Spirited Away is allegedly about child prostitution in the bathhouses of early Japan (Horton). Even beyond Miyazaki, fairytales have always had a darker side to them, most famously those from the story collection Children’s and Household Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm (published in 1812). Disney, the superpower of children’s media in America, has borrowed many of its beloved stories from the Grimms, albeit sugarcoated versions of them. To name just a few examples of the horrors in the original fairytales, the stepsisters in Cinderella cut off parts of their feet to fit into the lost slipper; in The Little Mermaid, the heroin commits suicide; while the main character of Sleeping Beauty is in her coma, the king rapes her (Lindsay). Given the strong tie between Disney and Studio Ghibli (Disney distributes the English versions of Studio Ghibli films), it is not a stretch to say Miyazaki’s tales have equally dark undertones as those of the Grimms. That is not say the stories are meant to be disturbing and horrible tragedies, but Miyazaki is certainly not one to ignore all angles of humanity and nature.

The reason I chose to study this famous Japanese animator/director and his film My Neighbor Totoro is due to its rich incorporation of both oriental and western styles and cultures. As mentioned in Greenberg’s essay, Miyazaki often alludes to a motley of children’s tales preceding his own, including novels by Swedish author Astrid Lindgren, Swiss author Johanna Spyri, and Canadian author Lucy Maude Montgomery. Kjosleth recognizes Totoro’s references to Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland: in order to find Totoro, Mei and Satsuki go down a tunnel similar to the rabbit hole; the Neko bus with its wide grin and disappearing ability is strongly reminiscent of the Cheshire Cat. Ultimately, My Neighbor Totoro is a versatile and timeless work worthy of representing the genre of children’s literature as a whole. Unlike a lot of children’s story writers, Miyazaki does not neglect the reality and context of adulthood, but embraces it as the ends of growing up—a challenge all children must face. 

Fans, including myself, were children when we first saw My Neighbor Totoro. As we have grown up, so has our interpretation of the film, due to the complex symbolism incorporated by Miyazaki—it is this flexible complexity, on top of the heartwarming coming-of-age elements, which begs the work be re-watched and re-evaluated as a narrative reflective of individual context, not solely that of its creator. Although Miyazaki did not intend for his children’s films to be seen in a darker light, his style ties in strongly with Japanese culture and traditions, which inevitably ties his films to every aspect of those histories and traditions, dark or innocent. It is human nature to search and draw meaning out of life, especially from a literary perspective. When one analyzes a children’s story as an adult, the work itself never changes, but one is able to extract a subtextual idea that is unreachable to the understanding of a child. This does not mean the implications do not exist. At the root of all literature are fairytales and myths told to children before bedtime—they were never meant to be happy-go-lucky, they were meant to appeal to a child’s imagination, emotions, id, Ninjo. Giri and its socially acceptable maturity has censored such raw emotion; it is a mask over the animalistic chaos in us all, our lust and bloodlust. Therefore, the interpretation of My Neighbor Totoro as an allegory for a murder is every bit as legitimate as society’s façade of innocence. After all, if ignorance is bliss, then bliss is darkness.

Loss of Innocence in My Neighbor Totoro

Initially, I interpret this slice-of-life story My Neighbor Totoro as narrating the coming-of-age struggle faced by an ordinary girl and her younger sister, hinting at the theme of respecting tradition, nature, and a child’s imagination. Yet death still plays a significant role in the film and its basic themes, thus legitimizing the connection between the actual plot and fan-made theories. Raz Greenberg—content editor, Hebrew translator, and freelance writer—examines Miyazaki’s coming-of-age themes and their western roots in his essay “Giri and Ninjo: The Roots of Hayao Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro in Animated Adaptations of Classic Children's Literature.” At the center of his research are the Japanese concepts of Ninjo and Giri, similar to the Freudian concepts of id and superego. Ninjo represents raw emotion and desire, whereas Giri represents social responsibility, which often contradicts those societal conventions and/or morals. Greenberg claims the central development of Totoro is that of Satsuki and Mei transitioning from Ninjo to Giri, yet coping with the hardships of Giri through the fantastical elements (re)introduced by Totoro, an embodiment of Ninjo (Greenberg). It is explicitly stated by Mei and Satsuki’s father that Totoro is a forest spirit, a deity of nature (Miyazaki, My Neighbor Totoro). Nature itself is a driving force behind Ninjo, as the latter is a form of raw instinct. Since life and death (day and night) are the two faces of nature, it would not be farfetched to suggest Totoro symbolizes the latter, if not both. After all, the plot is driven by the possibility of death just as much as it is driven by the possibility of Totoro’s existence.

Inevitable in any bildungsroman is the loss of innocence, a universal theme conveyed through the imminence and immanence of death in the case of My Neighbor Totoro. Satsuki more than any other character grapples with the bleakness of death, made most obvious when faced with the fact that her mother will not return home as planned. She cynically remarks about her mother, “They said it was just a cold… when she went into the hospital. But what if she dies!” (Miyazaki, My Neighbor Totoro). At this point Satsuki’s veil of Giri breaks and she cries helplessly, plunging back into the emotions of Ninjo; not much later she seeks Totoro, the embodiment of Ninjo, for help. Satsuki’s catharsis of despair is significant considering her mature composure throughout most of the film. As Greenberg points out while discussing the fear of orphanhood, “Mei relies on the guidance of Satsuki in the adult world of Giri because her mother is absent - and here we see Satsuki not only functioning as the big sister, but also as a replacement for the mother.” If Satsuki is a mother figure and her own mother is bordering on death, Satsuki’s own childhood life is commensurately put in jeopardy. 

Greenberg also points out that Mei offers the perspective of Ninjo, and Satsuki offers the prospect of Giri. Children who watch the film are more likely to identify with Mei, to see the story from an innocent point of view. But once a fan grows up and faces the adult world him/herself, he/she is more likely to identify with Satsuki, thus shifting the entire interpretation of the film to fit such a loss of innocence. The very existence of an alternate, darker version of My Neighbor Totoro serves as an extra and external metanarrative frame. The older fans are Satsuki. When she falls into hopeless despair, and Mei—her innocence, her Ninjo—is nowhere to be found, we the audience join her. Mei’s disappearance itself is timed perfectly with the sudden threat of death, so with the death of innocence comes the death of Mei. However, a paradox arises when Satsuki seeks help from Totoro; as soon as she falls down the rabbit hole and is whisked away to be reunited with her little sister (happy ending ensues), she regains her innocence. In reality of course, innocence is not so easily recovered. To make sense of this anomaly, fans scramble to find a down-to-earth answer: the only possible way, at least in literature, to return to innocence is to die. Once Satsuki exits the adult world after having already existed in it, she is dead to the adult audience, no matter how much we want to believe in the happy ending.

(See next post: Legitimacy of Dark Side of My Neighbor Totoro)

Analysis of My Neighbor Totoro from the Dark Side

Looking for a fun family film parents will enjoy as much as their kids? My Neighbor Totoro is the inspirational horror story of two young girls who move into an isolated, shithole house infested with soot demons, while their sick mother slowly dies. All their fears are soon left among the living when they knock on death’s door and awaken the morbidly obese grim reaper, Totoro!

I for one have adored Miyazaki's animated film My Neighbor Totoro ever since I was a child. Those who have seen it know that the above description is a twisted version designed to be a satirical advertisement. However, anyone familiar with the internet cannot simply ignore long-standing rumors about this animated work of art. Therefore, I shall analyze the film from the perspective of its darker interpretations. 

Many fans, particularly Mami—known for a variety of blog posts pertaining to Japanese anime—believe My Neighbor Totoro is an allegory for a murder case known as the Sayama Incident and that Totoro is the god (or some representation) of death. In her blog post “My Conspiracy Theory Nut Neighbor, Totoro,” Mami explains that the Sayama Incident occurred on May 1, 1963 in Sayama City, while My Neighbor Totoro takes place not long before in the 1950s and not far away in a town based on Tokorozawa-city; the house in the movie is modelled after a house located in Sayama Kyuryo (“Sayama Hills”). Another strange coincidence lies in the names of the protagonists: Satsuki means “May,” and Mei is pronounced like the English word “May” (Mami). In the Sayama Incident, a sixteen-year-old girl was raped and killed by a man who may or may not have gotten away, as the arrested suspect might have been wrongfully convicted. Not long after the girl died, her older sister committed suicide. Fans of Miyazaki suggest that Mei’s disappearance in the film is meant to mirror the Sayama murder, and that Satsuki takes her own life when she sets out to find her. Since Totoro sends Satsuki on a mystical bus to her “dead” sister, he is presumed to be a god of death.

Figure 1: Satsuki (left) and Mei (right) wait by an Ojizou-sama statue.

Figure 2: Satsuki and Mei (left) wait at bus stop next to Totoro (right).

Symbols and background details throughout the film suggest the protagonists of My Neighbor Totoro die at the end, and that Totoro serves as the god of death who guides them into the underworld. From the very beginning, Mei and Satsuki are able to see soot sprites in their house, sprites which in Japanese folklore only appear to those about to die (Mami). While watching My Neighbor Totoro, I notice other motifs evocative of the “other side.” Take for instance the parallel scenes depicted in Figures 1 and 2, in which the protagonists are waiting in the rain beside an Ojizou-sama shrine in one, beside Totoro in the other. Described by Pablo Kjosleth, a critic for the Turner Classic Movie website, Ojizou-sama is a Buddhist patron deity of children; to honor the memory of deceased children, statues of Ojizou-sama are often perched alongside roads in Japan. Rain itself is a symbol of cleansing and rebirth; in order for rebirth to occur, death must precede it. Thus, Totoro stands in as an Ojizou-sama—not exactly a god of death, but one associated with the death of children nonetheless. In relation to the Totoro-God-of-Death theory, the statues seem to adumbrate the passing of the protagonists. Each time an Ojizou-sama appears, it appears with either symbols of death or motifs associated with Totoro—rain and nightfall. 

Figure 3: Lost while searching for the hospital, Mei sits beside Ojizou-sama statues.

Ojizou-sama statues appear later in the film well (see Figure 3), when Mei is utterly lost after wandering off to find the hospital in which her mother is being treated. Symbolism aside, the sight alone of the ominous cloaked statues resembles a funeral procession for the distraught and abject child. Furthermore, the statues stand on the darker side of the frame, facing away from the remnants of sunset and towards the falling night. Coincident or not, the appearances of Totoro himself are predominately at night or dusk, fitting for a lethargic spirit who spends most of his time napping (which suggests he is nocturnal). Even when Mei first meets the spirit during the day, she ends up falling asleep on his belly; sleep is but death’s counterfeit. 

Above all, the irony of the situation surrounding Figure 3 is unavoidable—Mei seeks to heal her dying mother, to prevent death, only to go knocking on the door of presumably her own tomb. When Mei goes missing, Satsuki literally seeks out Totoro underground through a tunnel lined with soot sprites which, as mentioned earlier, foreshadow death. As she rides on the Neko bus to find her little sister, one of the destinations listed on the bus reads “Grave Road” (Mami).

Once Mei and Satsuki finally arrive at the hospital where their mother resides, they watch from outside her window, under the cover of darkness. One wonders why they never reveal themselves; perhaps they are physically incapable of doing so. After they leave an ear of corn by the window, their mother comments to their father, “I thought I saw Satsuki and Mei smiling at us from up in that tree” (Miyazaki, My Neighbor Totoro). Without context, this situation is quite eerie, suggesting that the daughters are practically ghosts, especially since only their mother, who is bordering death, catches a glimpse of them. Their presence is questioned yet impossible under the current reality, so their parents discuss them as though they are absent, almost as though they are dead.
(See next post: Loss of Innocence in My Neighbor Totoro)