My Neigh­bour Totoro at 30: In praise of Hayao Miyazaki’s gen­tle giant

Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neigh­bour Totoro was released in Japan 30 years ago to lit­tle fan­fare. Mis­judged by financiers and shoe­horned into a dou­ble bill with Isao Takahata’s much-antic­i­pat­ed Grave of the Fire­flies, Totoro trod water until slow­ly, sure­ly, it became one of the most beloved ani­mat­ed fea­ture films of all time.

Com­ing into the world two days before Totoro arrived in cin­e­mas, I find myself strange­ly bond­ed to this great grey tree-dweller. I can’t remem­ber when it was I first saw the film, but it has always been a rem­e­dy for par­tic­u­lar­ly rainy days, a tro­phy film pre­sent­ed proud­ly to loved ones, and the cause of many bare­ly con­cealed yelps of excite­ment dur­ing a trip to Japan. It would seem I’m not alone, too. ​“It’s like a ton­ic,” says Paul Vick­ery, head of pro­gram­ming at the Prince Charles Cin­e­ma, a Lon­don rep cin­e­ma that has been show­ing Stu­dio Ghi­b­li strands for years. ​“If it’s play­ing on one of the days I’m work­ing I’ll pop in to catch some of it. It just tops up the well­be­ing that you need.”

This year the Prince Charles has shown My Neigh­bour Totoro three times already, swap­ping from subbed to dubbed ver­sions in the hope of draw­ing in a dif­fer­ent crowds. ​“When you show the film at 1pm on a Sat­ur­day to 300 peo­ple, and half of those peo­ple are chil­dren, it’s real­ly amaz­ing. It’s avail­able on Blu-ray in shops near­by, yet peo­ple still bring their fam­i­lies to see it on the big screen.”

Per­haps one of the biggest rea­sons for Totoro’s suc­cess is that every­one has their own inter­pre­ta­tion of what it means. While the phys­i­cal appear­ance of the title char­ac­ter has been com­pared to every­thing from an owl to a seal to a giant mouse troll, on a meta­phys­i­cal lev­el the the­o­ries run even deep­er. In Miyazaki’s book of essays ​‘Start­ing Point: 1979−1996’, Totoro is described as a cre­ation of Mei and Satsuki’s imag­i­na­tion, a gen­tle giant who guides them through their mother’s illness.

Some believe Totoro to be a Kami (a spir­it tied to nature) belong­ing to the cam­phor tree which Mei falls into the bel­ly of while she’s out play­ing. The tagline on the orig­i­nal Japan­ese poster trans­lates as, ​“These strange crea­tures still exist in Japan. Sup­pos­ed­ly,” which sum­mons thoughts of old souls and end­less wis­dom. Ulti­mate­ly, you can project what­ev­er you want onto Totoro. Even Miyaza­ki leaves open the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the crea­tures in the film don’t real­ly exist (although he solemn­ly believes it to be real, as do I).

Helen McCarthy is the author of ​‘Hayao Miyaza­ki: Mas­ter of Japan­ese Ani­ma­tion’ and has stud­ied Totoro’s jour­ney from the film’s ini­tial release to the present day. She informs me of the short-sight­ed­ness of the film’s financiers, who hitched it onto the sure-fire suc­cess of Grave of the Fire­flies, a film based on a pop­u­lar short sto­ry by Akiyu­ki Nosaka.

Aside from Totoro mak­ing a killing in mer­chan­dise rev­enue, those who are famil­iar with Miyaza­ki can trace the film’s mod­ern suc­cess to his stub­born moral mind. Reluc­tant to put his char­ac­ters into straight­for­ward ​‘good’ and ​‘evil’ box­es, the Ghi­b­li stal­wart nev­er­the­less rewards the pure of heart and pun­ish­es greed and glut­tony. It’s a trait that wasn’t missed by Roger Ebert, who described Totoro’s small king­dom as, ​“the world we should live in, not the one that we occupy.”

As McCarthy explains, “[Totoro] extend­ed the studio’s pos­i­tive green and social cre­den­tials by tying itself so firm­ly into a sim­pler time and a soci­ety ruled by nature. I think Miyaza­ki does two very dif­fi­cult things in this film with con­sid­er­able del­i­ca­cy and grace: he makes a film at a child’s pace and on a child’s lev­el; and he allows death to assume a major role in the movie with­out demon­is­ing or per­son­al­is­ing death. It’s also con­sum­mate­ly beau­ti­ful. After almost thir­ty years of watch­ing it sev­er­al times a year, it still sur­pris­es me with its capac­i­ty to deliv­er images of almost heart-stop­ping beauty.”

I love that Miyaza­ki is a direc­tor who is will­ing to roll up his sleeves and ani­mates as well, but it’s the col­lab­o­ra­tive nature of his work that ele­vates it to such an extra­or­di­nary lev­el. Totoro wouldn’t be com­plete with­out Joe Hisashi’s score, for exam­ple, a sweep­ing com­po­si­tion that is as delight­ful and mem­o­rable as the whiskers on the title character’s cheeks. It feels like part of the mag­ic that makes Totoro take flight or gives the cat bus its 12 legs.

Sega Bode­ga is a music pro­duc­er and per­former who has sam­pled Hisashi’s work in the first of three shows ded­i­cat­ed to the music of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li for a spe­cial run on NTS. For him, the score is an unmatched mix of play­ful­ness and grandeur: ​“It’s the choice of sounds that makes it so heart-warm­ing. It’s all very fun; car­toon-type nois­es but in par­al­lel with this melody and chord pro­gres­sion that kills me.”

Bode­ga lis­tened to every score from Stu­dio Ghi­b­li for the series but rates the orig­i­nal­i­ty of Hisashi’s score above all oth­ers, which links direct­ly to his appre­ci­a­tion of the film. ​“There is just such a puri­ty to it, but like a mature one. So many times, I go back to films I watched as a kid and find that they’re shit. But Ghi­b­li films feel like com­ing of age films, mixed with pure fan­ta­sy. It just seems like a time­less combination.”

Time­less is key here, because the pow­er of Totoro seems infi­nite. ​“You will nev­er see an audi­ence as hap­py as the one leav­ing the build­ing after we screen Totoro,” adds Vick­ery. ​“A lot can be said for going to see a film that is gen­uine­ly just very nice, and you leave the screen with a big smile on your face because it doesn’t hap­pen that much. You leave feel­ing full of love almost.”