Dis­cov­er the Japan­ese fish­ing town that inspired Stu­dio Ghibli’s Ponyo

Should it gen­uine­ly be the final film in Hayao Miyazaki’s remark­able fil­mog­ra­phy, The Boy and The Heron won’t be a ter­ri­ble way to bow out; car­ry­ing away Baf­ta and Acad­e­my Awards, gross­ing around $300 mil­lion, and bag­ging a rare per­fect 5−5−5 score when reviewed for this very publication.

That review laud­ed the film and oth­ers in the Stu­dio Ghi­b­li col­lec­tion for their ​‘shift­ing moral­i­ties and moti­va­tions’, flex­i­ble plot­ting and inscrutable world rules. Yet con­verse­ly, one aspect that con­sis­tent­ly char­ac­teris­es much of Miyazaki’s oeu­vre – no mat­ter how fan­tas­ti­cal the sto­ry – is an authen­tic, tan­gi­ble sense of location.

It’s not unusu­al for Miyaza­ki and Ghibli’s ani­ma­tion depart­ment to mod­el these set­tings on real places; large­ly, but not nec­es­sar­i­ly, locat­ed in Japan. Yubaba’s bath­house in Spir­it­ed Away is the exam­ple that most read­i­ly springs to mind, inspired by the 1894-built Dōgo Onsen build­ing. But these deeply authen­tic roots are always present, from the pan-Euro­pean sea­side cityscapes that back­drop Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice through to the mys­ti­cal Kushi­ro wet­lands of the Hiro­masa Yonebayashi-direct­ed When Marnie Was There.

While Fujimoto’s seafloor dwelling – a coral tow­er that is, part mad sci­en­tist lab­o­ra­to­ry and part mag­i­cal marine farm – can only have been trawled from the depths of Miyazaki’s ocean-like imag­i­na­tion, the land­lub­bing town in 2008’s much-loved Ponyo is anoth­er loca­tion drawn from the director’s own first­hand experience.

Tomo­noura is a town in the cen­tre of the Seto Inland Sea, an hour or so due east of Hiroshi­ma on Japan’s biggest island, Hon­shu. Flick­ing through a well-thumbed guide­book dur­ing a cher­ry blos­som spot­ting road trip this spring, I found myself drawn to the promised gor­geous views and trea­sures of this ​‘lacon­ic fish­ing vil­lage’. And when fur­ther read­ing revealed that the port town was por­trayed in Ponyo, the Japan­ese-speak­ing sat nav was duly set.

Though Miyaza­ki is a Toky­oite born and bred, he took a plea­sure trip to Tomo­noura after mak­ing Howl’s Mov­ing Cas­tle – and end­ed up stay­ing for two months. It was in that peri­od that he con­jured the basic inspi­ra­tion for Ponyo.

“There was the bay, docks, and the town slop­ing up into the moun­tains,” remem­bers Noburi Yoshi­da, the film’s Art Direc­tor, in the cof­fee table book ​‘The Art of Ponyo’. ​“The way we ren­dered the colour of the not-so-blue sea, and the way the waves surge like huge shad­ows, were the results of our research trip.”

What’s clear imme­di­ate­ly when sweep­ing around the bay into Tomo­noura (not quite at the break­neck speeds that Lisa risks in the film), is that the ani­ma­tion is no faith­ful recre­ation. There’s no hulk­ing dry dock or cute retire­ment home vis­i­ble. But there are clear ref­er­ence points to be dis­cov­ered; ones that the cheer­ful cus­to­di­ans of the town’s tourist infor­ma­tion office are delight­ed to point out.

Spot num­ber one, they say, is the mod­el for Sôsuke’s idyl­lic cliff-side abode. Set slap bang in the mid­dle of town rather than out on its own, it’s imme­di­ate­ly appar­ent why it stuck in Miyazaki’s mem­o­ry: a strik­ing red roof in a sea of black. Yoshi­da explains, ​“He’s always liked red tri­an­gu­lar roofs and also used them in My Neigh­bor Totoro. A house on a cliff with an ocean view. While Sôsuke’s house may be an incon­ve­nient place to live (laughs), in a way, it may be an ide­al land­scape for Miyazaki.”

While the driz­zly Hon­shu skies were enough to keep away many sight­seers on the day I vis­it­ed, the locals have become well accus­tomed to unfa­mil­iar faces and snap­ping cam­eras. ​“It accounts for more than 20% of the total,” Aki­hiko Katao­ka, Direc­tor of the Tomo­noura Tourist Infor­ma­tion Cen­ter, tells me of the pro­por­tion of tourists flock­ing to his work­place in pur­suit of Ponyo-based sights. ​“Nowa­days, there are many young tourists, and the num­ber of tourists is increas­ing world­wide – espe­cial­ly many French, UK and South­east Asians.”

Indeed, the ani­ma­tion even served as an unlike­ly source of inspi­ra­tion for Hol­ly­wood loca­tion scouts. ​“Hugh Jackman’s Wolver­ine: Samu­rai [released as The Wolver­ine in the US and UK] also learned about this town from the pro­duc­tion web­site of direc­tor Miyazaki’s Ponyo and chose it as a film­ing loca­tion,” says Kataoka.

I’m next point­ed along a jet­ty of bob­bing boats towards a crag­gy set of rocks, that were Miyazaki’s touch­stone for the inlet where Sôsuke dis­cov­ers his fishy friend. It would be disin­gen­u­ous to say that it’s instant­ly recog­nis­able, but freight­ed with that infor­ma­tion, one’s imag­i­na­tion imme­di­ate­ly visu­alis­es a five-year-old boy pad­dling out to inves­ti­gate the allur­ing coral-coloured jar.

It feels unchar­i­ta­ble to won­der where the bustling bay full of trawler boats and fish­er­men are – wouldn’t Koichi be out there some­where, flash­ing Morse-cod­ed mes­sages to Lisa and his son? It’s undoubt­ed­ly pic­turesque, but not the hub­bub of activ­i­ty I had expected.

And yet that’s where the imag­i­na­tion begins to fill in the gaps once more. Imput­ing mag­ic and mean­ing into the most benign of fea­tures. Per­fect­ly abstract street tiles are sud­den­ly, unmis­tak­ably the scales of a fish. The town’s elder­ly women morph into spit­ting images of Yoshie, Noriko and the mild­ly ter­ri­fy­ing Toki. And, sure­ly not… do those waves have eyes?

Katao­ka-san describes the con­fi­dence and pride that Ponyo’s asso­ci­a­tion has giv­en the res­i­dents of the town. So it is sur­pris­ing how lit­tle Tomo­noura has leant into its con­nec­tion with the lit­tle fish from the deep blue sea. If this was a sim­i­lar set­ting on England’s Juras­sic or North Sea coast, you feel, the cob­bled streets would be lined with ​‘Ponyo Expe­ri­ence’ muse­ums, can­dle-pow­ered boat trips, and fam­i­ly restau­rants spe­cial­is­ing only in ham. Here the odd Ponyo soft toy and pin badge are mas­sive­ly out­num­bered by the amount of prod­ucts fea­tur­ing the region’s med­i­c­i­nal-tast­ing Houmei liquor.

“Time in life is lim­it­ed,” says Katao­ka, ​“but the beau­ti­ful nature and cul­ture of this town will remain in the film.” And, as dusk falls, I realise my own time here is also approach­ing an end.

Thank­ful­ly, my route out of the town reveals two final trea­sures. The first couldn’t be more obvi­ous, as I dri­ve through a road tun­nel that is a clear mod­el for the one in which Ponyo begins to revert to fish form in the film’s last act.

And then, dri­ving just a few min­utes more on the oth­er side, the Abu­to Kan­non where sailors have prayed to the God­dess of Mer­cy for over a mil­len­ni­um. As the strik­ing Bud­dhist tem­ple stands sen­try, jut­ting out from a head­land over the Seto Inland Sea, it’s only a min­now-sized stretch to asso­ciate its crim­son lac­quered façade with the fiery locks of Gran­ma­mare – Ponyo’s matri­ar­chal sea deity. And it’s her serene, com­pas­sion­ate beau­ty that per­haps gives the most reveal­ing clues as to the streams in Miyazaki’s mind where Ponyo and Tomo­noura meet.