The Technology of Nostalgia and Displacement: Miyazaki’s Military Manga
Susan J. Napier
Tufts University
“I have a love of technology that no longer exists” Miyazaki Hayao interview in
Animerica
“All around the bombers falls a kind of quiet” Daniel Swift, Bomber County
How do we represent weapons of war? If you are a fantasy writer you may base
your weaponry on the arms of ancient times—such as the swords and arrows of warriors
in the Lord of the Rings or simply on magical power itself. Thus, Susanna Clark in
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell describes an alternative 19th century where magicians
are the technocrats of the age and produce warships conjured out of rain that help the
British win against the French in the Napoleonic Wars. To the watching French, they
appear to be “heavily armed warships” but “even under the dark sky,” they “glitter” and,
even in all that drenching rain they shone.” Of course, when the sun comes out, the
warships flicker and disappear, but they have already done their work of intimidation and
now remain a pleasant, gossamer memory of warfare at its most ethereal.
If you are a science fiction writer, especially of what is known as hard science
fiction, you would probably extrapolate from the present to create futuristic weapons that
are based on believable premises. One of the most immersive sci fi descriptions of future
combat appears in the opening scene of Robert Heinlein’s 1959 Starship Troopers. In a
viscerally exciting sequence a young soldier named Johnny Rico dons an intricately
described mobile suit that augments his powers to such an extent that he can land on an
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alien world and bounce exultantly through a city throwing “pee wee” (as he calls them)
atomic explosions all around him. This vivid opening plunges the reader into a world
where the excitement of high level technology deployed in combat immerses him or her
into an almost video game level of intensity, the action only stopping when Johnny’s
sergeant abruptly cuts off his “juice”, or energy supply.
In both books (and genres) military technology is multivalent. It is beautiful but
intimidating. Strong but ephemeral, human and non-human, homely but alien. In other
words, it is a work of art. It is also an art that is an art of empire. In Clark’s evocation this
is a vanished empire, the British Imperium, seen at the beginning of its glimmering
height, but one that will ultimately disappear as completely as the ships of rain.
Heinlein’s vision is of a future empire based on the America of 1959, an empire
beginning to be built out of the destruction of World War II and the us versus them
dynamic of the Cold War. This is an empire fueled by rapid and constant technological
innovation that makes mobile suits in extraterrestrial combat look like a product that
might appear the day after tomorrow.
The subject of my paper, the animation director Miyazaki Hayao, is also an artist
of military technology and of empire. Both these assertions may come across as
surprising to audiences who appreciate Miyazaki for his family friendly movies. In many
fans’ eyes, Miyazaki’s films are appealing for their distinctive characters, imagery, and
agendas, most notably his feisty young female protagonists, his sublimely beautiful
visions of nature and what might be called his eco-pacifist message. Such a perception is
not inaccurate, but it fails to see a more complex side of Miyazaki, one rooted in both his
personal and cultural identity. This side encompasses a sometimes more tragic vision and
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a more complex attitude toward war which I believe are based on both personal and
national traumas, revolving around Japan’s prewar empire and the question of war
responsibility.
Miyazaki has worked through these issues in many forms. A notable number of
his films involve intense scenes of violence and destruction and, as early as his
pioneering television series Mirai Shonen Conan, (Future Boy Conan), these scenes are
often related to overarching conflicts that are sometimes literally between empires (as in
the case of Conan or the 1985 Nausicaa) or more metaphorically, as in the 1996 film
Princess Mononoke where beasts and woodland gods band together to fight against the
human Other. (or is it vice versa?) Apocalyptic visions abound, sometimes out of
Miyazaki’s own imagination, as in Nausicaa or Princess Mononoke, or at other times
based on the vision of Western fiction writers, such as Lloyd Alexander Keyes or Diana
Wynne Jones.
One of his most poignant and original filmic examinations of war is the 1993
film Kurenai no Buta (Porco Rosso), Miyazaki’s only film consciously aimed at an adult
audience. Set in the Adriatic in 1930, the film has many lighthearted moments but also
deals directly with the tragedy and waste of war, particularly in a surreal fantasy scene
towards the end of the movie. In this scene the movie’s hero, Porco, a former WW1
fighter pilot who has taken on the face of a pig as a symbol of his disgust with humanity
after the war, remembers a vicious dogfight that ended with most of his comrades dead
and he himself comatose. As he tells it, he regained consciousness to finds himself still in
his little plane flying through a veil of glittering brightness. All around him Porco sees
the planes of his dead comrades (and those of the enemy) rising up through the ether,
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leaving him behind to face his horror, sadness, and loss alone. The initial dogfight echoes
the visceral intensity of the scene in Starship Troopers. Although not sci fi, it could
perhaps be described as “hard tech”, as the planes’ design and flight paths are beautifully
evoked. The sequence ends on a Clark-esque note of poignant ephemerality, however,
especially in the final sequence when the dead fighters’ planes become a glimmering
evanescent line in the sky. But Miyazaki goes beyond Clark’s aesthetics and Heinlein’s
technological celebration to suggest the human toll of war, paradoxically through the
porcine transformation of his pilot hero who continues to fly as a bounty hunter after the
war but still insists on renouncing his humanity.
I will return to the film version of Porco Rosso later on but for now I would like
to leave the world of Miyazaki’s film for a much less well known aspect of Miyazaki’s
art, his manga, specifically what I am calling his “military manga.” The original form that
Porco appeared in was as a three episode manga version published in the magazine
Model Graphix. Model Graphix is a hobby magazine aimed at aficionados of plastic
model kits of machines and weaponry, that range from World War I ships and airplanes
to futuristic combat suits inspired (and often licensed) by science fiction anime such as
the immensely popular Gundam series. Originally entitled “Hikouteijidai” (The Age of
the Seaplane) the manga version of Porco Rosso is one of a group of sporadically
appearing military manga published under the title “Mosou noto” (crazy notes) that
Miyazaki has produced over the last three decades.
These manga are fascinating both for what they are and for what they are not. On
the one hand, although they range across countries and historical periods, they are far
more limited in terms of period, genre, subject matter and setting than Miyazaki’s
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breathtakingly broad filmic oeuvre. Each one of them (and most are very short—usually
less than six pages) concerns some kind of military technology always appearing in an
episode of combat. Sometimes, as in the Porco original, the story is essentially fantastic.
For example, the three page Tahouto no deba concerns a pig in a tank who captures a
young (human) girl only to be routed by her and her bicycle riding boyfriend. In most
other cases, however, they are primarily historic, as in the Civil War period manga
Koutetsu no ikiji, (The Pride of the Gunships) which accurately recounts the sinking of
the Confederate Monitor by the Union army’s turreted gunboat, Merrimack. Other
historical works include a retelling of the German tank commander Otto Carius’s battles
on the Russian Front in WWII, and the bombing of London in 1918 by a German
Zeppelin.
It is worth looking at the organization and presentation of these manga in some
detail. Since most of these (including the Porco manga) are historically rooted, the
technology in them is far from the high tech expansive visions of science fiction or the
sleek aesthetic images of fantasy. Instead, it is almost endearingly retro, even clunky.
Chunky biplanes abound, along with warships weighed down with fat, distended turrets,
monstrous tanks sporting what look like grotesque teeth and even a dowdy fishing boat
forced into reluctant service as a rescue ship. Even Porco’s plane, while painted a shiny
crimson red, is noted for being made of wood rather than steel, an appealingly retro
touch.
It is this retro technology that is the star of each manga. Indeed, it is not too much
of a stretch to say that, in striking contrast to Miyazaki’s animation, the story and
characters in these manga are relatively unimportant. In page after page carefully and
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intricately rendered images of war machines—are front and center, literally occupying
most of the manga space. Even compared to other Japanese military manga—of which
there are many—these works are unusual. For example, many of Matsumoto Leiji’s
combat flying manga feature sequences in which the planes swoop in and out of manga
panels, offering a seamless vision of soaring, darting flight and enabling the reader’s eye
to soar along with them. In contrast Miyazaki’s flying and other machines seem to chug
along, bulking out of each panel and forcing the reader to stop and examine each one.
This slowness of presentation is reinforced by another unusual feature, the enormous
amount of textual explanation surrounding many of the images. For example in his Civil
War manga, “The Pride of the Gunships,” fully two thirds of each page are given to such
arcana as explaining the types of cannon used on the two warships, including their
dimensions, firing power and how they were loaded, not to mention a detailed description
of how the ships were put into service. Intriguingly, the final battle between them is told
mainly in text, a few detailed paragraphs squashed into the bottom of the last page.
In general, rather than combat sequences, these manga seem to privilege military
technology for its own sake—as complicated works of art that almost take on a life of
their own. Many of the manga show cut out scenes of tank plane and warship interiors,
again with a great deal of textual explanation, including arrows pointing between the text
and a particular image. Some of the images are so detailed as to have the quality of
blueprints. It should be noted, however, that Miyazaki is on record for saying that he
does not really know that much about technological design and it is indeed unlikely that
anyone could build a machine from one of his diagrams. The overall impact of each
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manga, however, is of a world overstuffed with machinery that leaps out of the pages at
the reader.
If, as Miyazaki insists, he is really an artist rather than an engineer, it is now time
to ask why he obsessively recreates out-of-date technology. Furthermore, why should an
artist known for his brilliant use of the genres of science fiction and fantasy maintain a
separate compartment in his work that is tied, (again, almost obsessively) to history? Part
of the answer may lie in the line quoted at the beginning of this paper. In an interview
with the American anime magazine Animerica, he explicitly says, “I have a love of
technology that no longer exists.” Taking this statement alone we could easily link it
with Miyazaki’s use of science fiction and fantasy in his animation. In essence,
technology in science fiction is technology that does not (yet) exist while technology in
fantasy is technology that cannot exist. In all three cases, therefore, Miyazaki is playing
with non-existent technology. More specifically, and here, I think we come to the heart of
the matter, Miyazaki is playing with non-existent military technology.
What is the link between Miyazaki and military technology? Part of it, is related
to generation and cultural considerations. Miyazaki was born in 1941 and was therefore
four years old when the war ended. Four years old is too young to remember much about
the war, especially the first two years when the tides of war seemed to be bringing the
Japanese toward victory. But he would certainly have been old enough to have vivid
memories of the aftermath.
Like many Japanese of his generation and somewhat older (Oe Kenzaburo, who
was ten years old, when the war ended immediately comes to mind), Miyazaki pursues a
strongly pacifistic agenda in his art and utterances. Howl’s Moving Castle, for example,
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changed the original novel considerably to make its eponymous hero a literal weapon of
peace. Nausicaa, arguably his most beloved heroine, sacrifices her life to stop a war. His
military manga also often end with a hymn to peace or, at the very least, a total lack of
celebration of victory. For example, his previously mentioned Civil War manga ends
simply, on an elegiac rather than bellicose note as the Merrimac sinks into the twilight
river. It is hardly surprising that, given his national identity and historical position,
Miyazaki should be concerned about the aftermath of war and the destructive
consequences of empire.
And yet. at the same time, it must be acknowledged that most of the military
manga are devoted in glowing detail to what can be seen as a celebration of military
technology. This is not a recent aspect of Miyazaki’s art. As he mentions in his book
“Shuppatsuten” (Departures) he had always loved to draw military weapons even as a
child. No doubt part of this is related simply to a common love among boys of “cool”
technology which is in turn related to an understandable fascination with power and
control on the part of children or adolescents. Furthermore, Miyazaki is an artist and
rendering war and war machines has been part of many artists’ portfolio, from the
Japanese screens depicting the Heike battles to Winslow Homer’s work on the American
Civil War. Images of war are riveting, immersive and powerful. Intricately built
machinery can be a thing of beauty and a joy forever in the eyes of the appropriate
audience.
But I believe that there are other factors behind Miyazaki’s obsessive need to
depict military technology in so many different forms. At the risk of oversimplifying, I
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suspect his celebration of “unreal” technology suggests a more ambivalent or at least
more complex attitude towards war and empire than might initially be supposed.
To understand this aspect of Miyazaki it is helpful to return to his personal past, or more
accurately, his family’s personal past.
Miyazaki was born into a family with close relations to military technology. In
1942 his uncle and father co-founded a factory, known as Miyazaki Aircraft, which was a
subsidiary of Nakajima Aircraft, one of the most important aircraft makers in Japan. The
family benefited from their association with the factory. Miyazaki’s father was not called
up to serve in the military and the family lived far more affluently than most Japanese did
during the war. As Shiro Yoshioka speculates, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that
Miyazaki is still working through guilt over the factory’s role in the war and also his
family’s relatively comfortable lifestyle during the war.
But I believe that it is more than guilt that operates in Miyazaki art. Or to put it
another way, guilt is mixed in with a larger complex of emotions that inspire some of
Miyazaki’s most interesting creations. Nostalgia, loss, grief and even denial also play a
part and relate to Miyazaki’s complex cultural identity as a citizen of a country with a lost
empire. By dealing with military technology that is “unreal” Miyazaki can engage with
his personal and national past in a safely displaced form.
For the rest of this paper I would like to concentrate on Miyazaki’s most recent
military manga. Entitled Kaze Tachinu (The Wind has Risen), it has the additional
designation “mosou kamubaku” or the “come back of the wild notes”. The designation
“comeback” presumably refers to the fact that Miyazaki has not written one of these
manga in many years. Kaze Tachinu started in 2009 and finished serialization at the
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beginning of 2010 so it is a particularly useful snapshot into Miyazaki’s concerns at the
moment.
There are other unusual aspects to Kaze Tachinu as well. The first is the fact that
this is a long manga consisting of nine episodes, published monthly in the magazine
Model Graphix. Unlike his previous “mosou notes”, therefore, this is a sustained story
with a certain amount of character development and even a romance included as a major
part of the plot. (Interestingly, the manga version of Porco Ross contains no hint of the
romance that was an important element in the movie version). In fact, Kaze tachinu is
based partly on a romantic story of the same name written in the 1930’s by Hori Tatsuo .
But its real subject matter is another kind of romance, the love between an
engineer and his plane, specifically the Japanese Zero fighter. Miyazaki’s Kaze tachinu is
the story of Jiro Horikoshi, the designer and ultimately the developer of the Mitsubishi
Zero, the Japanese empire’s most fearsome and most successful warplane. It is also the
story of the plane itself and its various early iterations, an “ugly duckling” as Jiro calls it
but one that is clearly beautiful to both Jiro and to Miyazaki.
It is his choice of subject matter that is the most interesting aspect of Kaze
Tachinu. Although two of his “Mosou notes” feature stories about Japanese civilians
caught up in WW I, this is the first manga by Miyazaki to be about Japanese military
technology per se. And not simply Japanese technology but what was, for its time, the
summit of Japanese technology and one that is intimately grounded in the story of the
Japanese empire. The Mitsubishi Zero fighter is without question the most iconic
Japanese weapon ever produced (with the possible exception of the Japanese sword), a
technological achievement that captured the Japanese hearts and minds at the same time
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as it held sway over enemy combatants as a weapon of both literal and psychological
intimidation.
For the Japanese, the Zero exists in two profoundly complex iterations. Zero
fighters were the main fighters that led the successful surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
Japanese pilots had already used the planes to a considerable extent in their invasion of
China and Southeast Asia , bombing and strafing both military targets and civilian
populations. This accumulated expertise helped them at and beyond Pearl Harbor, as they
went on to rule the skies of the Pacific theater for almost two years afterwards. Faster and
lighter and therefore more maneuverable than what at that point were clumsy American
planes, the Zeros seemed to come from nowhere ( literally, in fact, as Allied intelligence
knew nothing about their development), and won almost every instance of single combat
they engaged in. Even American fighters at the time admitted to turning tail if they were
alone when confronted with a Zero. On the wings of these fighters the Japanese empire
expanded in a series of brilliantly strategic territorial grabs to the point where all of
Southeast Asia and most of China were under their sway and even Australia was
threatened.
But the Zero is also the weapon of defeat, and on the most personal and painful
terms possible. By the end of the war, as American airpower increased hugely in quantity
and quality, the Japanese factories and manpower simply could not keep up. While, at the
beginning of the war, the Zero was the most innovative air fighter around, as early as
1942 it began to be superceded by American Hellcats, Corsairs, and other more powerful
and more maneuverable bomber planes. The Japanese were never able to capitalize on
the innovative technology of the Zero, nor did they really appreciate the lesson of their
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own victory at Pearl Harbor, that this was a war whose outcome would be decided in the
skies, and not, as they had hoped, through their enormous warships such as the Yamato.
Ultimately the entire Japanese war machine collapsed around them but, rather than accept
defeat, the Japanese high command continued to press the Zero into service, as the main
carrier of the Kamikaze fighters. As is well known, the Kamikaze pilots were young men
who flew their planes into American warships, severely damaging a number of them but
at the cost of their own lives and with little effect on the war’s final outcome.
But Miyazaki’s narrative is not about the invasion of China, the victory at Pearl
Harbor or the Kamikaze. It begins in 1910 and ends in 1937 (with a coda set in 2009),
just before the Japanese began the all-out war in China. 1937 was also the year the
Japanese government chose Mitsubishi (Nakajima, Mitsubishi’s only rival had dropped
out of the competition) to develop the Zero as a fighter plane for use in China.
Thus, Kaze tachinu is not a story about bombing, death or destruction. It is rather
the narrative of the development of a beautiful (at least in its creator’s and in Miyazaki’s
eyes) technological product. Despite its length, the story itself is actually a fairly simple
one, although it contains a number of intriguing and even surprising elements. One of the
most surprising is that it begins, not in Japan but in Italy in 1922, just after the First
World War. The first two pages invites the reader into the world of the Capronis, a
family factory run by the patrician Gianni Caproni who, in 1910 had built Italy’s first
plane, a biplane, as was typical of that period in aeronautics. In 1918 he began building
the Caproni Ca 60. intended to be a 100 passenger plane (the first of its kind) the plane
crashed in 1920 on its maiden flight over Italy’s Lake Majore. Miyazaki’s images
beautifully illustrate this monstrous but somehow graceful creature, at the same time as
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his text has Caproni telling a young, apparently Japanese, interlocutor (whom Miyazaki
identifies as a youthful Horikoshi Jiro) that “Planes are not instruments of war or
economics”. To which Jiro, who is, intriguingly depicted in the form of a pig, replies
“The thing in itself is a crystallization of a dream. It has to be beautiful.”
The theme of beauty over practicality, war, or money is stressed throughout the
manga. As Miyazaki says in a comment to the first episode “In beauty magic dwells”.
It is worth spending some time thinking about why Miyazaki grounds the story of
this most Japanese of planes in an Italian foundation and in fact, returns to the setting and
period of Porco Rosso. As the narrative continues, it becomes clear that both Caproni
and Jiro are stand-ins for Miyazaki, who himself appears in pig persona to make
comments on the action. In fact, Miyazaki explicitly compares the intensity involved in
developing a plane to the energy required to create a new animated movie. In this regard,
the fact that the aristocratic Caproni ran a small familial factory outside of a major city
undoubtedly resonates both with Miyazaki’s family background and his own
contemporary position as head of Studio Ghibli, a small familial studio set just outside
Tokyo in Musashi Koganei. Kaze tachinu clearly exalts the notion of the hard working
genius who experiences both triumphs and failures.
But the Italian setting and the period are interesting for other reasons. It was
World War I that really inspired the quickening of technological innovation in warfare. It
is also, as Paul Virillo discusses, a time when the basic technologies of cinema began to
be formed. Finally, there is the political aspect. In his discussion of Porco Rosso, x
points out that, “ If you put together airplanes and fascism anyone will think of the Italian
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futurists represented by Marinetti, who actually was a pilot. [furthermore]Futurism itself
was the aesthetic and philosophical background for Italian fascism.”
Politics, aesthetics and technology—of both weaponry and cinema—thus swirl
around this period. As is clear from Porco Rosso, of course, Miyazaki takes pains to
show his hero’s scorn for fascism. In Kaze tachinu Caproni and Jiro are depicted as
resolutely apolitical. And yet, the union of beauty and conservative politics that the
Futurists celebrated is worth remembering and perhaps speculating further about.
Certainly, the Zeros and its forbears are depicted as objects worth celebrating.
Their iconic role is made clear early on, as Japan’s relative backwardness vis a vis the
“advanced countries” of the West is constantly mentioned. As with Miyazaki’s other
“Mosou manga” the reader is constantly treated to close-ups—plane fuselages, wings,
propellers, and flight paths are depicted with loving care. Such a treatment makes sense
given Model Graphix presumed audience of tech model aficionados.
But it is also worth suggesting that the manga’s relentless emphasis on literal nuts
and bolts and the “beauty” of the plane is a form of escape from these vexing questions
of politics, guilt and responsibility. In other words, in sharp contrast to the Futurists,
Miyazaki goes out of his way to avoid any connection with politics, concentrating instead
on the sheer joy of machinery for its own sake. While there are references to the fire
power of the planes under development, the main focus is on the hard work involved in
their creation.
The subsequent episodes of Kaze tachinu return the reader to Japan of the late
1920’s and documents in careful detail Jiro’s entrance into the Mitsubishi factory and the
many complex mechanical problems he faced in developing a series of planes. Jiro
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himself is shown as something of a nerd, with a serious face and thick glasses. As a
newbie he is questioned by his fellow workers but soon proves himself to be a “genius”
who is increasingly appreciated by his employers.
Once again, there are obvious parallels with Miyazaki’s own history. In
interviews with his colleagues, he is depicted as arriving at his first job in Toei Studio
still wet behind the ears but remarkably brash and confident and breathtakingly
imaginative and competent as well. There are other, even more obvious, parallels with
Miyazaki’s life. Unlike the other “Mosou Noto” Kaze tachinu also contains a romance,
between Jiro and a young girl he meets at the posh resort of Karuizawa. Unfortunately,
the young lady turns out to be suffering from tuberculosis and is sent off to a remote
sanitarium where an increasingly work-beleagured Jiro must find time to visit her.
The original novel Kaze tachinu revolved around a love story with a character in a
sanitarium but the Miyazaki persona in the manga draws explicit parallels with the
famous sanitarium that is the setting of The Magic Mountain. The Magic Mountain is a
1924 novel by the famous German writer Thomas Mann whose political views shifted
from right wing to left wing in the course of the 1920’s. In the manga Miyazaki insists
that he finds the book very boring but it is interesting that he should mention a work
encompassing the confused and amorphous state of Western Europe in the WW I period,
so explicitly. On a more personal level, Miyazaki’s own mother was confined to a
sanitarium with tuberculosis for a number of years while he was a child, an aspect of his
life also touched upon in his famous anime Tonari no totoro.
The manga comes to a close with Jiro’s sweetheart still sick and he himself torn
by the need to work doggedly on the plane and his desire to be with her. He leaves her,
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knowing that she will die. The textual commentary explains “[Jiro] couldn’t stay any
longer at the hospital. He had to …no, he wanted to complete the no. 9 prototype.” The
next panel switches to Jiro watching proudly as the no. 9 finally takes flight and his
employer tells him “Jiro, it’s a wonderful plane.” He says “Thank you” but then adds
sadly, “the person I wanted to show it to is no longer here.”
The scene shifts again to the Miyazaki persona saying “As for Jiro during the war
I can guess a little what his life must have been like from my own experience—no time to
sleep, no time …” We then see a mob of hardworking pigs psyching themselves up for
their final labor—is it to make a fighter plane or an anime?
Finally the bottom half of the page adds a slightly rueful coda. We are now in 2009
watching a small scale model of the Zero zooming through the sky. Who should appear
but Caproni, who says to Jiro, “It’s really beautiful. You can feel the tradition of Japanese
craft. You made something good.”
Then Caproni asks “How was it? Those ten years when you were working so
hard?” To which Jiro replies “Yeah, the end was really tough (zutazuta).”
Caproni laughs and puts his hand on his shoulder, saying “That is the fate of those
who stand at the peak. By the way, I’ve got some decent wine, why don’t we spend today
just doing some talking?”
And there is one last comment by Miyazaki, “That day I really felt that Caproni
and Jiro were close beside me.”
On the one hand, Kaze tachinu is the celebration of the joy and beauty of
craftsmanship, the pleasure of making something out of nothing and pouring one’s
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energies into creation. This something can be a war plane or an anime or, for that matter,
a manga.
Perhaps it is narrow minded (or simply untechnophiliac) of me to harp on the fact
that this is the story of plane that killed thousands of soldiers, civilians and ultimately the
young men whose country built it. As Daniel Swift points out in his book on the RAF,
Bomber County, it is hard to create art or even memory about planes that bomb. As one
aging pilot puts it, “They don’t want to remember us because we killed civilians.” Or, as
Swift himself says, “all around the bombers there is silence.”
Miyazaki in Kaze tachinu resolutely does not romanticize or mythicize the Zero
fighters. By choosing history to tell their story, over fantasy or science fiction he does not
even glamorize them. But, in his choice to use history, we might also speculate that, at
some level, at least, he is beginning to engage with Japanese history and his own on a
more direct level than the displacement afforded by fantasy and science fiction. As
mentioned earlier, Miyazaki has said that he likes to “draw technology that no longer
exists,” a statement that can imply many things—a love of the unreal and also a love of
the past.
But he adds an intriguing coda to that statement which is “That’s what makes the past so
stirring, that you can never return to it.”
In fact, in Kaze tachinu Miyazaki both is and is not returning to the past. Rather,
almost like the plane his manga celebrates, he is circling around it from above, choosing
his targets carefully. Whether this most creative and imaginative of artists will ever
choose direct engagement is an open question. Miyazaki’s recent work in animation
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seems increasingly immersed in fantasy. But, like it or not, the past, will continue to
inform his work and I, at least, look forward to further engagements.
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