In Ponpoko: The Heisei Tanuki War (『平成狸合戦ぽんぽこ』 Heisei Tanuki Gassen Ponpoko) released in 1994, Takahata Isao chooses tanuki 狸/たぬき/タヌキ (Nyctereutes Procyonoides Viverrinus) as main protagonists to deliver powerful, profound messages to audiences already insensitive to current challenges and upheavals. At first glance, the main theme seems to be the destruction of the furusato as a consequence of human action, seen from the perspective of the animals, unable to protect themselves efficiently from the human ruthlessness. As in previous animation films such as The Grave of Fireflies (1988), Memories like Raindrops (1991) or in subsequent animation works such as Hôhokekyo: My Neighbors, the Yamadas (1999), Ponpoko: The Heisei Tanuki War is less a fantastic story with talking animals à la of Walt Disney and rather a realist representation with almost documentary-like accuracy. The fantasy elements serve to highlighting the dramatism of the unexpected layers of the secondary message hidden beyond the conformist eco-surface – as to be shown further below – and to connect the contemporary world to the folkloric, traditional beliefs. Takahata Isao employs in Ponpoko: The Heisei Tanuki War some powerful creative strategies such as the emotional ambivalence, the dynamic reconsideration of mythology, the earthy humor, the artistic expression of the spiral-like dialectics of cause and effect, the ethnocentric representation of worldwide nostalgias, thus re-locating Studio Ghibli’s aesthetic-ideological position within Japan’s Soft Power macro-endeavors and, simultaneously, outlining general features of a more comprehensive understanding of life and of “folklore tradition” as media-related phenomena constructed in the unstable stress-ratio between economic-political systems and socio-cultural individuals constituting those very systems. An important element in this concern is the “ghost parade” patterned upon a centuries-old medieval concept of hyakki yagyô (「百鬼夜行」, literally “night parade of one hundred demons”) displayed at the climax of the movie; it brings into foreground the effort to present tradition and folklore beyond their historical appearances with seemingly clearly defined levels of “good” and “evil”, but rather as highly personal concerns, deeply affecting individuals – both those directly involved and those peripherally affected – in their quest for identity, acceptance and love.
Plot Overview
The plot of Ponpoko: The Heisei Tanuki War takes place in the Tama region of Western Tokyo which has been experiencing deep functional and urban developments during the 1970s. (Ponpoko is a word used to reproduce the sound created by the so-called tanuki drum [tanuki tsutsumi 狸鼓]. According to Japanese legends and myths, tanuki inflate their belly – or their testicles, depending on version – and knock on it with their paws in order to scare wanderers and passers-by: pon-poko, pon-poko. On a side note, pon-poko is the sound resulted from softly hitting a full belly, in case of humans.) Large rural areas have been deforested to make place for new housing facilities necessary on the account of the population explosion during the economic growth in Tokyo, and most of the hills and mountains in the Tama region were cut down and leveled out – as a result, the wild animals living in the forests on those hills and mountains were forced to leave the region due to the increasing lack of food and housing space.
Particularly dramatic is the situation of the tanuki, who find themselves driven out of their homes by the human population’s urge for progress: the tanuki in Ponpoko: The Heisei Tanuki War live on the Tama hills, West of Tokyo. The Japanese government (in reality as in the animation film) commissioned during the 1970s the construction of a completely new suburbia with housing facilities, schools, hospitals, supermarkets etc. This was the most important project of this type in Japan, so far. This suburbia stretching over the districts Tama, Machida, Inagi and Hachiôji was called Tama New Town. The Tama New Town region is an immense surface with light forested hills stretching over two prefectures. A further animation film produced by Studio Ghibli Whisper of the Heart (1995) plays in the same region and addresses some of the ecological topics from Ponpoko: The Heisei Tanuki War. The train station in Ponpoko: The Heisei Tanuki War is Seiseki-Sakuragaoka on the Keiô line. There are innumerable folk-tales, legends, superstitions, proverbs and songs since times immemorial which talk about the peaceful, harmonious co-existence between Japanese people and tanuki; countless quotes and episodes from folk culture and beliefs appear in Ponpoko: The Heisei Tanuki War in order to illustrate the long history which tightly binds the lives of the tanuki with the destiny of the humans. Moreover, consistent with Japanese folklore, tanuki are presented as highly sociable, mischievous beings, able to employ the art of illusion to change shape in all possible things. In the design process of his tanuki, Takahata embarks on a long journey back into the deep past of Japanese culture, where traditional folk beliefs of the power of the tanuki to change shape and to co-exist with humans reside.
Tanuki as Cultural Archetypes
Zoologically speaking, tanuki are raccoon-like mammals. In the Japanese folkloric imagination, they are lazy, but cheerful animals, who are able to change their shapes into all possible alternate figures; they do it as a game, and seldom – almost never – out of malevolence. Tanuki seem to enjoy good food and a leisurely life, and they can hardly ever become really malicious, a very important difference from foxes (狐 kitsune, another shape shifter in Japanese folkloric imagination). It is believed that tanuki can scare the humans by suddenly appearing in front of them in unusual forms (such as three-headed serpents or a no-legged woman flying over the earth), or that they make more or less innocent jokes (such as transforming leaves into banknotes and handing them over to the gullible humans). One can see statues of tanuki everywhere in Japan, especially at the gates of temples and shrines where they might often carry a barrel of saké. As a result of the strong deforestation and the brutal urbanization of the rural areas during the last decades, the real tanuki can be seen around the suburbia of the big cities, looking for food.
At the very beginning of Ponpoko: The Heisei Tanuki War, the audience catches sight of the tanuki deeply embedded in their simple life within a peaceful community, in a small village with thatched roofs on the Tama hill, while they practice the art of transformation. During the movie, the tanuki are able to fight courageously for the protection of the furusato or homeland, though Takahata keeps a realistic perspective, so that tanuki are only partially successful in their struggles; gradually, despite the increasing aggressiveness and fighting spirit, the tanuki lose the war and have either to move to the city – metamorphosed into real humans – or to move away in their natural shape as animals). Indeed, the decision to take tanuki as main characters of this mythical struggle – for life and for self-preservation – was motivated by tanuki’s ability to metamorphose and by their well-known benevolence. Thus, even if the largest part of the Japanese contemporary audience does not believe in the transformation ability of the tanuki, they are familiar with the folk beliefs and, unconsciously, react in a positive manner when in touch with the fantastic universe populated by mythical creatures, now threatened by their very own civilization. Rather than attempting to convince the audience of the necessity to save the tanuki and their natural habitat, Takahata goes the long way of confronting the members of the audience with the world of their most intimate beliefs and emotions, beyond the quotidian, self-driven reality and consciousness.
The main plot in Ponpoko: The Heisei Tanuki War is the common life of a tanuki community on some very richly forested hills which, at the beginning of the 1970s, are completely leveled and deforested in order to create space for new housing facilities to be annexed to West-Tokyo. The tanuki fight in defense of their homeland, but eventually they lose the war. The expansion of urban habitable surface and the absorption of the circumfluent rural area is accepted as an economic-technical necessity due to the increasing population, though the brutal destructions generated by its practical execution lead to the questioning of its ethical effectiveness. Still, humor, positive description and straightforward comments dominate the narration: the furry heroes are not presented as cuddly potential traffic victims, but as resolute, stubborn, kind-hearted rascals possessing individual, human-like character traits; they reproduce the human community, lost at the dawn of modernity, characterized by loose, but reliable social relationships. Their humorous and oftentimes spectacular metamorphoses into all possible shapes – from stone statues up to almost-perfect human beings with big rings under their eyes due to the great effort to imitate the human behavior – remind directly of the unknown, mysterious sides of the nature. Conversely, humans are not portrayed solely as brainless criminals keen on destruction and plundering, but as ambivalent, desperate characters torn between what they feel they must do and what they are told to do, and torn away by the waves of history.
To this end, in the film, there are three visual depiction modes of the tanuki, depending upon which role they are supposed to play in every scene, related to their environment and to the plot: firstly, they can take over an anthropomorphic appearance (when they are supposed to look like humans, so that the audience can identify itself as much as possible with the tanuki, with their destiny and their struggle – in the film, they appear mostly in this mode); secondly, they are displayed in a more plain, cartoonish, manga-manner with cute facial features and funny shapes (apparently inspired by the drawing style of the manga author Sugiura Shigeru [杉浦茂, 1908-2000] – while organizing something strange, funny or forbidden); thirdly, they are represented very realistically, according to their zoological nature (while being around humans, and contrasting to them). Thus, tanuki are either integrated in the late-modern Japanese habitat as a reconstruction of the folkloric, traditionally established past (via the anthropomorphic drawing style) or relocated within the contemporary context of popular everyday culture (via the manga-like drawing style), the third representation mode being rather a stylistic necessity to differentiate between categories when the fantastic and the real intertwine.
Nature versus Civilization
The expansion of the urban living spaces into the surrounding rural areas is recognized as an economic and population-related necessity; simultaneously, though, it is questioned due to the brutality of the subsequent destruction, cynically seen as “collateral damage” in the name of progress and civilization. The film’s serious message is conveyed with what has become to be regarded as Takahata’s in-house brand of warm humanism and tender irony: even if it hurts, one must go with the flow of time and adapt to it – in order to survive. One of the last scenes is highly symbolical: a young family living in one of the newly built housing facilities is extremely happy to see a couple of tanuki who got lost in the garden. The somehow subliminally nostalgic atmosphere reminding of those times when humans and animals used to live in harmonious togetherness traverses the whole movie and brims over in this scene: 「自然の美しさは人間が自然の力を生かしながら作り出した。」 – While acknowledging the force of the nature, the humans recreate the beauty of nature.” (Takahata Isao, 1999, Eiga wo Tsukurinagara Kangaeta Koto II: 1991-1999 [What I Was Thinking While Creating Movies II: 1991-1999], Tokyo: Tokuma Shoten, pp. 66). Indeed, harmony is never a complete condition, but rather something changing with the passing of time, and it must be won over and over again from the turmoil of history.
In the moment the tanuki in Ponpoko: The Heisei Tanuki War realize they are about to lose the very foundation of their existence due to the humans’ advancement, they try with various strategies to hinder the humans’ progression into their natural habitat. At the same time, tanuki want to prevent humans from completely withdrawing from their environment, as this would mean the loss of available sources of food, so that in a first phase, they employ their ability to change shape into ghost-like appearances (face-less humans, twin-ghosts, etc.) which are intended to scare away the workers on the construction sites. However, new workers keep coming, endlessly.
After several more or less unsuccessful attempts to deter the humans from the continuous works on progressing into tanuki’s natural habitat, the tanuki belonging to Tama community ask for advice from an 800-year old tanuki-elder: this tanuki master will, eventually, organize a final parade along the main street, with many tanuki joining their forces in a desperate march, assuming all sorts of shapes and forms that are almost cut out of the medieval painted scroll of hyakki yagyô, the “night parade of one hundred demons”, which combines goblins and other fantastic creatures usually known as yôkai 妖怪 with characters from various animation films directed by Miyazaki Hayao as well as mythological beings. Unfortunately, the whole creepy dimension of the “night parade” is ruined when the representative of a local theme-park acknowledges the organization and performance of the parade, stating that it was a commercial maneuver to display the innovative special effects of his enterprise. Shocked by this counter-development, tanuki find out that the theme-park is administered by foxes who have lost the struggle against the humans penetrating into their natural habitat, and, in order to survive, they decided to live among humans under human appearance. At slow pace, tanuki’s living space diminishes continuously, while the new housing projects take greater form – and even a last television show where the tanuki appear will not massively change the situation.
The tanuki would, eventually, outsmart the foxes, and organize a last, emotional metamorphose artifice: united, they transform the new landscape composed of housing facilities into the old, virgin countryside landscape, for a very short fraction of time. Exhausted after this last enterprise, the tanuki able to metamorphose change into human shape and blend with the humans, while those unable to metamorphose – apparently, most of the ordinary tanuki – are left behind, forced to survive either by migrating to other forests or by hiding in public parks and private gardens. Most of the tanuki, however, embark on a special, symbolical ship traveling towards Fudaraku – and this is their last trip, towards death. This scene is based on the school of Fudaraku (Paradise), one of the numerous Buddhist schools in Japan, which promotes the idea of an island called Fudaraku existing in Western waters and to which one might reach after embarking on this special ship; when arriving at Fudaraku, all pain and sadness is left behind and nirvana is attained. The ship has the shape of a Takarabune or Treasure Ship, and the seven gods of luck are traveling on it. The narrator tells the story of those tanuki living among humans: for instance, one of the main characters, Shôkichi, is now employed in a company and laments the life of commuting daily in overcrowded trains. Sometimes, he meets the tanuki who could not metamorphose and are pursuing a painful life in poverty: however, no matter how precarious their life might be now, both categories of tanuki did not lose their cheerfulness and self-confidence, and enjoy every single moment of companionship and happiness. As later in My Neighbors, the Yamadas, the important principle of “living at one’s own pace” (「適当に」 tekitô-ni) is paramount for survival, both in spiritual and biological terms. In an emotionally charged final scene, one of the main characters Ponkichi ぽん吉, Shôkichi’s friend, directly addresses the viewers and asks them to show more consideration towards the tanuki and other animals which do not possess the ability to change shape, and not to destroy any further their living habitat.
Contextualization and Significance
The designs and the plots in Takahata’s animation film indicate several stylistic directions, and still, every animation production is related to a specific era located either in the modern world history or in the modern Japanese history. To the first category belong Heidi, the Girl from the Alps, 3.000 Leagues in Search of Mother, and Anne of Green Gables; to the second category belong Grave of the Fireflies, Ponpoko: The Heisei Tanuki War, Hôhokekyo: My Neighbors, the Yamadas. One notable exception is The Tale of Princess Kaguya (2013) which transcends mythology and history, and delivers unforgettable parables of love, remembrance and acceptance. Even though the plot in Ponpoko: The Heisei Tanuki War was inspired by a historical incident and development from the 1970s, the word “Heisei” in the title suggests the temporal immediacy of the story – while the main protagonists are simple tanuki, the purpose of the movie is to allegorically exhibit the human behavior from the perspective of the animals in order to illustrate a different view of the consequences of the human action. (The word “Heisei” refers to the Japanese chronology, more specifically to the Heisei era which started in 1989 when the current emperor Akihito took over the throne after the death of his father, Hirohito, and ended in 2019, being followed by the current era, Reiwa, with emperor Naruhito as its representative.)
As previously mentioned, at first sight, Ponpoko: The Heisei Tanuki War is a common eco-oriented manifesto, reinforced in the final scene in which Shôkichi’s best friend, Ponkichi, addresses the audience directly and pleads for a more friendly attitude towards the freely roaming tanuki. The impish tanuki, familiar characters from Japanese folk-tales, are re-introduced into the Japanese everyday life and are appointed to communicate a heartbreaking version of Studio Ghibli’s famous eco-message. On the same tone with the lamentation against the destruction of natural life forms from Nausicäa from the Valley of the Winds or later in Princess Mononoke, the happy, ancestral rurality from My Neighbor Totoro is evoked in tanuki’s life – the tanuki themselves having become once again fashionable in Japan by mid-1990s.
From this perspective, the message in Ponpoko: The Heisei Tanuki War might be summed up as the warning about the negative effects of human actions upon the environment and upon those beings living within that environment, unable to defend themselves against the human actions: the destruction of the rural landscape in favor of the construction of new housing facilities. Takahata operates with dynamic, realistic characters to deliver an important, serious message, counterpointed by humor and a positive worldview, and accompanied by the wonderful folkloristic music played by the band Shang Shang Typhoon. (Shang Shang Typhoon is a Japanese band of the 1980s and 1990s. Its musical style is characterized by a mixture of various Japanese musical elements such as traditional music from Okinawa or min’yô 民謡 with influences from rock’n’roll, pop and reggae. The notion of min’yô refers to Japanese folk songs, and was used exclusively during the 20th century to denominate traditional Japanese music from different regions.) It is indeed a great advantage that Takahata does not employ cheap sentimentalism as a means to transmit his eco-message: that significant scene in which one of the newly relocated families joyously watches the tanuki playing in their garden carries the idea that the condition for moving forward and keeping on living does not mean the repression of other beings and the enforcement of human power, but it consists of a harmonious, peaceful togetherness based on respect, loyalty and responsibility towards these other beings. Takahata’s ecological worldview relates to an all-encompassing vision of nature and humanity as parts of a considerably larger and more complex whole, which cannot be grasped within this life’s dimensions.
However, there is second, more subtle and more pervasive – and less popular – interpretation of the movie: Ponpoko: The Heisei Tanuki War is a hymn of life as the best asset one possesses and could ever possess. It is possible to go one step further and assert that Ponpoko: The Heisei Tanuki War is for Takahata what Princess Mononoke (1997) would be later for Miyazaki: the artistic analysis of that favorite spare-time activity of the modern human being consisting of the destruction of myths, the killing of gods, the transformation of the holy into profane and the dissolution of the magic – that is, carrying the netherworld into this world out of pure fun. The main problem in this endeavor seems to be the fact that the modern human being cannot replace the disenchanted world with anything else. Technology, science or longer life expectancy cannot fill-in the holes in the existence of modern social actors created by the loss and the disappearance or simply by the dissolution of old folk-tales and beliefs, fairy-tales, myths and ghost stories. As naïve as they might have been, these old folk-tales and beliefs, fairy-tales, myths and ghost stories granted magic and fantasy to the everyday life. In Ponpoko: The Heisei Tanuki War, Takahata attempts to decorate the bleak and comfortless everyday life with light and joy by displaying a colorful version of existence – the existence of humans, of animals and of nature – as something extremely valuable. Later on, Miyazaki Hayao will express this same idea through the voice of the leprous Osa オサ in Princess Mononoke: 「生きることはまことに苦しくつらい。世を呪い、人を呪い、それでも生きたい。」 – “Life is painful, life is hard. The world is damned, the human being is damned. And still, we want to live.”
Existential Realism and Ideological Pragmatism
Even though the general tone of the film speaks of a reactionary nostalgia towards the ‘old good times’ when humans and nature still lived under more harmonious circumstances, this is foiled by a healthy dose of relativism, especially in the last scenes: there is the balanced optimistic picture of a possible compromise between the old, traditional, natural, familiar world and the new, innovative, culture-oriented, alienating space. The most important task is to keep on living. Thus, even the main victims, the tanuki, who are originally taken as examples of the classical community ideal with their clan-like structures and solidarity patterns – seemingly, long-lost for most humans – are portrayed at the beginning of the movie as a quarrelling bunch with a carefree lifestyle much too luxurious on the background of the historic-geographical situation. Not until they are confronted with a common enemy, do they form alliances to defend themselves. Despite united forces, they lose the war, eventually. Still, life goes on, even if some things are lost forever. One must live with one’s time, accommodate to the passage of time, accept the passage of time, enjoy life with full energy, joy and passion until the very last moment – this is Takahata’s message.
At first sight, the main plot – and the most obvious message – of Ponpoko: The Heisei Tanuki War is the struggle of the tanuki, who are the most affected by the deforestation and the clearance of the hills, to protect and preserve their furusato (homeland) from the destructive human forces. While describing tanuki’s life in the vanishing hills and forests, Takahata enterprises a long, symbolical trip back in the deep past of the Japanese culture to those traditional popular beliefs connecting the humans and the tanuki. It is well known, even in nowadays Japan, that humans and tanuki used to live together peacefully, harmoniously, as reflected by old popular tales, legends, superstitions, sayings and songs.
The secondary, hidden message of the film is the plea to live life at its fullest as long as this is possible: the ability to pick out those moments that can convey a deep, meaningful purpose to the self, and to enjoy them despite their ephemerality, make the difference between a happy, fulfilled existence and an empty one, full of worries and regrets. The key to this secondary layer is the “ghost parade” at the climax of the movie, elucidating the force and the beauty of living one’s life at one’s own pace – within the history and the community. The symbolical incursion into the medieval imagery of the medieval hyakki yagyô, “the night parade of one hundred demons”, becomes, therefore, a highly-stylized “initiation trip” both for the performers and for the audience, leading to (physical) death respectively to (spiritual) resurrection. The general, common consideration of Ponpoko: The Heisei Tanuki War as an ecologist manifesto with the tanuki transforming themselves into eco-warriors waging a holy war to protect the nature from the invasion of the human culture, is demystified as discursive propaganda.
The elderly, the weak and the poor have, indeed, no chance to win whatsoever: at the beginning of every battle, on can still close the eyes in front of this fact, but very soon, it becomes obvious. Takahata suggests that instead of fighting a hopeless war, it might be a better existential strategy to lose it fast and in dignity – in order to go on living and let others go on living, as well. Apart from the lack of chances in an unjust war, there is also the dignified departure: the scene in which the tanuki restore in one last common effort the old rural mountainous landscape is a symbol of this dignified departure, of forgiveness and of the belief in the continuity of life.
In this train of thoughts, Ponpoko: The Heisei Tanuki War comes from the other extreme than the animation film The Grave of the Fireflies and seems to anticipate the future animation film Princess Mononoke in the voice of the old fortune-teller: 「誰にも運命は変えられない。だがただ、待つか自ら赴くかは決められる。」 – “Nobody can change his destiny. But you can decide if you simply sit and wait for destiny to take its course, or if you stand up and face it [with dignity].” This means that one must go forth towards an inevitable ending, in dignity and self-awareness. It is a matter of personal choice whether one accepts the inevitable end in dignity and self-confidence or whether one fights a senseless war towards the same outcome. It refers to that attitude encompassing friendship, social solidarity, loyalty and self-sacrifice, if necessary, as well as the force to accept in serenity the things one cannot change, the courage to change the things one can change, and the wisdom to differentiate between these two categories: in short, the artistic adaptation of the so-called “serenity prayer” promoted by the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) by mid-20th century. The possession of these three elements – the force to bow in serenity in front of the inevitable things, the courage to craft the changeable and the wisdom to differentiate between the inevitable and the changeable – is a worthwhile condition which self-confident mature beings should strive to attain, so that unnecessary (self-)sacrifices are avoided. Takahata employs his tanuki to clearly outline the immense difference between strong, self-reflexive individuals and weak, defensive persons lacking any orientation. It is the positive message about the possibility to avoid conflicts and to agree to compromises.
Live and Let Live!
Ponpoko: The Heisei Tanuki War is a resolute victory of life over death; it is a gesture of forgiveness and a hedonist scream: Live and let live! Moreover, this movie is a declaration of love towards life and towards all the reasons why life is worth living despite various hardships and setbacks. The pretext of ecological problems and of the disappearing nature (as earlier in Memories like Raindrops, 1991) is inserted as an interface to warn about unknown living destinies in the characters of the tanuki. In its essence, Ponpoko: The Heisei Tanuki War is an immense parable: the destruction of the forests means for those living in these forests not only the loss of their homes, but also the annihilation of what Hannah Arendt described as “the common world”. Living beings are not only separate entities, they live in complex, temporal and spatial as well as emotional networks. When their living space is destroyed, a whole network of lives is destroyed: in the name of progress and of human development, a complex, fully developed small universe is destroyed. Nevertheless, one has to go on living. Tanuki must learn this hard lesson despite their naturally motivated resistance; they use in the process their mythical ability to adapt – probably reminiscent of their ability to metamorphose –, even when this claims for innocent victims. The restoration of the original harmonious condition is an endless task; in its course, both victories and defeats are due. In this train of thoughts, the harmonious condition craved by all living beings is never an absolute condition impossible to challenge or to change, but a condition to be achieved within a long, exhausting process full of valuable lessons. This process is commonly called “life”.
Despite united efforts, Ponpoko: The Heisei Tanuki War did not manage to reach the final Oscar nomination as Best Foreign Film for the year 1994. The most important reason is the fact that Takahata’s works, in opposition to Miyazaki’s works do not possess universal features and are deeply ethnocentric: the jokes derive mostly from the Japanese history and folklore, and several humorous elements are simply too down-to-earth for the sanitized Disney market (for instance, the unforgettable scene in which a tanuki distracts a truck driver from safely driving by transforming his testicles into a blanket and laying this blanket over the truck’s front shield). The specific design and art direction standards typical for Studio Ghibli animation productions reach a definitive climax in Ponpoko: The Heisei Tanuki War; coupled with the practical textual, Japan-related dimensions; this aspect contributed to its extraordinary success at the Japanese box-office with over 2.63 billion JPY in distribution income, thus becoming the number one Japanese film on the domestic market in 1994 – which was not always a natural fact in case of Takahata’s films, although they display undeniable formal and contents-related features to be found solely in authentic masterpieces.
Ponpoko: The Heisei Tanuki War might sometimes be regarded by Western audiences as surrealistic due to the numerous references to Japanese superstitions and folk beliefs and traditions. Apart from that, Ponpoko: The Heisei Tanuki War contains strong humanist messages under the superficial ecological cover. Takahata’s animation film is unique in its humorous display of serious problems and themes, and it goes far beyond the typical, simplistic, easily to digest framework of classical animation and cartoons productions which take entertainment as their highest priority. The animation as a genre and a technique gains gradually under Takahata’s ideological and aesthetic supervision the status of an independent, self-confident phenomenon: as part of the Japanese cultural heritage, animation “made in Japan” can finally afford to be and to become idiosyncratic and eclectic, to challenge history and present, to allow humans and animals to play against each other, in order to mediate the same, eternal message – life is the most important asset one possesses and could ever possess. Correspondingly, one must enjoy life to its fullest, and must allow others to enjoy life to its fullest, as well
