「昭和20 年9 月 21 日、夜、僕は死んだ。」: “In the evening of 21. September 1945, I died.” In this manner, the animation film which marks off the climax of Takahata’s disenchantment process begins: The Grave of the Fireflies 『火垂るの墓』 Hotaru no Haka, released in 1988. Carefully avoiding any pro-war or anti-war stance, Takahata moves beyond the topos of collective guilt or collective (spirit of) sacrifice – his preoccupation turns mainly towards individual guilt and individual sacrifice as well as towards the sense of responsibility attached to it.
At the end of the Pacific War, two orphan children, 14-year old Seita 清太 and his younger sister, 4-year old Setsuko 節子, die from malnutrition and social segregation. The Grave of the Fireflies presents their blunt death as an everyday tragedy in the light of individual battles for progress and historical assertiveness. From the beginning, the two children are given no chance of survival, which is strongly and realistically displayed through the abstractness of the animated medium: 「アニメーションだからこそ映像化できる世界だ。」 “This is a world which I could transform into images precisely because I dealt with animation.” (Takahata Isao, 1991, Eiga wo tsukurinagara kangaeta koto I: 1955-1991 [What I Was Thinking While Creating Movies I: 1955-1991], Tokyo: Tokuma Shoten, pp. 422). On the one hand, there is the representation of war as a dehumanizing force – not a necessary evil, as cynical apologists try to describe it; on the other hand, there is the unexhausted attempt to reveal and celebrate the human essence beyond death, in the eternity of acceptance. Personal decisions are at the forefront of historical events, which are not only questioned by individual failures, but lose their legitimacy entirely due to their historical contextualization. In the age of grand identity discourses, mere survival is not guaranteed to the weakest among the citizens, which eventually, fundamentally undermines the effect and validity of such legitimation mechanisms.
The Grave of the Fireflies is far more than a disenchanting movie transcending the boundaries of the animation art: it is a tremendous work of art, which reports with almost documentary accuracy on the dehumanization of humans in the age of world wars. The two children are struggling to survive: Seita and his younger sister Setsuko are left on their own device after their mother dies in the brutal bombing of Kobe and while their father serves in the Japanese Navy. However, the two siblings have not heard from him for a long while, so the subtext is that he might have probably died already. At first, they move with a distant relative; shortly afterwards, the atmosphere is increasingly deteriorating because their aunt considers Seita lazy and ungrateful and Setsuko spoiled. Seita decides to leave the house of these relatives together with his sister and get along alone. However, as they cannot get enough food from begging and stealing in bombed Japan just after the surrender, the two siblings starve to death.
The plot is largely based on the semi-autobiographical eponymous novel by Nosaka Akiyuki 野坂 昭如 (1930-2015) published in 1967, whose own sister starved to death during war. The author blamed himself for her death and wrote the story as a kind of reconciliation with his own feelings of guilt. Takahata’s animated version of The Grave of Fireflies represents an almost surreally calm, sepia-colored apocalypse that contains strong subliminal messages. Indeed, the producer Suzuki Toshio had repeatedly underlined the educational value of the original literary work The Grave of the Fireflies in order to advertise for cinema entrance tickets for Takahata’s film. To this purpose, Suzuki allowed the simultaneous release of Miyazaki Hayao’s more cheerful, brighter animation film My Neighbor Totoro with Takahata’s gloomier, sadder The Grave of the Fireflies, and hoped that the combination of the two films would bring with it an increased appreciation of both films by audiences and critics. Thus, throughout the entire film, the viewer’s gaze is constantly, regularly guided towards Setsuko and Seita’s ghost-like figures, overflooded by red light reminiscent of the color of the blood, while the two sisters reproachfully, intensely look down at their fellow-humans who had abandoned them to such a painful, dreadful death. While they happen in regular time-intervals, these interludes occur relatively seldom, so that most viewers do not really perceive them; it is mostly the more self-reflexive viewers who capture the intensive, but nevertheless discreet tension of these scenes. Similarly, Takahata charges the film with subtle feelings of guilt, which correspond to the thought of “What would have been if those children had been given some sort of survival chance, no matter how slim?”: The possibly resulting big difference delivers a huge shock due to its simplicity and candor.
The humanist vision of the director moves effectively into the background. He does not share pity or allegations. He limits himself to an almost documentary exactness that challenges prevalent aesthetic standards. The artistic means employed to this avail reminisce of the simplicity of ideological mechanisms when they have lost their historical validation. The firebombs seem ridiculous at first: thin, stray tongues of fire against a fence and barely swallowing a house – however, Seita does not even try to fight them, instead takes his sister on his back and simply runs away. From the distance he sees his burnt house. There is no psychological commentary on it, solely the visual statement of the historical fact that houses are bombed during wars and innocent civilians die incessantly as a consequence of those bombings. The conventional explanation that Seita had given up all hope and casually waited for death to come, is more appropriate for an adult who understands one’s own situation and estimates it realistically to a certain degree, not for a teenager who is obviously overwhelmed by challenges and hardships – to somehow save himself and his own little sister from the chaos of the end of one of the most destructive wars in modern history: the devastating tragedy of the two siblings results from the lack of alternatives and from the increasing, bitter, disheartening awareness of the non-existence of these alternatives, despite all hope.
The interpretation according to which Seita closes his eyes in front of reality and rejects to acknowledge the severity of their situation, by turning away from the grown-ups around him and trying to find solutions on his own, is in itself the result of the mature gaze of the I-narrator in the original novel and it does not exist, in fact, in the juvenile Seita – starved, scared and deeply distraught – delivered by the animation version. In his young heart, which can neither comprehend nor grasp the real dimensions of the war and the subsequent catastrophes, Seita decides to survive; still a child and lacking the supervision of a mature view of things, this seems to him the more feasible alternative, instead of trying to come to terms with acquaintances, unbearable due to their harsh behavior, which might have – or might have not – made survival indeed possible. To claim that Seita chooses pride over reason, is a mistake; in such a young boy, who had grown up under difficult circumstances in times of war and deprivation, pride and reason play a minor, if any, role. Rather, it is the mature I-narrator – in the original novel, but not in Takahata’s animation work – who blames himself for the loss he thinks, from current perspective that he might have avoided. But in the logical reality of Seita’s situation, there was indeed no alternative, if one takes into account Seita’s life experience, the socio-economic background as well as the historical circumstances.
Neither Nosaka’s novel nor Takahata’s animation film are intended as explicit manifestos against war or as direct statements supporting the concept of family as an indestructible unit. If Nosaka’s novel appears as a kind of reconciliation with his own conscience and deep-seated feelings of guilt, Takahata’s work constitutes the mere portrayal of an inevitable tragedy by means of artistic exploration: it shows two absolutely normal life-stories extinguished by the casualties of war. There are no heroes in the first line, no great speeches about human dignity and human rights, no history-challenging events: there are only two orphans who starve to death under the powerless gaze of the audiences, while desperately witnessing the awkward attempts of the elder brother to persuade his younger sister that everything will be alright, eventually. The expressive power of the animation art delivers to the whole story a crucial atmosphere of glowing surreality, so that destruction and death seem unbelievably unreal and still close enough to be emotionally compelling. In the midst of such a relentless tragedy, the animated medium remains an ideological salvation: the aesthetic dimension of the message takes over the mental control and guides the audiences against their own despair and disgust.
Seita and Setsuko destroy an entire line of stereotypes promoted by the animation industry: the helpless brother and sister do not achieve a monumental victory against all odds, but instead, they are mercilessly crushed by the war machine. The only thing they seem entitled to, is the eternal, reproachful gaze downwards their fellow-humans, who have been building up Japan throughout the decades to becoming a world-superpower. Takahata does not ask such (otherwise important) questions as to why Japan had been so barbarously bombed or why the war circumstances had developed so poorly. In one powerful gesture of directorial design, war itself as a man-made occurrence is gleefully questioned, as well as its well-planned destruction of human lives and the very fabric of societies, as such. The spotlight is slowly reversed from Japan’s historical calamity at the end of the Pacific War towards the personal destinies of the two siblings as symbols of a rotten humankind.
The animation film The Grave of the Fireflies makes possible a glimpse into the individual perspective on things, life and death included, by bringing into the foreground individual tragedies triggered by war without showcasing war itself as a glamorous heroic battle among competing ideologies. The beauty of separate scenes and the almost obsessive concern for detail, present in The Grave of the Fireflies as well as in other productions of the Studio Ghibli, mediate a gentle introduction into the ideatic, emotional dimension of the represented structures, by means of artistic, aesthetic paradigms meant to soften the brutality of the message: while superficially, at first glance, The Grave of the Fireflies might appear as an anti-war film, a more compassionate gaze metamorphoses it into a sad, ballad-like contemplation on human existence, told from the perspective of children and lacking psychologizing comments so typical for the mature mind.
The title itself is a metaphor of life and death: due to the fact that Japanese nouns do not, usually, change their form in singular and plural, hotaru 蛍 (firefly or fireflies) might mean one firefly or more fireflies; maybe, what is meant is Setsuko’s existence, short and intensive, a bright and happy flame. Mature fireflies which emit light have a very short life-expectancy – two to three weeks – and are, generally speaking, regarded as a symbol of volatility, consistent with major segments of the traditional Japanese way of observing human life and the universe. Sometimes, fireflies take over the function of symbols of human souls, like in 人魂 hitodama, literally translated as “souls of the dead” or “false light(s)”, described as floating, flickering fire-balls. Lastly, the Japanese title of the animation film The Grave of the Fireflies does not include the common ideogram for hotaru (firefly/fireflies), but it appears as an unusual combination of two ideograms: 火 (hi, fire) and 垂れる (tareru, which could be translated or interpreted as something fluctuating downwards, swaying towards the ground using the force of gravity, a physical state similar to the inner tension of a drop of water being on the verge to fall down from a leaf). This combination of ideograms suggests the director’s intention to depict fireflies as drops of fire, freely, tensely falling to the ground.
Some Japanese fans of animation stated their view of “fireflies as drops of fire incessantly falling to the ground” by associating it with senkô hanabi 線香花火 (literally to be understood as sparklers, a sort of “wonder candles”; little sparkling fireworks made out of drops of fire, held down from the bottom). Indeed, not only in Japanese socio-cultural context, but in wider regions of the world, fireworks, more specifically, the small ones to be lightened up in the intimacy of one’s immediate household, are discreet symbols of the ephemerality of (human) life. On this background, senkô hanabi is a particularly powerful metaphor, as one must carry the stick very calmly, otherwise the drop of fire falls to the ground and vanishes. Moreover, it evokes the images of a harmonious family: in Japan, it is part of family bonding to watch together with one’s own family fireworks during summer-time, in the same way as watching fireflies is a further family bonding ritual. Thus, the title is a vivid reminder of the deeply intimate connection between Seita and Setsuko as well as of the absence of their parents. Their isolation and their premature death are already alluded in the title, so that neither ambiguity nor confusion can arise. Ultimately, through the employment of this title, Takahata outlines the artistic project of the contemplation of life as worthwhile precisely due to its brevity and intensity.
In contrast to Barefoot Gen (『はだしのゲン』 Hadashi no Gen, animation film, 1983, director: Mori Masaki 森 柾 ), a further animation work which tackles the topic of Pacific War and more specifically the dropping of the atomic bomb over the city of Hiroshima on 6. August 1945, The Grave of the Fireflies carefully avoids any spectacular representations of terrible, inconceivable tragedies, and focuses instead on the little dramas of quotidian life: war is absurd, the two siblings cling to each other and love each other dearly, the elder brother fights for his own life and for his younger sister’s life, they die – in telling this story, there is no need for great visual effects, as even plain images can express the intense dramatism of emotional representation. Takahata does not question the ambivalence of Japan’s historical past; he solely observes the little tragedy of the two siblings in the midst of discursive calamities. Human beings lose their humanity in the chaos of war and destruction (like the relative who expels the two children from her household), and the family as basic cell and vital concept disappears, as the little actors have no survival chance among the big actors deciding over their lives: the ending is so sad and brutal that there is no spare emotional-mental space for catharsis or hope. Red-lit echoes pronounce the verdict.
The Grave of the Fireflies breaks the tradition with serene, empathic representation of community and family at its core, and offers a brutal, painful insight into the cynical mechanisms of love and war: while the animation film is neither an anti-war manifesto, nor a pro-war revisionist re-writing of history, it employs war as an uncomfortable reminder that quotidian realities we accept as inevitable – and war is one of them, whether we like to acknowledge it or not – have incalculable impacts on innocent victims who cannot protect themselves against it. In spite of having the phenomenon of war as the main catalyst, The Grave of the Fireflies is not about war, but about human beings who happen to live in times of war, and about their pains and losses. Family and any functional grown-ups are absent, and it is, again, in the desperate affection of the two siblings that we find a sense of relief and forgiveness. Beyond being a historical occurrence with apparently clearly defined levels of “good” and “evil”, war becomes, thus, a personal concern, deeply affecting individuals – both those directly involved and those marginally related – in their quest for love, happiness and existential fulfillment. Ironically, in the brutality of war and the meaningless death of the two siblings, we see, and feel, and detect, the strength to believe in the future, and to appreciate the little things which we might otherwise take for granted, like food, peace and human togetherness.
From a financial perspective, The Grave of the Fireflies was, like many animation works directed by Takahata Isao, a flop. Even if it was part of a “double release” in Japanese cinemas, together with Miyazaki Hayao’s cheerful family comedy My Neighbor Totoro, The Grave of the Fireflies’ bleak and tragic story prevented many parents from watching it with their children. This 88-minutes long animation film is, indeed, devastating; however, at the same time, he unveils the wide, aesthetic-ideological dimensions of animation as a genre as well as a historical challenge in comparison to Western cultural imperialism – and in particular, with US-American efforts. In sharp contrast to further animation works such as Akira (『アキラ』 Akira, animation film, 1988, director: Ôtomo Katsuhiro 大友 克洋), Neo Genesis Evangelion (『新世紀エヴァンゲリオン』 Shinseiki Evangerion, literally “New Century Gospel”, television animation series, 1995, director: Annô Hideaki 庵野 秀明) or Death Note (『デス・ノート』 Desu Nôto, television animation series, 2006-2007, director: Inoue Toshiki 井上 敏樹) – to mention only a few examples from among the most popular ones –, which define the animation genre as dominated by sex and violence, The Grave of the Fireflies allows the emergence of an aesthetic-ideological universe in which love, courage and honesty still play a very important role, even if they, in themselves, cannot save anyone. In Takahata Isao’s vision, animation is not meant to sugarcoat the reality: if reality is ugly and hopeless, it is represented as such. It is up to the individual viewer to discover the beautiful lotus-flowers of existence in the bitterness and brutality of quotidian existence. This is perhaps the most important message to be extracted from Takahata Isao’s animation works.
