The Dark Herald Recommends: The Boy and the Heron
“Thinking like Copernicus that our Earth is a celestial body moving within the vastness of space, or thinking that our Earth is fixed at the center of the universe, are two ways of thinking that, in reality, are not only related to astronomy. Even when we think about things like the world around us or our own lives, the truth is that we are still revolving around them after all.” Kimitachi wa Dō Ikiru ka, 1937
Kimitachi wa Dō Ikiru ka, is the actual title of Hiyao Miyazaki’s latest and most likely last film. It is also a rather famous coming-of-age novel in Japan. In cultural terms, it had the same impact as Catcher in the Rye but didn’t suck as bad, is much better written, and doesn’t have Boomers moaning over how much it affected the course of their lives.*
It’s a book about growth and moral lessons. It’s a book about learning how to look at the world. The plot isn’t very close to this movie but the lessons of the story are and the title fits in terms of its challenging tone. It’s being translated into English as How Do You Live but as usual, there are several attached meanings and layered meanings to the original Japanese. You, my Darklings are familiar enough with the many different meanings of the word, “Hai” to get the picture.
Kimitachi roughly means, ‘you guys,’ but it is also a term used by a superior authority to address a subordinate and is somewhat formal. Ikiru can mean live, vivify, come into existence, live life, live out your life. The rest of the phrasing makes the title an interogative. It is possible that Miyazki is asking that question, not of his audience but of the boy he used to be.
This movie is semi-autobiographical. He’s dipped his toes in those waters before but this time he went wading up to the waist. Miyazaki was born in 1941 to a well-to-do family that was heavily involved in aircraft production. It allowed his father to avoid military service as well as keep his family fairly comfortable during the worst of the war’s privations. But he couldn’t physically protect them from the war itself. Miyazaki’s earliest memories were of the clouds of burning ash during the bombing raids and the city of Tokyo screaming.
His family eventually evacuated to the countryside. Miyazaki would always regard his father as something of a callow, Don Draper type of Japanese executive. Their relationship wasn’t bad but he never regarded his father as a good man. Hayao was the youngest in his family and his mother made him her favorite in consequence. Of all her children, her last was the only one with a rabid fascination with art, which she strongly encouraged. Young Hayao became very close to his mother at this time and then his mother was stricken with tuberculous, he lived in constant fear of losing her. Which he finally did… When she was 73. But his dread of losing her has continually acted as background painting to his works. He spent much of his early life as an outcast and loner, likely because he is an autistic savant. When he first started drawing he couldn’t manage people at all and could only draw machinery. When he finally managed to draw people he created a new an unique aesthetic.
I think that gives you the necessary lens through which to view this picture.
This story is told in the Japanese tradition of Kishōtenketsu.
Kishōtenketsu is a compound word whose sub-syllables describe their steps in the plot. It works like this:
Introduction (ki): introducing characters, era, and other important information for understanding the setting of the story.
Development (shō): follows leads toward the twist in the story. Major changes do not occur.
Twist (ten): the story turns toward an unexpected development. It is a character’s moment of enlightenment, frequently done by shifting his paradigm without a clutch. This is the crux of the story.
Conclusion (ketsu), also called ochi (落ち) or ending, wraps up the story.
The boy in The Boy and the Heron is Mahito Maki, who was born into a life of privilege right before the war started. When he was far too young to lose his mother, he lost her during a firestorm. The artwork here is dusk red and threatening. One of the first things our young protagonist sees is the burning ashes of Tokyo wafting in the breeze like hellishly beautiful cherry blossoms. As expected the detail work is painstaking. One scene that has stuck with me was the boy Mahito going into a half-handstand to kick off his sandals. It’s a little slice-of-life detail like a child going down on all fours to race up the stairs.
Three years later Mahito and his father evacuate to the country. His father has married Mahito’s aunt, (his mother’s younger sister) and they have a baby on the way. His aunt lives on her family’s old estate, here the art design begins telling Miyazaki’s story. There is an old house that looks to be pre-Meiji era but next to it is a newer western-style house with electricity and indoor plumbing.
The first hints of the uncanny are the family servants, they are all hunched over, short, and just a bit goblinesque. While of this world, there is the hint of something a little unworldly in their background. As if they had lived on the border of the realm of Faerie for a few too many generations. They are not really sinister just slightly alien. Mahito’s aunt cares deeply for these family retainers symbolizing her connection to the old ways of life. She herself always wears kimonos in support of this.
Mahito’s aunt tells him she’s going to be his new mother. He is respectful and obedient but quite sullen. We get see quite a bit of his life. He gets into fights at school and finally self-harms by hitting himself in the head with a sharp rock.
The shō part of the story begins when he is recovering from his injury. He starts getting followed and harassed by a large grey heron. It leads him to a part of the estate he’s not supposed to go to. The heron disappears into a dilapidated tower.
The style of architecture of the tower is Miyazaki-medium, and fans of anime’s living treasure will now sit up and start taking a more active interest in the picture. The family retainers and the Aunt know about the tower and don’t want him to go anywhere near it. You start hearing them whisper about how they hope he won’t “be taken like the others.”
It’s clear that the Aunt knows more than she’s telling when the Heron is trying to lure Mahito away and she comes after the bird with a bow and fowling arrow.
When the heron starts to speak, it tells Mahito that his mother is still alive and can be found somewhere in the tower. After his Aunt disappears, Mahito builds his own magic bow with a feather he had taken from the Heron, then enters the tower and crosses over into the other world intent on bringing her back.
This particular Miyazaki wonderland, while being a place of danger and menace to children as well as it’s inhabitants’, is distinct from his others in that it’s the starting point where souls gather and gain strength before being born into the human world.
A lot of what happens at this point is pointless to explain in text. The story is being told with Studio Ghibli imagery and describing it would diminish it. It suffices to say that Mahito begins his quest to move past his mother’s death and live his own life.
The “Ten” or moment of enlightenment is reached when Mahito accepts his Aunt as his new mother. It’s not the usual ‘big twist’ moment in the story but it really doesn’t have to be. It’s the enlightenment that matters.
The beauty of Miyazaki’s exquisite hand drawn animation is the real draw as it always is for his films. His signature glories and grotesqueries are never absent from the screen. You do grow found of Mahito and his frenemy the Heron. Parquet King on the other hand feels almost like that most sacrilegious of things in a Miyazaki movie… Fan service. Regardless, if you were on the fence about this one, then get off the fence and go see it because it’s your only chance to see it in a theater.
This film isn’t for little kids. They are going to be bored and then terrified. The Boy and the Heron is more Princess Mononoke and less Spirited Away. A kid who has lost a parent and is ready to come to grips with moving on from that could get something from this movie. But in my view, this is really more a story Miyazaki was telling to himself more than anyone else. Don’t get me wrong, it’s absolutely worth seeing but I wouldn’t regard it as a film for the whole family.
In any case…
The Dark Herald Recommends with Enthusiasm (5/5)
*This alone is reason enough to burn every single copy of Catcher in the Rye and make recommending it punishable by public flogging.
