Between my trip to the Kyoto International Manga Museum in September and the Studio Ghibli Museum in December, I’ve had a lot of time to think about Miyazaki Hayao and my current lifestyle.
Late autumn/early winter: Camellias near my home
Miyazaki’s exhibit at the Manga Museum was called アニ目と虫目 (Anime’s Eyes and Bugs’ Eyes, a pun on the me syllable of anime, a homonym for eye 目). The main part of the exhibit was series of watercolor paintings of “My Ideal Town,” which included Miyazaki’s written explanations and thoughts. (All in Japanese–I was quite pleased that I was able to come this far in my studies if only to understand what he wrote!) One idea he had was to have the preschool/daycare and the retirement community/hospice next to each other; this, he wrote, would teach children about aging and dying as part of the natural life-cycle and would provide company for the elderly. Most importantly, it would provide an audience for the elderly people’s stories, from which the children could learn about the world. He also wrote/illustrated about having no cars; having a community farm; living with/near nature; and letting people live the kind of life they want without judgment. (When can I sign a lease?)
One illustration that really struck me was about Miyazaki’s irritation with some of his fans. A young couple is raving about how their children love Totoro and watch the DVD every day. Miyazaki, on the other hand, writes that he wishes that children would experience nature for themselves, instead of in his films. That is, instead of watching Mei and Satsuki run around the forest having wonderful adventures with Totoro, he would rather inspire his fans to explore local nature on their own.
As I was browsing the Ghibli Museum, I remembered this and wondered what Miyazaki would think of my current lifestyle.
If someone had told high-school me how I’d be spending the first few years of my post-post-grad life, I wouldn’t have believed a word of it. I think Miyazaki would approve of sending young people who grew up as middle-class suburbanites out for a stint in the country, and, despite my continual 憧れ for the big city, I’m going to say I agree with him. This place has challenged me to be more adventurous with travel, cooking, and living without the creature comforts I really love, like a water heater I don’t have to crank by hand or running hot water in more than one sink. Or a shower-head that attaches to the wall. Or central heating.
However, I’m glad to live in a place where I can bike along the bay or take a walk in the woods anytime it’s light enough outside to see. In the summer and early fall, I can drive or take a train the beach for a day or to the mountains for the weekend of hiking.
Although I live in the country, I’m still an outsider to it. I’m a foreigner who works a white-collar intellectually based job. I could do my job anywhere, because I don’t produce a tangible craft or product for consumption that requires local materials. I don’t live off the land. I buy from a farmers’ market, but I don’t farm. I don’t even have an herb garden. (Yet.) I don’t fish, and, despite my culinary inclinations, I’m still too nervous to gut a fish. I get the sense that I’m, to mangle metaphors, some kind of Bunburying Thoreau, playing in the country with only some of the difficulties of living there.
I’m not sure if that’s the kind of country life Miyazaki meant, but I don’t think it’s that far off. Like Mei and Satsuki’s professor father, I can still learn to live in the country even if my job deals with ideas and words rather than producing miso or catching oysters. I still want to go back to the conveniences of a small-city life (buses! brew-pubs! a pool with more than one swimming lane!) I led before I moved here. And, as shoujo-manga of me as it is to say, because it’s probably the only time I’ll be able to work in rural Japan, I want to treasure this time in the country.
