"Autobiographies of great nations are written in three manuscripts – a book of deeds, a book of words, and a book of art. Of the three, I would choose the latter as truest testimony." - Sir Kenneth Smith, Great Civilisations
"I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine." - Leo Tolstoy
I have never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again. - John Updike
"The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it." - J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan
Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations." - Lawrence Ferlinghetti
[Note - If any article requires updating or correction please notate this in the comment section. Thank you. - res]
This morning I find myself mulling over this past week's thoughts, decisions, and commentaries both written, unwritten and read. The complexity of life perplexes why so little progress is made locally as national and international constructs wash over us like so many destabilizing tidal waves. Many of which are unhealthy while some few are healthy. Issues such as witnessing how many forms of social unrest has taken us to those more poignant moments requiring actionable movement only to see one-and-all floundering in the wake of a strong backwash knocking us over unable to keep our footing to be pulled away from the shorelines of reason and goodwill. Which I think explains why focusing on controllable moments around us by participating in recurring life experiences are the only points of sanity we have left to us or feel empowered by.
The issues are too large, too deep, too complex, as we are discovering, leaving us with the only thing we can do which is to reorganize ourselves into larger, more cohesive regional blocks of social networks to systematically address the tidal washes of change confronting us to large scale world action. We can no longer live in our little bubbles pretending all is well. Rather, we each have obligations to fulfill in resolving societal detractors, destructive earthly practices, and the social injustices around us.
How? By counterbalancing those negatives with the good things the bible urges us to enact amongst each other and into the world beyond. Such Spirit things as peace, love, mercy, forgiveness, and unity. Our natural tendencies bespeak our fragility as a species - if not the weak mindedness bourne our humanity that we stand up to disinformation to create constructive moments of rightful actions. And yet, if we do nothing but sit and judge nothing is done.
Whether enacting better democracies or Spirit-based resolves, each requires a personal and generational duty to the larger society around us to contribute to its health and healing according to the social networks and livelihoods we each have and bear a responsibility to address regarding the weighty issues pressing in on us from all sides. Fear, isolation, and anger are the poorest constructs to build upon. Much better we respect each other, listen to one another, and build a future we might be proud. One that is good, morally strong, and vibrantly cohesive in the face of so many societal and earthly negatives.
R.E. Slater September 18, 2019 *A traditional Japanese haiku is a three-line poem with seventeen syllables, written in a 5/7/5 syllable count. Often focusing on images from nature, haiku emphasizes simplicity, intensity, and directness of expression with no rhyming @copyright R.E. Slater Publications all rights reserved
Notes to Haiku
Having come across a foreign concert segment on the Internet I became curious as to why it was so moving to the well dressed audience gasping and swooning during its emotional performance. It seems that the song being sung by the young lady in white was lamenting the losses of childhood and of that of the ancient Japanese culture having forgotten its meaning and identity when absorbing Western practices, capitalism, and consequentially separation from the cradling arms of the earth (sic, earth spirits of nature) in its mimicry. The song, like the film it originated from, layers its hopes upon a succeeding generations which might remember the old ways in finding a way back to what once was treasured in its ancient traditions - cultural vitality, fellowship, earth care, and the social identity which came from these traditions. Themes universal to the ancient human breast itself.
Modern Western critics like Wendell Berry, Aldo Leopold, and a host of others ranging from poets to theologs have echoed these same sentiments in observing how industrialized Western progress has created great loss to humanity's inherent cardinal values imaged upon our souls by the divine granting the life-giving qualities of identity and meaning when in fellowship with the earth and one another. Specifically, both concert, song, and film, recall the primal longing of creation as an ancient longing we have too easily dismissed as an insignificant thing when pompously disrupting or destroying both our own past as well as the pasts of other native American cultures, aboriginal cultures, and non-European civilizations by Westernizing standards having become deaf-and-blind to the accumulated wisdoms of the ancients over the centuries in succeeding echoes of enforced religious and doctrinnaire superiority.
Consequently, in this present day we must now repair the renewing cycles of divine life by listening to, and learning from, one another as from the earth and Spirit themselves, each once heard in the sublime symphonies of our distant souls now lost within the graves we have wantonly dug as memorials to our sins, greed, and follies. This loss of divine rhythm must somehow be recovered from what was carelessly destroyed and now deemed worthless in our pride and short-sightedness. Soul qualities we are only now realising granting life, hope, purpose, and fellowship with the earth and with one another. And it is in this divine revelatory light we must hear again those ancient lyrics to restore, renew, steward, and cultivate earth's primal Edens which had once nurtured both creation and the human spirit in practices of wisdom, selflessness, silence, love, and community.
R.E. Slater September 16, 2019
America's Manifest Destiny by John Gast painting
Joe Hisaishi in Budokan was a concert commemorating
both the Japanese theatrical premiere of Ponyo and the 25 years of musical collaboration between composer Joe Hisaishi and film maker Hayao Miyazaki.
Lyrics: The Name of Life
The whiteness of the clouds left behind by a plane Draw a line across the blue sky Always, no matter to where, always continuing As if it knew tomorrow.
In my chest I breathed in a shallow breath I remember the breeze that blew on my hot cheek.
The hands and feet which are bound before the future Are freed by a quiet voice So nostalgic that I want to scream out, is One life, the midsummer light At your shoulder, swaying, the sunbeams streaming through the leaves.
The white ball at rest The petals which have been scattered by the wind The invisible river which carries both Singing while flowing on.
Secrets and lies and joy Are the children of the gods who created this universe.
The heart which is bound before the future Someday, will remember its name So loved that I want to scream out, is One life, the place to return to At my fingertips, the summer day which doesn't disappear.
Inochi no Namae (The Name of Life)
Joe Hisaishi in Budokan - Studio Ghibli 25 Years Concert
Futatabi [Reprise] (Spirited Away)
Joe Hisaishi in Budokan - Studio Ghibli 25 Years Concert
Miyazaki wrote the script after he decided the film would be based on the 10-year-old daughter of his friend, associate producer Seiji Okuda, who came to visit his house each summer. At the time, Miyazaki was developing two personal projects, but they were rejected. With a budget of 19 million US dollars, production of Spirited Away began in 2000. Pixar director John Lasseter, who is a fan and friend of Miyazaki, convinced Walt Disney Pictures to buy the film's North American distribution rights, and served as the executive producer of its English-dubbed version Lasseter hired Kirk Wise as director and Donald W. Ernst as producer of the adaptation. Screenwriters Cindy Davis Hewitt and Donald H. Hewitt wrote the English-language dialogue to match the characters' original Japanese-language lip movements.
In 2016, it was voted the fourth-best film of the 21st century as picked by 177 film critics from around the world, making it the highest-ranking animated film on the list. It was also named the second "Best Film of the 21st Century So Far" in 2017 by the New York Times.
Ten-year-old Chihiro Ogino and her parents are traveling to their new home when her father takes a shortcut, leading them to what appears to be an abandoned amusement park that Chihiro's father insists on exploring. They find a seemingly empty restaurant stall stocked with food, which Chihiro's parents immediately begin to eat. While exploring further, Chihiro finds an exquisite bathhouse and meets a boy named Haku, who warns her to return across the riverbed before sunset. However, Chihiro discovers too late that her parents have metamorphosed into pigs, and she is unable to cross the now-flooded river.
Haku finds Chihiro and has her ask for a job from the bathhouse's boiler-man, Kamaji, a yōkai commanding the susuwatari. Kamaji refuses to hire her and asks worker Lin to send Chihiro to Yubaba, the witch who runs the bathhouse. Yubaba tries to frighten Chihiro away, but she persists, so Yubaba gives Chihiro a contract to work for her. Yubaba takes away her name and renames her Sen (千). While visiting her parents' pigpen, Haku gives Sen a goodbye card she had with her, and Sen realizes that she had already forgotten her real name. Haku warns her that Yubaba controls people by taking their names, and that if she forgets hers like he has forgotten his, she will not be able to leave the spirit world.
Sen faces discrimination from the other workers because she is still a human and not a spirit; only Haku and Lin show sympathy for her. While working, she invites a silent creature named No-Face inside, believing him to be a customer. A "stink spirit" arrives as Sen's first customer, and she discovers he is the spirit of a polluted river. In gratitude for cleaning him, he gives Sen a magic emeticdumpling. Meanwhile, No-Face imitates the gold left behind by the stink spirit and tempts a worker with gold, then swallows him. He demands food and begins tipping extensively. He swallows two more workers when they interfere with his conversation with Sen.
Sen sees paper Shikigami attacking a Japanese dragon and recognizes the dragon as Haku metamorphosed. When a grievously injured Haku crashes into Yubaba's penthouse, Sen follows him upstairs. A shikigami that stowed away on her back shapeshifts into Zeniba, Yubaba's twin sister. She mutates Yubaba's son, Boh, into a mouse, creates a decoy Boh, and mutates Yubaba's harpy into a tiny, flylike bird. Zeniba tells Sen that Haku has stolen a magic golden seal from her, and warns Sen that it carries a deadly curse. Haku attacks the shikigami, which eliminates Zeniba's hologram. He falls into the boiler room with Sen, Boh, and the harpy on his back, where Sen feeds him part of the dumpling she had intended to give her parents, causing him to vomit both the seal and a black slug, which Sen crushes with her foot.
With Haku unconscious, Sen resolves to return the seal and apologize to Zeniba. Sen confronts No-Face, who is now massive, and feeds him the rest of the dumpling. No-Face follows Sen out of the bathhouse, steadily regurgitating everything he has eaten. Sen, No-Face, Boh, and the harpy travel to see Zeniba with train tickets given to her by Kamaji. Yubaba orders that Sen's parents be slaughtered, but Haku reveals that Boh is missing and offers to retrieve him if Yubaba releases Sen and her parents. Yubaba agrees, but only if Sen can pass a final test.
Sen, No-Face, Boh, and the harpy meet with Zeniba, who reveals that Sen's love for Haku broke her curse and that Yubaba used the black slug to control Haku. Haku appears at Zeniba's home in his dragon form and flies Sen, Boh, and the harpy to the bathhouse. No-Face decides to stay behind and become Zeniba's spinner. In mid-flight, Sen recalls falling years ago into the Kohaku River and being washed safely ashore, correctly guessing Haku's real identity as the spirit of the Kohaku River. When they arrive at the bathhouse, Yubaba forces Sen to identify her parents from among a group of pigs in order to break their curse. After Sen answers correctly that none of the pigs are her parents, her contract combusts and she is given back her real name. Haku takes her to the now-dry riverbed and vows to meet her again. Chihiro crosses the riverbed to her restored parents, who do not remember anything after eating at the restaurant stall. They walk back to their car, which is now covered in dust and leaves. Before getting in, Chihiro is shown to still be wearing the hairband No-Face spun for her at Zeniba's home.
The themes of the film are heavily influenced by Japanese Shinto-Buddhist folklore. The central location of the film is a Japanese bathhouse where a great variety of Japanese folklore creatures, including kami, come to bathe. Miyazaki cites the solstice rituals when villagers call forth their local kami and invite them into their baths.
Chihiro also encounters kami of animals and plants. Miyazaki says of this:
"In my grandparents' time, it was believed that kami existed everywhere – in trees, rivers, insects, wells, anything. My generation does not believe this, but I like the idea that we should all treasure everything because spirits might exist there, and we should treasure everything because there is a kind of life to everything."
The film has been compared to Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as the stories have some elements in common such as being set in a fantasy world, the plots including a disturbance in logic and stability, and there being motifs such as food having metamorphic qualities; though developments and themes are not shared. Among other stories compared to Spirited Away, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is seen to be more closely linked thematically.
The major themes of Spirited Away center on the protagonist Chihiro and her liminal journey through the realm of spirits. The archetypal entrance into another world demarcates Chihiro's status as one somewhere between child and adult. Chihiro also stands outside societal boundaries in the supernatural setting. The use of the word kamikakushi (literally "hidden by gods") within the Japanese title, and its associated folklore, reinforces this liminal passage:
"Kamikakushi is a verdict of 'social death' in this world, and coming
back to this world from Kamikakushi meant 'social resurrection.'"
Yubaba has many similarities to The Coachman from Pinocchio, in the sense that she mutates humans into pigs in a similar way that the boys of Pleasure Island were mutated into donkeys. Upon gaining employment at the bathhouse, Yubaba's seizure of Chihiro's true name symbolically kills the child, who must then assume adulthood. She then undergoes a rite of passage according to the monomyth format; to recover continuity with her past, Chihiro must create a new identity.
Along with its function within the ostensible coming of age theme, Yubaba's act of taking Chihiro's name and replacing it with Sen (an alternate reading of "chi", the first character in Chihiro's name – lit. "one thousand"), is symbolic of capitalism's single-minded concern with value, reflecting the film's exploration of capitalism and its effect on traditional Japanese culture.
Yubaba is stylistically unique within the bathhouse, wearing a Western dress and living among European décor and furnishings, in contrast with the minimalist Japanese style of her employee's quarters, representing the Western capitalist influence over Japan in its Meiji period and beyond. The Meiji design of the abandoned theme park is the setting for Chihiro's parents' metamorphosis - the family arrives in an imported Audi car and the father wears a European-styled polo shirt, reassuring Chihiro that he has "credit cards and cash", before their morphing into literal consumerist pigs.
Spirited Away contains critical commentary on modern Japanese society concerning generational conflicts and environmental issues. Chihiro has been seen as a representation of the shōjo, whose roles and ideology had changed dramatically since post-war Japan.
Miyazaki has stated:
Chihiro’s parents turning into pigs symbolizes how some humans become greedy. At the very moment Chihiro says there is something odd about this town, her parents turn into pigs. There were people that "turned into pigs" during Japan’s bubble economy (consumer society) of the 1980s, and these people still haven’t realized they’ve become pigs. Once someone becomes a pig, they don’t return to being human but instead gradually start to have the "body and soul of a pig". These people are the ones saying, "We are in a recession and don’t have enough to eat." This doesn’t just apply to the fantasy world. Perhaps this isn’t a coincidence and the food is actually (an analogy for) "a trap to catch lost humans."
Just as Chihiro seeks her past identity, Japan, in its anxiety over the economic downturn occurring during the release of the film in 2001, sought to reconnect to past values. In an interview, Miyazaki has commented on this nostalgic element for an old Japan.
However, the bathhouse of the spirits cannot be seen as a place free of ambiguity and darkness. Many of the employees are rude to Chihiro because she is human, and corruption is ever-present; it is a place of excess and greed, as depicted in the initial appearance of the No-Face. In stark contrast to the simplicity of Chihiro's journey and transformation is the constantly chaotic carnival in the background.
There are two major instances of allusions to environmental issues within the movie. The first is seen when Chihiro is dealing with the "stink spirit." The stink spirit was actually a river spirit, but it was so corrupted with filth that one couldn't tell what it was at first glance. It only became clean again when Chihiro pulled out a huge amount of trash, including car tires, garbage, and a bicycle. This alludes to human pollution of the environment, and how people can carelessly toss away things without thinking of the consequences and of where the trash will go. The second allusion is seen in Haku himself. Haku does not remember his name and lost his past, which is why he is stuck at the bathhouse. Eventually, Chihiro remembers that he used to be the spirit of the Kohaku River, which was destroyed and replaced with apartments. Because of humans' need for development, they destroyed a part of nature, causing Haku to lose his home and identity. This can be compared to deforestation and desertification; humans tear down nature, cause imbalance in the ecosystem, and demolish animals' homes to satisfy their want for more space (housing, malls, stores, etc.) but don't think about how it can affect other living things.
Additional themes are expressed through the No-Face, who reflects the characters which surround him, learning by example and taking the traits of whomever he consumes. This nature results in No-Face's monstrous rampage through the bathhouse. After Chihiro saves No-Face with the emetic dumpling, he becomes timid once more. At the end of the film, Zeniba decides to take care of No-Face so he can develop without the negative influence of the bathhouse.
Mamoru Fujisawa (藤澤 守 Fujisawa Mamoru, born December 6, 1950), known professionally as Joe Hisaishi (久石 譲 Hisaishi Jō), is a Japanese composer and musical director known for over 100 film scores and solo albums dating back to 1981. Hisaishi is also known for his piano scores.
While possessing a stylistically distinct sound, Hisaishi's music has been known to explore and incorporate different genres, including minimalist, experimental electronic, European classical, and Japanese classical. Lesser known are the other musical roles he plays; he is also a typesetter, author, arranger, and conductor.
Where brother calls brother brother no more, Where hand lifts 'gainst head by anger’s vent, And smouldering ires lie murderous about. Surely no woman, no man, denies family or friend, Yet vile offenses seethe neglects and feuds, Fueling lies of ill-will, refusing fellowships sweet, Castrating lives like mown grasses of summer. Low lay brooding spirits inflamed siren’s hymns, Fell darkness descending on remorseless charms, Imagined illusions guiding misguided spirits, Hearing no seasons but hell's hateful dark maw. Winter or summer, springtime or harvest, All be the same moved intent's dark climes, Spewing madness’s flames lit burning moods, Noxious marshes befouling most putrid fools. R.E. Slater July 17-19, 2019; edited Aug 20, 2019; May 5, 2020 @copyright R.E. Slater Publications all rights reserved
