Due to the sheer number of casualties of the nuclear bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japanese postwar cinema has traditionally focused on the effect of them over time, particularly as related to industrialization and the difference in pre and postwar generations. Films such as Yasujiro Ozu’s Tokyo Story do so passively, its tone reflecting a sense of hushed disappointment in watching the sun setting on their traditions and values in the wake of Western industrialism’s imposition. Other films, like Nobuhiko Obayashi’s House, do so actively, focusing on the bitterness that prewar generations feel against the postwar generations that were not affected by the bombs. In part due to the graphic nature of the source material, the difficulty of filming it, and the budgetary restrictions necessary; this commentary on the tragedy is easiest handled through anime, defying the filmmaking style’s perception as childish. Films such as Isao Takahata’s Grave of the Fireflies present the horrors of war through a lens of grounded realism, presenting a haunting insight into the lives of those that survived both firebombing and nuclear bombing. Daniel Haulman, writing for Air Power History in Winter 2018, states that Americans had developed napalm to use in bomb raids against the Japanese and cites Army Air Forces and US Strategic Bombing Survey statistics, which estimate that 310,000 Japanese were killed, 412,000 were injured, and between 9.2 and 15 million were left homeless (Haulman, 41). Although these numbers are likely true for Kobe, the setting of much of the film, Takahata chooses to avoid focusing on mass casualty, preferring instead to use small-scale tragedies and rapid cuts to black in order to simulate the emotions of those who lived through it, allowing the viewer to widen this feeling to a larger scale, echoed by wide open shots after close-ups on dead characters. Through Grave of the Fireflies, Isao Takahata uses biological realism and by extension rapid editing, such as instantaneous cuts to black or to another scene, after the deaths of the two main characters, Seita and Setsuko, in order to offer a realistic depiction of life during wartime and allow the viewer to interpret this small-scale plot for themselves and widen it to a larger scale rather than imbuing the film with an argument.
Biological realism is crucial to Grave of the Fireflies, as the effects that weapons have on the human body, as well as the body’s process of starvation, are the main vehicles for Takahata’s deliverance of these emotions of shock and loss. Writing in Animating Film Theory, Marc Steinberg references Otsuka Eiji’s Three Realisms, defining biological realism as a “fleshly, physical body that can bleed, die, and have sexual relations,” (Steinberg, 291). When characters die in such a biologically realistic manner, the characters around them are forced to come to terms with it quickly. While airplanes drop firebombs, those below must flee from cover to cover in order to survive. If they remain sedentary, they are killed gruesomely. Due to this, then, those that witness the deaths of their loved ones are forced to cope with them quickly and move on in order to survive. When Setsuko dies toward the end of the film, the camera jarringly cuts to a black screen, and Seita in voiceover states that she never woke back up. The film then cuts to Seita preparing his sister’s body for cremation. In this particular exchange, the loss of Setsuko, a toddler, who much of this film has been focused on is brushed past. The viewers, like those who witnessed loss firsthand, move past the death and cannot adequately cope with the countless emotions attached to it. This allows the film to exercise precision in its handling of the subject material, using the single example of the tragedy of Seita and Setsuko in order to expand the viewers’ understanding of the events to the macro-level, to understand that this tragedy is felt by countless people across Japan. Writing for Film Comment, Violet Lucca interprets this aspect of the film, stating that it “explores the cruelty of human behavior at macro and micro levels” and “encourages children to look at their own behavior and make choices that are for the greater good rather than themselves” (Lucca, 47). Human behavior is not as cut-and-dry as “good” or “bad.” Takahata, therefore, never makes macro-level arguments based on the firebombing, allowing the biological realism of the characters’ deaths to give insight so that the audience can make these arguments with more knowledge of the emotional aspects of these events.
Grave of the Fireflies, though entirely groundbreaking in its handling of the topic in anime, is not unique in its commentary. In regards to its contemporaries in the industry, this film was released as a double feature, playing after another Studio Ghibli film, My Neighbor Totoro, in theaters. Unsuspecting viewers would conclude the latter and next be presented with the scathing heartbreak of Grave of the Fireflies, unexpected in a genre traditionally underestimated in terms of its ability to handle mature themes. Although this juxtaposition between childhood ecstasy and childhood agony–as well as between expectations of anime and the reality presented by Takahata–deepens the impact of the film’s imagery, it managed still to open to universal acclaim. The topic of life and death during wartime is addressed in countless other Japanese films, including a wide variety of anime. For example, Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke, among other themes, addresses the impact of nuclear weaponry on the environment using the vengeful spirit of nature–killed by a gun, traditionally symbolic of nuclear weapons–decimates a major city, making it necessary to rebuild the city and its economy in a model that would all but erase the former identity of it. In Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira, released exactly three months after Grave of the Fireflies, two separate young generations are irradiated and mutated by an explosion, which subjects them to tortures beyond their physical disrepair. Countless other anime feature large monsters, turned into such by radiation, or other allegories to the bombings. At the time, however, the methods that Grave of the Fireflies uses, namely biological realism and a rapid pace, were relatively new to the genre. Additionally, anime had not frequently featured allegories for the bombings. Anime such as Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy featured the misuse of powerful technology while Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind focused on themes that he further elaborated on in Princess Mononoke, but a treatment of such themes in an Italian neorealism-inspired extent had either been done rarely, or not done at all.
Within the context of history, this film takes place during the Allied firebombing raids, though the tragedy and insurmountable loss due to this event can easily be likened that that of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Examples of this feeling of loss shown through biological realism would be their mother’s death to napalm, showing in bloody detail the effect that it has on the body, or Setsuko’s realistic death to starvation. For the Western viewer, these deaths and the staggering overall body count are sorrowful; however, as mentioned, Seita and countless others were forced to move on from them rather quickly in order to survive. In a journal devoted to World War II, Mark Grimsley increases the specificity of this tragedy by comparing the film to the original short story of the same title, stating that “Seita is the brother [Akiyuki] Nosaka wishes he could have been. And his story is an elegy for a specific infant sister, lost long ago” (Grimsley, 75). By incorporating the viewers into the emotions felt by Nosaka over the loss of his sister to starvation, Takahata provides an emotional basis for understanding the national emotion felt after the conclusion of the Second World War: overwhelming sorrow.
In Grave of the Fireflies, Takahata provides detailed insight into the emotional trauma that the bomb raids caused in Japan for generations. Although this is the case, Takahata never makes an outright statement of his ideology. Robin Wood wrote about auteur theory in Film Comment stating that, to paraphrase, due to an auteur’s influence on the creative process of a film, that film is either directly or indirectly imbued with that filmmaker’s socio-cultural ideology (Wood, 46-51). In the case of Grave of the Fireflies, Takahata indirectly incorporates the Japanese cultural ideology that defines its devastation during World War II as insurmountable tragedy, and one that would stunt the nation by killing a generation. He does this not only through his emphasis on the realism of how human bodies react to external and internal stimuli, but through his style of editing that cuts away from tragedy to reflect that necessity during wartime. This provides an understanding of the damaged cultural development of postwar Japan in the eyes of many filmmakers, and provides insight into the rapid coping process for those who survived.
Works Cited
Grimsley, Mark. “Elegy for the Lost.” World War II, vol. 31, no. 6, Mar. 2017, pp. 74–76. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=a9h&AN=120951128&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
Haulman, Daniel L. “Firebombing Air Raids on Cities at Night.” Air Power History, vol. 65, no. 4, Winter 2018, pp. 37–42. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=a9h&AN=134235215&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
Lucca, Violet. “Worldly Wise.” Film Comment, vol. 54, no. 4, July 2018, pp. 44–47. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=a9h&AN=130344584&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
Miyazaki, Hayao, director. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Studio Ghibli Inc., 1984.
Miyazaki, Hayao, director. Princess Mononoke. Studio Ghibli Inc., 1997.
Obayashi, Nobuhiko, director. House. Toho Co. Ltd., 1977.
Otomo, Katsuhiro, director. Akira. Toho Co. Ltd., 1988.
Ozu, Yasujiro, director. Tokyo Story. Shochiku Co. Ltd., 1953.
Steinberg, Marc. Animating Film Theory. Edited by Karen Redrobe Beckman, Duke University Press, 2014.
Takahata, Isao, director. Grave of the Fireflies. Studio Ghibli Inc., 1988.
Tezuka, Osamu. Astro Boy, Season 1, episode 1, 1963.
Wood, Robin. “Ideology, Genre, Auteur.” Film Comment, vol. 13, no. 1, 1977, pp. 46–51. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43451300.
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