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Denison, Rayna. "Introducing Studio Ghibli’s Monster Princess: From Mononokehime to Princess Mononoke." Princess Mononoke: Understanding Studio Ghibli’s Monster Princess. By Rayna Denison. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017. 1–20. Bloomsbury Collections. Web. 6 Oct. 2021. <http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781501329753-005>. Downloaded from Bloomsbury Collections, www.bloomsburycollections.com, 6 October 2021, 08:10 UTC. Copyright © Rayna Denison 2018. You may share this work for non-commercial purposes only, provided you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher, and provide a link to the Creative Commons licence. 1 I NTRODUCING STUDIO GHIBLI’S MONSTER PRINCESS: FROM M ONONOKEHIME TO P RINCESS MONONOKE Rayna Denison When it came out in 1997, Hayao Miyazaki’s Mononokehime ( Princess Mononoke ) was a new kind of anime fi lm. It broke long- standing Japanese box offi ce records that had been set by Hollywood fi lms, and in becoming a blockbuster- sized hit Mononokehime demonstrated the commercial power of anime in Japan.1 F u r t h e r , Mononokehime became the fi rst of Miyazaki’s fi lms to benefi t from a ‘global’ release thanks to a new distribution deal between Disney and Tokuma shoten, then the parent company for Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli. As a result of this deal, Mononokehime was transformed through translation: US star voices replaced those of Japanese actors, a new market- ing campaign reframed the fi lm for US audiences and famous fantasy author Neil Gaiman undertook a localization project to turn Mononokehime into Princess Mononoke (1999). 2 A s Princess Mononoke, it was the fi rst Miyazaki fi lm to receive a signifi cant cinematic release in the United States. In these ways, as Mononokehime and Princess Mononoke , Miyazaki’s fi lm became a ‘monster’ fi lm event – the source for a long- lasting, wide- spread cultural phe- nomenon refl ective of a general trend towards the globalization of anime. 3 Globalization had already impacted upon Mononokehime before this trans- formation took place, which is perhaps most obvious at the level of its ani- mated imagery. For, despite Studio Ghibli’s reputation for using hand- drawn cel animation, Mononokehime included imagery produced using globalized Computer Generated (CG) animation technologies. Miyazaki aligned the use of these new animation techniques with a deepening thematic concern regard- ing the whole of humanity’s relationship with nature. From its animation style and themes to their translation, from its local blockbuster status to its high profi le global distribution, therefore, Mononokehime was at the vanguard of anime in a period of rapid change. For these reasons and others, twenty years aft er its initial success, it is worth looking back at how Mononokehime marked changes in the Japanese animation industry; at how it shaped, and was shaped, and then reshaped by the cultures with which it came into contact. Th e essays 99781501329760_pi-220.indd781501329760_pi-220.indd 1 111/1/20171/1/2017 44:21:03:21:03 PPMM 2 2 Rayna Denison collected in this volume are therefore intended to reveal just how important Mononokehime has been to the history of Japanese, and global, animation. As this suggests, Mononokehime is worth revisiting because of its excep- tional status within the oeuvre of one of the world’s most respected anima- tors: Hayao Miyazaki. Writing in 1999, for Newsweek , David Ansen claims that, on watching Princess Mononoke , US audiences would ‘see why, in animation circles, Miyazaki himself is considered one of the gods’. 4 In the same year, in one of the fi rst extended critical appraisals of Miyazaki’s work in English, Helen McCarthy argues that ‘Miyazaki now stands at the pinnacle of Japanese artistic achievement. He has helped raise two mass entertainment media, animation and comics, to the status of artistic and literary excellence.’ 5 Th erefore, as an animator- turned- director, and as an emerging brand name, Miyazaki’s style and thematics were already well- established on the release of Mononokehime , and his treatment of young female heroines, ambivalent approaches to good and evil, depictions of fl ight and fl ying machines and deepening concern about ecological issues were all well- known. 6 However, as McCarthy notes, Mononokehime was as much a departure for Miyazaki as it was a distillation of his thematic interests and the style of animation at Ghibli.7 Shiro Yoshioka argues, in this collection, that Miyazaki adopted a new directorial persona as a public intellectual around the time of Mononokehime , turning to scholarly Japanese texts for inspiration and borrowing new theories from history and ecology to deepen the themes of Mononokehime ( Chapter 1 ). Th ese themes are most clearly rendered in a newly emergent ambivalence and complexity found within Mononokehime ’s characterization, something that several of the authors in this collection analyse (for examples see Chapters 5 and 6 ). Miyazaki’s historical and environmental research also resulted in extreme representations of nature and humanity in Mononokehime . Miyazaki has lik- ened Mononokehime ’s gods to ‘living animals, tortured by humans,’ and argues that, ‘I wanted to show the unbearable existence of these animals. I feel it is impossible to talk about the relationship between humanity and nature unless I depict these aspects of it.’8 Mononokehime is consequently fi lled with mon- sters: from the animalized god- monsters who protect the Shishigami ’s (Deer God) magical forest, to the monstrous human characters bent on its destruc- tion. Th is is another reason why the title of this collection refers to a ‘monster princess’. Th ere is, however, considerable debate about how to translate the title of Miyazaki’s Mononokehime . In the English language version of the fi lm, Princess Mononoke , part of the Japanese phrasing is retrained, and ‘mononoke ’ signals US audiences about the fi lm’s cultural diff erence.9 Jennifer E. Nicholson, for instance, explores how hard it was for US adaptator, Neil Gaiman, to try to incorporate the sense of ‘mononoke ’ within the English- language version of the fi lm in Chapter 7 of this collection. In more general accounts, Michael Dylan Foster and others have traced the Japanese word mononoke at least as far back as Th e Tale of Genji , 10 and argue that it was in common usage in the Heian 99781501329760_pi-220.indd781501329760_pi-220.indd 2 111/1/20171/1/2017 44:21:03:21:03 PPMM 3 Introducing Studio Ghibli’s Monster Princess 3 period of Japanese history (794– 1185). Foster translates mononoke as a numi- nous ‘thing’ that is suspicious or unstable: Mono- no- ke phenomena betrayed the instability and mutability of everyday existence, like ripples appearing suddenly in the solid- seeming surface of a dark liquid body. Th ey were sudden, unusual, unpredictable – and therefore frightening . Perhaps it is helpful to think of the occurrence of mono- no- ke as akin to a crime or an automobile accident – not an everyday occurrence but always a terrible, imaginable possibility capable of rupturing mundane ‘reality’. 11 San, the eponymous princess of Mononokehime , displays many of these traits in her uncanny speed, ferocity and unpredictability. However, we have no easy equivalent word in English, which might help to explain why Mononokehime became Princess Mononoke on its US release. However, given the frightening, unstable and phenomenal aspects of the term, many translate it as ‘possessed’, ‘spirit’ or ‘monster’ (see Chapter 7 ). Consequently, the word ‘monster’ is invoked in this collection to signal some of the cultural complexity of Miyazaki’s fi lm, as well as its central ‘monstrous’ gods and indomitable princess. In addition, the translation of mononoke as ‘monster’ also nods to the blockbuster- size of the phenomenon around the fi lm in its local market, and to Miyazaki’s new- plumbed thematic extremes. Th e use of ‘monster princess’ in the title of this collection on Mononokehime also signals how much Miyazaki’s vision for the fi lm changed over time. Th e orig- inal sketches for Mononokehime were done by Miyazaki around 1980, shortly aft er the release of his fi rst fi lm, Lupin III: Caguriosutoro no shiro ( Castle of Cagliostro , 1979). At that time, the imagery for Mononokehime shows a Totoro- like bipedal cat character carrying a teenaged girl on his back. 12 Reporting on the subsequent release of this imagery as a storybook in Japan in 1993, a jour- nalist describes the original story as an ‘adaptation of Beauty and the Beast ’ that ‘resets the work in Japan, telling the story from the perspective of a young girl. Estranged from her father, she is married off to a mononoke , or vengeful spectre, and then tries to free her father from evil spirits.’ 13 Neither the original look of the characters, nor the story itself, survived to appear in the fi lm ver- sion of Mononokehime . If anything, these earlier versions indicate how radically Miyazaki changed his core concept before the 1997 fi lm was made. Changing from a Western- style fairy tale to a violent and new kind of jidaigeki (period drama) Mononokehime refl ects Miyazaki’s developing seriousness of purpose. Of this new purpose Miyazaki has said that: In fact, [in Mononokehime ] I meant to state my objection to the way environ- mental issues are treated. Th at is, I didn’t want to split off the global environ- ment from human beings. I wanted to include the entire world of humans and other living creatures, as well as the global environment, water, and air. 99781501329760_pi-220.indd781501329760_pi-220.indd 3 111/1/20171/1/2017 44:21:04:21:04 PPMM 4 4 Rayna Denison I also wanted to delve into whether people can overcome the hatred that has gradually grown up inside them.
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