<em>My Neighbor Totoro</em>: The Healing of Nature, the Nature of Healing

Abstract

Originally released in 1988, Hayao Miyazaki’s fourth feature film, My Neighbor Totoro , could, in retrospect, be viewed as heralding the prominence of healing in the popular culture of Japan in the 1990s. During that decade, healing charms and incenses that would purportedly soothe one’s weary spirit were popular among younger generations; racks of new age and easy- listening cds were recategorized as “healing music”; and vhs rental shops offered an assembly of “healing movies”— films that were set against bucolic provincial backdrops and carried an emotional storyline capable of producing a cathartic effect. Such films would include Powder (directed by Victor Salva in 1995) and Phenome non (directed by John Turteltaub in 1996)— both set in US small towns surrounded by woods and pastures— as well as Nabbie’s Love (directed by Yuji Nakae in 1999), a Japanese film that showcased the lavish natural beauty of an island in Okinawa, the southernmost archipelago in Japan. Those who could afford to do so also escaped from urban areas in order to indulge in the healing practices available at a growing for est of resort hotels overlooking gleaming subtropical seas that year by year are being depleted of their sustainable resources. Appearing at the zenith of Japanese people’s satisfaction and complacency with the country’s economic achievements and just prior to the collapsing of the bubble economy, My Neighbor Totoro offered a utopian portrayal of 1950s rural scenes that stirred the viewers’ imagination through the beauty, the power, and the simplicity of its representation of nature. The film appealed both to the young, who were unfamiliar with the film’s setting,