Miyazaki’s WWII film fails to impress nationalists
The latest film by Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki has received a mixed response in China, with some accusing the animation master of “insufficient reflection” over Japan’s war history as ties between Beijing and Tokyo worsen.
The film The Boy and the
Heron, which was released on the mainland earlier this month, has gained praise but also received far more criticism compared to Miyazaki’s earlier works.
The film features the surreal adventure of a Japanese boy during World War II as he is torn between the sorrow of losing his mother in an air strike on Tokyo and a sense of guilt from his father’s contribution to the war as a munitions manufacturer.
The mixed responses came despite Miyazaki’s well-known anti-war stance in Japan, where he made headlines in 2015 for urging his country’s leaders “to say clearly that aggressive war was completely wrong, having brought enormous damage to the Chinese people”.
Miyazaki, a co-founder of Japanese animation company Studio Ghibli and director of films such as Spirited Away and Princess
Mononoke, was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2024 last week. The publication described him as “a brutal realist regarding greed, war and human rage”.
Some nationalists have argued that Miyazaki’s anti-war stance was hypocritical as his latest film portrayed Japanese characters in a sympathetic light and as victims of the war.
The criticisms come amid deteriorating Sino-Japanese ties. Asia’s two biggest economies are at odds over several issues, including long-standing territorial disputes in the East China Sea, the Fukushima nuclear plant water release, and Japan’s growing concerns about security in the Taiwan Strait.
Sheng Zou, an interdisciplinary media scholar at Baptist University, said Miyazaki’s latest work had received criticism in China in part because it contained a lot of abstract symbols “open to many different kinds of interpretations”.
“[The film] gives you different ways to read the plot and to read different characters. So I would say it’s sometimes contradictory, sometimes inconsistent, that’s also why people feel confused.”
The film was a box office hit in China, earning 693 million yuan (HK$749.41 million) as of Friday, making it Miyazaki’s bestselling work in the country. The film took 46 per cent of the total box office earnings during the three-day Ching Ming Festival holiday earlier this month.
However, on Douban, the country’s best-known film review site, it scored 7.7 out of 10 – lower than Miyazaki’s earlier works, which have scores of eight or nine.
Many criticisms have centred on the metaphors used in the film, with some accusing Miyazaki of being “hypocritical” and “vague” about his anti-war stance.
“The film shamelessly packages Japan as a victim of war, and stops short of talking about why Tokyo was bombed … The film adds all kinds of metaphors, but they lack sincerity on truly reflecting on the war,” one film blogger wrote on Weibo.
Another influencer with more than 5.3 million Weibo followers acknowledged Miyazaki’s antiwar stance but also said “his view on history has limits”.
“Yes, the Japanese people also suffered a lot, but that’s because they lost the war. What if they had won?” he wrote.
But many Chinese viewers praised Miyazaki’s visuals and storytelling and recognised the complexity of the filmmaker’s reflections on the war.
“The visual language of Miyazaki’s work is rich, cohesive, and sincere,” one Douban reviewer wrote, rating the film highly.
A mainland-based political scientist, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic, said that over the past decade, some criticisms of Japan had become more extreme as part of a revival of populism and ultra-leftist views in the country.
“If it was 10 or 20 years ago, no one would judge or criticise Miyazaki’s works with the angle [that we see today],” the scholar said, adding that “the public understands that he is not defending militarism”.
“But now we see some with ultranationalist and leftist views judge works of art, and it is sometimes extreme, especially in recent years,” the scholar said.
According to the scholar, these more extreme views were related to Beijing’s tightly controlled historical narratives, which opposed anything that did not toe the official line or support national rejuvenation.
The scholar warned that the harsh stance adopted by Beijing could “hurt objective presentation of history” and reinforce nationalist sentiment.
The scholar noted that this trend paralleled the tensions in Sino-Japanese ties, including China’s “intense opposition” to Japan’s Fukushima water release and its criticism of closer ties between Tokyo and Washington.
“The sharp criticism is obviously a signal to civil society … and such an attitude has quite an influence on those radical voices,” the scholar said.
Some viewers have called for more nuance in assessing Miyazaki’s works.
In a review published on WeChat that has earned around 100,000 views, the author argued that Miyazaki’s film was critical of Japan’s role in the war.
“At the end of the film, [the protagonist’s action] shows that Miyazaki is criticising the ruling power’s control over ideology and the military, as well as their greed. He’s not targeting the people,” the article said.
Cao Xuenan, assistant professor of cultural studies at Chinese University, said the film was “very easy to interpret in whichever direction one wants” because it relied so heavily on symbolism.
“Any interpretation of a very open text shows us much more about the mindset of the interpreter, instead of the director’s intention,” Cao said.
Although Miyazaki’s earlier works also touched on complex themes, they had not been the target of nationalist critique “because there is not much room for such interpretation”, she said.