The relationship between parents and children in Japanese society based on the material of Hayao Miyazaki's film "Gone with the Ghosts"

Izotova Nadezda Nikolaevna ORCID: 0000-0002-2817-004X Doctor of Cultural Studies Professor of the Department of Japanese, Korean, Mongolian and Indonesian Languages at Moscow State Institute of International Relations 76 Prospekt Vernadskogo str., Moscow, 119454, Russia izotova@list.ru Other publications by this author

Sladkova Ekaterina Viktorovna Senior Lecturer of the Department of the Japanese, Korean, Indonesian and Mongolian languages 76 Prospekt Vernadskogo str., Moscow, 119454, Russia ek.sladkova@my.mgimo.ru

Introduction

In the last two decades, Japanese mass culture, the main driving force of this country's "soft power", has increasingly attracted the attention of researchers around the world. Japanese animation as a universal means of transmitting cultural information is of particular interest due to the visual and stylistic originality of its form and content, its enormous popularity, and its significant influence on the popular culture of other countries ^[18-21]. The specificity of Japanese anime is largely determined by the fact that this type of mass art not only entertains, but also translates certain values, images and symbolic meanings of traditional Japanese culture, reflects the peculiarities of the Japanese worldview.

Russian researchers E.S. Vorobyova ^[2], B.A. Ivanov ^[4], E.L. Katasonova ^[5], V.Yu. Leonov ^[6], E.S. Sycheva ^[12] and others are studying the Japanese subculture of anime. One cannot disagree with E.S. Vorobyova, who notes that "the popularity of Japanese anime as an art genre is a cultural phenomenon comparable to the phenomenon of the "Japanese economic miracle"" ^{[2, p. 816]}.

Hayao Miyazaki is rightfully considered one of those who made anime a vivid phenomenon not only of Japanese, but also of world culture ^{[1, 16-17]}. For many people living outside Japan, Miyazaki's films became the first acquaintance with Japanese animation. His "My Neighbor Totoro", "Princess Mononoke" and, of course, "Gone with the Ghosts" are the property not only of world cinema, but also of world culture.

As for the scientific works devoted to his work, there are very few of them, and they are often informative and descriptive in nature ^{[7, 8, 13]}.

"Gone with the Ghosts" – the Japanese world in miniature

The feature film "Gone with the Ghosts", shot at the studio "Ghibli" in 2001, is included in the list of the best animated films in the history of cinema. In 2002, "Gone with the Ghosts" won the Golden Bear prize at the Berlin Film Festival, and in 2003 won the Oscar in the nomination "Best animated feature film". Until 2020, he held the record for the highest-grossing film in the history of Japan, until he lost first place in the collections of the film version of the manga "The Blade that Slays Demons" directed by Haruo Sotozaki [CINEMA2 (Cinema News. One hundred highest-grossing films). URL: http://www.kogyotsushin.com/archives/alltime/ ].

The film attracts attention not only with its extremely fascinating fairy-tale plot, but also with a wide range of topical issues of modern society touched upon in it: fathers and children, the ruthless attitude of man to the environment, the peculiarities of the management system at Japanese enterprises, the dangers posed by consumer society.

When creating the film, the director set the task of "clearly depicting the modern world full of uncertainties" ^{[25, p. 230]}. And if V.G. Belinsky spoke about the novel "Eugene Onegin" as an "encyclopedia of Russian life", then the world into which the characters of the animated film "Gone with Ghosts" fall, it seems possible to us, following the writer Tomohiko Morimi, who works in the ranobe genre (light novel), to call the Japanese "world in miniature" ^{[10, p. 202]}. According to T. Morimi, "the world in miniature" is the place where the events of the film unfold, i.e., yuya, a public bathhouse where countless deities and spirits come to relieve fatigue ^{[22, p. 31]}.

The cartoon hides a lot of mysteries. On the question and answer sites Yahoo , GOO, OK WAVE, you can find up to ten thousand questions on the topic of "Gone with the ghosts". In Japan, several collections have been published with comments by researchers who try to interpret various points that cause confusion to the audience. The creators of the cartoon leave much to the discretion of the audience and do not reveal the full background of the characters ^[9]. It seems that there are peculiar "hooks" placed throughout the entire space of the film, clinging to which the viewer can untangle a tangle of personal problems, get to their essence, resolve perplexities, and maybe even heal his childhood injuries. The purpose of this article is to consider one of these "trigger hooks" – the topic of the relationship between children and parents.

Achieving this goal involves solving the following tasks: to characterize the images of the parents of the main character of the cartoon Chihiro, including from the point of view of Japanese viewers; to determine what goals the director set when creating the image of "inadequate parents"; to describe the beliefs associated with "spirit abduction" in Japan; to analyze the representation of the image of the main character Chihiro. The material for the study was not only the film itself, but also interviews with the director, participants in the process of making the film, journalists, viewers, and posts on social networks. The research methodology is based on an interdisciplinary socio-cultural approach, a method of cultural background interpretation and linguistic and cultural commentary.

Images of Chihiro's parents: reviews from Japanese viewers

Due to the highly contextual nature of Japanese culture, "many of the semiotic concepts that Miyazaki organically weaves into the fabric of his narrative are read by Japanese viewers on an intuitive level and enrich the semantic sphere of anime with additional semantic allusions" ^[3].

When watching numerous posts on social networks that are published after regular screenings of the film on Japanese television, it is noteworthy that the parents of the main character Chihiro, although their presence on the screen takes only about ten minutes, leave a serious and even indelible mark in the soul of the audience. Many people note that they were traumatized by meeting Chihiro's parents, despite the fact that they are gendai no re:SHINZO: "the image of typical modern parents." It should be noted that the appearance and behavior of Chihiro's parents, whom the audience calls imadoki no gendaiko a "typical modern child", is radically different from the images of parents in other works by X. Miyazaki. For example, a gentle, kind mother, whose smile dispels all the worries of the main characters in "My Neighbor Totoro"; a mother behind whom children are like behind a stone wall from "Laputa's Heavenly Castle"; an energetic, "her boyfriend in the board" mother Risa from "Ponyo Fish on the Cliff"; an understanding, kind dad from "My Neighbor Totoro". The most common epithets that the audience awards Chihiro's parents are: kudzu "bastards", "scum", "trash" (interestingly, the literal meaning of the word kudzu, i.e. "garbage", "garbage" corresponds to the original meaning of the Russian equivalents), hij:shiki "inadequate", i.e. leading They don't behave the way parents should, "indifferent", "callous". Outraged viewers list the "criminal actions" of the parents: they are ready to leave Chihiro alone in an unfamiliar place, do not even try to calm the frightened child, do not lend her a helping hand when she hardly crosses a dangerous place. Mom asks Chihiro not to cling to her when the girl clings to her in fear, does not look back at her daughter when she wants to talk to her, does not try to slow down to let the breathless child catch up with her.

Dad, who at first glance seems friendly to his daughter, also, according to the audience, shows "inadequacy". It is unpleasant for them to watch the picture when the father, who should be the mainstay of the family, rushes headlong along an unfamiliar forest road, wanting to demonstrate how well his four-wheel drive Audi holds the grip on the road. The audience characterizes the pope's behavior as "irresponsible childishness", "selfish boyishness".   And finally, the apogee of parents' inadequacy, according to the Japanese, can be observed in the episode when they are last seen in human form. We are talking about a scene in which Chihiro's parents, without waiting for the owner of the food shop, begin to greedily eat the dishes on the counter without asking. Judging by the reviews, this episode is more striking than the indifferent behavior of mom and the irresponsibility of dad. The key words that viewers use are katte-ni "without asking" and gatsu-gatsu taberu "greedily pouncing on food." Japanese warps the fact that the parents does not bother the likelihood that their actions can meiwaku-o kakeru "harass" the owners of establishments and how they looked like pigs, absorb food, whereas should be a model of good behaviour, example ["" (Why did Chihiro's parents turn into pigs in the movie "Gone with the Ghosts"?) URL: https://togetter.com/li/998179 ].

Why did the director decide to "reward" the main character with "inadequate parents from the point of view of fulfilling their role"?  In the book "Toxic Parents" by American psychotherapist Susan Forward, a definition of "inadequate parents" is given. According to her, the behavior of such parents is more like the behavior of irresponsible children ^{[14, p.20]}. Chihiro's irresponsible dad and mom, who, judging by her actions and according to the film's character designer Masashi Ando, sees herself more as dad's girlfriend than the mother of a ten-year-old girl, meet this definition ^{[22, p.112]}.

According to S. Forward, unlike parents who commit verbal or physical abuse, inadequate parents harm the child not by action, but by inaction. By not fulfilling their duties, "such parents deprive the child of an adequate model of parental role, without which it is difficult to develop emotionally" ^{[14, p.19]}. The psychotherapist notes that with such parents the child grows up faster. Maybe here lies the answer to the question of why the director gave the main character parents who did not grow up to be them. It can be assumed that this move allows the director's plan to be realized – to allow the heroine to grow up and not turn into a kidaruto (from the English kid+ adult) "an overgrown and never grown up child", as happened with the huge baby Bo, the son of Yubaba, who can be included in another category of toxic parent according to the classification of C. Forward – a controlling parent raising a child in an atmosphere of "hyperprotection".

The designer of the characters of the film M. Ando confirms that x. Miyazaki intentionally created a similar "setting", i.e. in this case, the conditions for the development of the action in the film. The director needed such "detached" parents, whom he eventually "removed" altogether, took both out of the field of view of the main character and out of the field of view of the audience ^{[22, p.115]}.

The indignation of the audience at the actions of parents that contradict the ideals of restraint and asceticism indicates that these ideals are alive in Japanese society, despite the apparent victory of the values of consumer society, against which director X. rebels in his works. Miyazaki. It seems completely natural to the audience for the further development of events, during which the parents of the main character are turned into pigs. They repeat the same words that the director puts into the mouth of the sorceress Yubaba, by whose will this transformation took place: that:zen no mukui "and it serves you right." They say that "this is the end of those irresponsible and selfish adults who are stuck in the bubble era" ["" (Why did Chihiro's parents turn into pigs in the movie "Gone with the Ghosts"?) URL: https://togetter.com/li/998179 ], the main motto of which could be voiced with an advertising slogan from the recent Russian past – "take everything from life."

The director himself believes that turning parents into pigs is "not sarcasm or an attempt at moralizing, but a real event." And now, according to him, when the era of the "soap bubble" economy is long over, there are a lot of "pigs" around, who continue to "insatiably absorb" garbage, for example, exclusive or branded items ^{[25, p.259]}. 

If the transformation of parents into pigs seems to be a completely understandable development of the plot, then sio tayo: "an indifferent, detached attitude" (lit. the "salty approach") to the daughter, a ten-year-old girl, is at least puzzling. The audience trying to figure out what's the matter, make different assumptions, for example that Chihiro – child mother from his first marriage, or that she caused the death of his older brother, who then appeared in the form of the boy Haku in a world ruled by the sorceress Yubaba ["" (Why did Chihiro's parents turn into pigs in the movie "Gone with the Ghosts"?) URL: https://togetter.com/li/998179 ]. But it's more like just Toshi densetsu letters. "urban legends", "tales", which the film "Gone with the Ghosts" has acquired in many ways.

It is likely that the mystery of the parents' indifferent attitude towards the main character can be solved if you pay attention to the original title of the film""letters. "Seng and Chihiro, hidden by the kami spirits."

Beliefs related to Kamikakushi "abduction by spirits"

According to popular beliefs, for a long time in Japan, the term kamikakushi, letters. "kami (gods) hide" meant stories related to the sudden disappearance of people and, above all, children ^[24]. It turns out that "abduction by spirits" was explained by real cases of missing children, which in reality could be "rathi" abduction", "iede "escape from home", "kutiberasi "reduction in the number of mouths", i.e. infanticide, murder in the womb or murder of already born children, the result of such a terrible phenomenon as "mabiki, letters. "weeding", "thinning", i.e. "getting rid of children". Mabiki was not uncommon in Japan until the Meiji era. This was due to extreme poverty, which did not allow the family to feed an extra eater, or the presence of a physical disability in a child.

 Japanese economist Nobuo Ikeda writes that in Japan since 1700 there has been no natural population growth for 150 years, it "hung" at the figure of 26 million, which was due, among other things, to the spread of such a radical way of solving economic problems in the family as mabiki ^[23].

During the Edo period, mabiki was prohibited by law, but the murderers of their own children were not punished. In conditions of high infant mortality, the child was not considered as a full-fledged member of society. Parents who are interested in the Japanese education system, including in Russia, have heard that in Japan a child under seven years old is given a certain freedom, without constraining him with unnecessary prohibitions. Based on a well-known statement, Nanatsu Made Kami no uchi letters. "up to seven years old in the realm of kami," they believe that in a Japanese family, a child is considered something like a deity. But it turns out that this installation has a rather frightening historical background. Namely: until recently, in Japan, it was believed that a child under the age of seven did not yet belong to this world, he was on the border of two worlds in the sphere of action, responsibility of kami. In case of extreme poverty, in a hungry year, or if the child, due to some flaw, could not benefit the community in the future, the parents "returned" him to the kami, resorting to mabiki.  The action of mabika, by the way, was indicated by the euphemisms kaesu, modos "to return".  If the parents did not dare to "thin out" the child, the community could "help" them in this.   If we take into account the small chance of survival for a child under the age of seven, then the holiday "seven-five-three", when they pray for the safe maturation of children of three, five and seven years of age, is filled with a special, sinister meaning. The successful maturation and development of children in Japan has long been the lot of the privileged classes, among whom this holiday became widespread. In the village community at the local Shinto temple, the child was given a "sign recognizing him as a member of the community, parish" only at the age of seven, he was also not assigned to the Buddhist community until the age of seven. And children who died before the age of seven were buried not in a common cemetery, but somewhere in the forest, in the mountains ^[24].

Although the main character of the film is already 10 years old, and even by medieval standards she should have been recognized as a full-fledged person, but the callousness and indifference of her parents, the unwillingness to notice her, I think, can cause the viewer to associate with the desire to "return" the kami of the hindrance child, which stood for kamikushi in medieval Japan. However, in those years, the "return" of the child to the world of kami could be justified by the extremely difficult financial situation of the family. And in the case of Chihiro's parents, their desire to "surrender" the child's calloused eyes, which, apparently, is secretly felt by the audience and causes them to shiver, is rather due to the parents' concentration on themselves, on satisfying their own desires, which they demonstrate the first ten minutes of the film until They remain in human form for the time being.

"Send your beloved child on a journey" (Japanese proverb)

         H. Miyazaki in his interviews says that he makes films for different age groups: "Ponyo Fish on the cliff" or "My neighbor Totoro" for the youngest, "Mononoke hime" for teenagers, and "Gone with the Ghosts" especially for girls of ten years old who are no longer small children, but not yet they entered the time of rebellious youth. What are ordinary ten-year-old girls who grew up in an ordinary family in the post-bubble era?  Here I would like to refer to the words of the director himself. In response to the interviewer's question, what is the main character of the film, H. Miyazaki characterizes her as a "nondescript" busu, an "inert mumble, a smudge" with a "sour, dissatisfied, pouty face" hatyamukureta kao. By the way, her older friend Rin, who took over Chihiro's patronage, calls her a "goofball", a "klutz", or even a "goofball". The director says that the children, who are fenced and protected (from the outside world), live as if in some kind of fog, have a vague idea of life, and they have nothing left to do but hiewana dziga-o hidaika saseru "to cultivate their frail ego to a huge size." According to the director, Chihiro's "thin, puny arms and legs" and her sour expression, which says, "I'm not so easy to cheer up," symbolize this dangerous process ^{[25, p.231]}. 

H. Miyazaki deliberately sends such an unsuitable ordinary modern girl on a journey during which she gains the strength to live. She finds herself in a magical world, which, for all its fabulousness, shows the viewer a clear picture of reality. When Chihiro finds herself in a desperate situation, then letters are found in her. "they boil up like a wave", resilience in the face of danger, the ability to navigate in a changed situation, forces that she herself did not even suspect. She suddenly notices that life itself begins to act in her, which gives her the strength to be courageous and take decisive action. Chihiro finds herself thrown into a world where the good and the bad in the characters are mixed. She goes through life school, ascetic practice, learns friendship and sacrifice, shows wisdom and, having freed her parents from magical captivity, safely returns to her former world. According to the director, Chihiro is an ordinary girl who does not possess any special external data or rare mental qualities. But her main feature, a kind of "qualification" (shikaku), which she possesses and which made her the heroine of the film, was the "ability not to be absorbed" by the world with its temptations, as happened to her parents. This ability, says H. Miyazaki, there is a flour of "untouchability", "purity" in her, which helped to reveal both the vitality and inner beauty that shone on Chihiro's face in the second half of the film ^{[22, p. 77]}.

         So, we can say that the main task that the director set himself was to help open up this inner life force that is in every person, especially in a child, and for this he sent the heroine on a journey full of trials. It should be added that not only Chihiro was sent on a journey that ended with gaining the ability to stand firmly on her feet, but also an overgrown baby Bo, the son of a loving (his child) without memory Yubaba. It is quite possible that the director acted in the spirit of the proverb "Kawai: ko-ni tabi-o sasei": "send your beloved child on a journey", which in the old days was not a pleasant entertainment, but rather a means of gaining life experience and developing perseverance of character.

         In the 12th issue of the  "The textbook of the studio Ghibli", which contains interviews of the creators of the film, voice actors, viewers who were at the premiere of the film at the age of the main character, we can read an interview with a young writer Tisato Abe. She says that those who were Chihiro's age at the time of the film's release are now in their thirties, and they belong to the generation of millennials, for whom the name "Yutori sadai" is fixed in Japan, "the relaxed generation".  This is the same generation whose representatives received "Yutori kyo:iku "education according to a simplified program" in contrast to previous generations who groaned under the burden of "tsumekomi kyo:ICU "education based on rote learning". This generation of young people, born in the period from 1987 to 2004, is "famous" for the fact that its representatives "do not know how to withstand the blows of fate", "are ready to give up immediately when faced with difficulties", it is not easy for them to stay in one workplace for a long time.   According to T. Abe, the children of the Yutori generation have now become adults and "are forced to fight with the very stormy waves of the sea of life", which the main character of the film fought at one time. Recalling her experience of watching the film for the first time with her parents at the cinema, T.Abe says that the film has become "food for her mind and heart" for many years. She followed the events that took place on the screen and felt that she was overcoming all difficulties with Chihiro, so vivid was the "effect of presence" and a clear association of herself with the heroine ^{[22, p. 77]}.  

If the audience, who were at the premiere at the age of Chihiro and associated themselves with the main character, including from the point of view of relationships with their parents, were able to find in this film not only food for thought and spiritual insights, but also a kind of support on the path of life, then we can say that the purpose of the artist who created the film, who feels responsible for the spiritual and physical health of children and adolescents has been achieved. This is the main result that we came to in the course of the study.