Ma (間)

| By Manal Safeer | June 13, 2022 |

“It’s called ‘ma’. Emptiness. It’s there intentionally.”

The Secret World of Arrietty (2010)

When we are no longer children, it is the playing we will miss. It is the plump and heartful laughter that thrums in the sweet, golden apple boughs, orange-petalled cheeks full with crisp plums and honeydew. It is old magic that children have in their hearts, that lingers in the gleaming brooks and riverbends. And it is Miyazaki who returns to us this childish beauty.

Hayao Miyazaki spent his childhood in Bunkyō, a ward in silver-glinted Tokyo. His father, Katsuji Miyazaki, manufactured aircraft parts. The thought of flight enchanted young Miyazaki, to glide atop the poplar trees, for the wind to blow beneath his limbs. A dewy-eyed boy, he lived cradled by honeyed fables and twinkling tales, The Little Prince and How Do You Live? pressed tightly to his chest, these writers’ words silvery and dreamful. But as he grew, the illustrations began slipping off the pages before Miyazaki, spellbound as if he were a young boy again.

By 1974, Miyazaki had worked for many Japanese animation studios, telling stories like those of the writers who raised him. His manga strip Kaze no tani no Naushika (1982; Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind) takes place in desolate lands devoured by a dark, poisonous forest, ruled by snap-toothed, blood-eyed beasts. Nausicaa, an iron-skinned warrior, glides through the Valley of the Wind, studying the deserted lands. She is pink-hearted and steel-minded, traits with which he has since sculpted all his heroines. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind was the first of his works that revealed to the world his illusive, charming manner of illustration, though it was Tonari no Totoro (1988; My Neighbour Totoro) that became his defining piece.

My Neighbour Totoro is the story of two young sisters, Satsuki and Mei. They befriend the good-hearted woodland spirits that sleep in the secret forests across from their countryside home. The children chant and sway with the twinkling treeland creatures, as their young hearts set sail, laden with the grief of their dying mother. Satsuki and Mei are bright-eyed, lively children, leaping and bounding through the thick, sweet air of the Japanese countryside. Yet, even in their glitter-eyed innocence, it is Satsuki and Mei’s wisdom that heavies the viewers’ chests. As much as their small throats ache and pinkish cheeks stain, as much as they scrape their knees on barbed wire and stone, hot, bubbling red-stain gushing beneath their frilled stockings, Satsuki and Mei hold their arms out wide and stand before their heartache with their chins held high.

But it is not the story of My Neighbour Totoro that rekindles the fresh, childish beauty that streams beneath our sown and pleated skin as the years roll on–this skin that is slung upon these bones that wither and split. It is the silence Miyazaki hears.

My Neighbour Totoro (1988)

Each character Miyazaki carves with his still, sculpting hands, speaks the Earth’s language. Miyazaki has shown this in each of his films, through transitional pillow shots, created by Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu, in which the characters silently sit, stand, or travel amidst broad and charming natural landscapes, momentarily isolated from the storyline.

Beneath the pine trees, leaden with slumber, Mei bounds along the mud paths, and we hear only the rustling of the leaves, the trilling of the cricket, the chattering of the songbird. In his mother’s car, parked at his new home in the Japanese countryside, cradled in the wooden, leafed limbs of the wise maple, Shō, of Kari-gurashi no Arrietti (2010; The Secret World of Arrietty) rests his eyes as his head falls back, listening as the wind pushes along the still and warm grasslands. Soft-hearted, gray-haired Sophie, of Hauru no Ugoku Shiro (2004; Howl’s Moving Castle), is silent and peaceful as she watches the sea shimmer and lip the coastline. Kiki, the young sorcerer of Majo no takkyubin (1989; Kiki’s Delivery Service), lies in the fresh, grassy hills with the sweet wildflowers, counting the clouds that saunter and stretch. In a 2002 interview, Roger Ebert, renowned film critic, tells Miyazaki he enjoys these momentary silences, describing how each character will “just sit for a moment, or they will sigh, or look into a running stream.” Miyazaki responds, “we have a word for that in Japanese. It’s called ma. Emptiness. It’s there intentionally.”

In each magical world occupied by Miyazaki’s characters, there is ample time to hear the treelands, the valleys, the hills. Though Miyazaki’s storylines are dynamic – they mount and sink, leap and bound, glister and whirl – his characters always find their roots and return to the Earth. They, like us, find certainty in this world, this stone and clay. When we are born, the trees wait with their branches, like arms, reaching out as the soil beneath them prepares for our steps. Then we are children, and all we know is to run and play, to let this Earth look after us. Then we have grown up, and we must remind ourselves of where we came from. When we retire to our beds with our limbs aching from the day’s labor, we remember that these limbs have burned before, when we as children ran bare-legged along the golden, dappled paths, cool sweetwater glistening atop the sleepy woodlands. Like Mei, we amble along the mud roads, hearing the trilling cricket, the rustling leaves, the chattering songbird. Like Shō, we rest our eyes and tilt our heads back, listening as the wind pushes along these grasslands. Like Sophie, we are silent as we watch the sea shimmer and lip the shoreline. And like Miyazaki, we know we are only children this Earth looks after.