Ellen muses on Moomin and Miyazaki

The mutual fascination between the Finns and the Japanese has interested me ever since I spent a year in Helsinki.

Ellen (Percival), currently an undergraduate student in London, sent me this excerpt from a paper she's written, quite rightly presuming that I'd be very keen to reead it. Now I'm sharing it with you. Thanks Ellen for letting me post this.





"Lastly, although I have not been able to conduct research in any way
other than through books, I have long been intrigued by the Japanese
passion for Moomins. Certainly, Moomins are kawaii, which explains a
chunk of their appeal, but it seemed to me that the connection ran
deeper. As the virtual museum on moomin.com attests, when Tove and
Tooti travelled to the region in the 1970s, the Japanese publisher
believed that the Moomins’ popularity was due to a lost sense of
togetherness experienced by broken families: the Moomin family offered
“a rewarding combination of freedom and safety.” The atomisation of
Japanese society has certainly been a hot topic in national discourse
during recent decades. For centuries communal life was centred around
family houses known as ie, which existed both architecturally and in
the form of the extended family, living communally or in multiple
dwellings, but possessing one ancestral home (Hendry, 2003). Hence,
isolated, urban living does represent a dramatic shift, although I
doubt this is the only element at play.
"Other affinities may spring from Japanese religion. The pictograms
for Shinto, Japan’s native religion, translate literally as “the way
of kami”. Kami has several meanings. It can imply spirits of nature,
such as rivers, trees, rocks or the ocean; the deities dwelling in
these objects, or a collective, supernatural ancestor spirit
protecting an ie (Yusa, 2002). Human beings, such as emperors, can
also be kami. Kami are not necessarily good; anything which is
possessed of superior power, or which is particularly awe-inspiring
could be called kami. Thus, it seems to me that although characters in
Jansson’s books are not kami, they have some of the same strange,
liminal, nature-based qualities. A number of Hayao Miyazaki’s films
deal implicitly with Shinto and kami, not least ‘My Neighbour Totoro’
and ‘Spirited Away’. Having seen these I would also argue that, from a
visual perspective, Jansson’s characters and kami share an affinity.
"Japan’s ‘second’ religion is Buddhism. The Buddha taught that sorrow
and discomfort (dukkha; ku in Japanese) resulted from craving and
attachment, the catch being that everything in the universe is
impermanent and changing (the state of anicca; mujō in Japanese).
Thus, things break down, fade and die, including beloved moments,
objects, and the bodies of oneself and others. It seems to me that
Jansson’s Moomin books, particularly the later volumes, deal with
themes not dissimilar to these, and attempt to show a path through
loneliness and suffering. The landscape of Moominvalley and its
surroundings is often evocative of mujō, for instance in autumn,
during storms, or at the end of summer."