These are "Makkuro-Kurosuke" from My Neighbor Totoro, and also "Susuwatari" from Spirited Away. The translated version of their names often disappoints me, because it's just "Soot Sprites". Soot Sprites.... I got the sentiments, but it kills the subtlety of Japanese goodness when I see the word "sprites", -a supernatural entity in European mythology (i.e. Wikipedia). To us Japanese, we see souls, and spirits in everyday things, including dust or soot. We don't see fairies, we don't see … [Read more...]
Archives for October 2015
Yubaba Miso Soup
This is Yubaba, from the film Spirited Away. She looks so scary to me; her head is bigger than a screen! But what I found scarier than her physical appearance is her magical skill of stealing people's names, or I should say, stealing their identities. To me, she represents a modern corporation. When you work in a corporation, you get paid monthly, but they also "own" you monthly. If you ever worked at a company, especially in Japan, you know what it feels like to lose your identity little by … [Read more...]
No Face Yakisoba
This is a character from the film Spirited Away, one of my favorite films of all time. His name is No-Face; the spirit of having no personality. No Face is wildly known as "No Face" to some of you, but in Japanese, the spirit's name is actually "Kaonashi", and it simply means, "faceless". To me, "Kaonashi" slightly differs from the "No Face" connotation, because he has no face of his own, so he has to absorb the faces of those around him, in order to pseudo-exist in his pseudo-reality, by … [Read more...]