What is Totoro? He’s an obake that represents Satsuki and Mei’s forest
Totoro in “My Neighbor Totoro” Is endearing, so we tend to forget that he is a supernatural creature/deity/spirit/monster/troll. He IS the forest by the community Satsuki and Mei live and doesn’t belong to the world people operate. That’s why he disappears at the end of the story, instead of becoming friends with Mei and Satsuki.
How did Hayao Miyazaki created Totoro? What does he represent?
In a book “ジブリの教科書 (Ghibli textbook) 3: My Neighbor Totoro,” (Bungei Shunju Publishing, 2013) director Hayao Miyazaki explains how he came up with Totoro and wrote the story about Mei, Satsuki and Totoro.
What is nature for Hayao Miyazaki?
…You could say that darkness is the opposite of light, and darkness is negative whereas light is positive. But I don’t buy such simplistic dualism…For Japanese, gods live in the darkness. Sometimes they come to the light, but they mostly hide somewhere in the thick of the forest, or deep in the mountain…the whole thing is eerie, uncanny and frightening… You feel and know that there is “something” in the thick of forest. You don’t know exactly what it is, but you know there’s something. That is awe, that’s respect to nature. (Translator note: “god” in Japanese is closer to mythological gods who represent natural elements.)
This world does not exist only for humans. I am skeptical about the idea to “preserve forests,” when it’s promoted by economic efficiency theory that claims such actions will eventually benefit humans. I am not persuaded that’s how nature should be regarded. We have some darkness in our mind, and it’s somehow connected to the dark side of the forests. If we eliminate such darkness from our forests, we could lose our own darkness. I think it will make our existence very shallow.
Who is Totoro?
Miyazaki had the idea to make movie about a girl and an “おばけ (obake)” that lives in a forest since the 70’s. The name “Totoro” is short for “Tokorozawa obake.” Tokorozawa is the name of the town he lives in. It’s about 60-120 minutes from Tokyo that still preserves the kind of natural environment you see in “Totoro.”
So Totoro is obake. But what is it? It’s a difficult word to translate. The easiest translation is “ghost,” but obake is not necessarily about dead people/animals. It could be a spirit or supernatural existence that takes some imaginary animal-like shape so that people can relate to it. Obake is usually scary or evil, but some of them that appear in traditional Japanese folklores are sweet, a little silly, and/and capriciously nice to people.
What kind of “obake” is Totoro?
Totoro never returns the umbrella Satsuki let him use… it shouldn’t occur to Totoro: “hey I need to return this to her.” It’s the thinking of humans, but not Totoro’s. Plus, why would Totoro mind getting wet from rain? Rain helps plants to grow, and Totoro is a ghost (spirit) of the forest…He simply enjoyed the sound raindrops made, but he never thought that he’d have to give the umbrella back to Satsuki.
Totoro is helping Satsuki and Mei by just being there. When Mei got lost, Totoro arranged Cat-bus for Satsuki, but never went with her. I felt strongly that he shouldn’t go with her…Totoro is there, and that should be enough.
When Satsuki and Mei find out that their mom couldn’t be released from the hospital to spend the weekend with them as planned, they feel so disappointed. When they come home, they cry, they try to play but they somehow fall asleep on the floor…they just ended up closing their eyes in a vacant room with no pillows, nor blankets…and that’s how I think I survived a similarly sad situation when I was their age. I like the scene a lot because I felt I could still “smell” how kids could deal with an enormous amount of pain, in a natural state.