Title: The Tale of the Princess Kaguya
Run time: 137 minutes
Released: 2013
Director: Isao Takahata
Studio: Studio Ghibli
This is Isao Takahata’s last film and maybe his best. It’s based on Japanese folktale The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, the oldest extant Japanese prose narrative.
The 10th century tale is standard fairy tale stuff. A childless old bamboo cutter finds a girl the size of his thumb hidden inside a bamboo shoot. He and his wife raise her into a beautiful and enchanting young woman, and she captures the attention of several high ranking courtiers and even the emperor. After refusing several proposals of marriage, it’s revealed that she is from the moon, and a procession of moon deities whisks her back away leaving her parents in tears.
Through water-painted scenes reminiscent of traditional Japanese art, Takahata tells a story about parenthood. The old bamboo cutter and his wife are enraptured to have a beautiful daughter. She grows magically fast, and the bamboo cutter does everything in his power to try to give her the future that he believes the gods have ordained for her.
The ending is a clear metaphor for the loss of a young child. Takahata has said as much in an interview. I’ve read that some people had trouble understanding the ending, but I think that metaphor is simple and maybe inherent even in the folktale that inspired the movie.
Kaguya, for her part, reminds me a lot of Taeko from Only Yesterday. They’re both willful girls, which can be said about a lot of Ghibli protagonists. But they also share the more specific preference for the city over the country despite the desires of their parents. Though it should also be said that Kaguya’s parents are doting and definitely well meaning in contrast to Taeko’s colder, less involved parents.
According to a conversation included in the documentary Kingdom of Dreams and Madness, production on Kaguya began in 2006. By 2011, it was intended to be released as a double feature alongside Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises. At that point, it seemed likely that Takahata and Miyazaki would both be retiring so debuting their last films together had the potential to be quite an event.
At the beginning of the project, Ghibli founder and producer Toshio Suzuki assigned Yoshiaki Nishimura to be the producer for Kaguya. Suzuki had been producer of Miyazaki and Takahata at the same time before, and he knew it would be too much to try to wrangle both demanding directors at once.
By the conversations recorded in 2011, several key members of the studio, Suzuki and Miyazaki in particular, were beginning to question whether Takahata even wanted to finish the film. Scheduled for a Summer 2012 debut, Takahata’s team wasn’t even close to finished storyboarding the movie. One day, Suzuki visited both men to get their approval on movie posters for the releases. Miyazaki spent about 10 minutes picking his poster. Suzuki met with Takahata for two hours.
The final result is a spectacle worth the time it took to make. It’s a beautiful and penetrating portrayal of parenthood and loss. It’s also the most expensive Japanese movie ever made, with a budget of $49.3 million. Unfortunately, despite amazing reviews, it only made back about half of what it cost to create. However, it did receive a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. It was the first anime film not directed by Miyazaki to receive this distinction. It is one of only five anime films to be nominated since the award’s inception in 2001.
I think, like a lot of Takahata’s other works, it’s not nearly as popular or well known as it deserves to be. As one of Takahata’s best works, if not the best of his works, it should hold a place of honor for fans of Ghibli and anime in general. My next post will be wrapping up Takahata. Then we’ll be moving on to Hayao Miyazaki, the second to last director I’ll be discussing. Until tomorrow!
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