New Ghibli Movie: Kokuriko Zaka Kara (From Up on Poppy Hill)
Posted by: Apple on 
Aug 22nd, 2011 | 
Filed under: What's New?
This post is created by Apple and Kirin. It’s our collaboration post! 
Apple’s part starts from here…
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I just got to know from my friend that there is a new Ghibli movie! I didn’t know that! I’ve just searched for the trailer on Youtube and here it is!
According to Wiki, this animation takes place in 1963 in Yokohama. I’m very happy because I’ve always liked to see old Japan~~ 
There’s a nice, sweet, nostalgic feeling about seeing old Japan even though I wasn’t not even born yet. Haha!
Well, anyway, the 2 main characters are a 16 year old girl, Umi, and a 17 year old boy, Shun.
Every morning, Umi raises a signal flag facing the sea, signifying a prayer for safe voyages. Shun will always see this flag from the sea as he rides a tugboat to school. I also read that Umi’s father went missing after a freak boating accident. Then, I saw a longer trailer where they had this conversation:
Umi: If you hate me, just tell me clearly.
Shun takes out a faded photograph and read out his real father’s name.
Shun: You and I are siblings.
Umi: Eh? What should we do?
I have no idea.
What is this about?
But like many other Ghibli movies, I feel, it’s not about the story. It’s about the feelings that you get when you watch the whole animation along with its usually very awesome accompanying music.
Honestly, I have never really understood fully any of the Ghibili animations I watch. I just enjoy the magic of each animation. If you ask me to tell you what “Spirited Away” is about, I can’t really say. It’s hard to summarise a personal experience. If I try to explain and put it in words, you wouldn’t even want to watch it. It’d be something like, “Oh. It’s about this girl, who got spirited away into another world, and came back later.”
So…I’m thinking this is perhaps why my friend hasn’t replied me on Facebook yet when I asked her what this movie was about. Haha!
Oh! She has replied! In her own words:
“The movie is about after WW2 in Yokohama. People started to bulid new things and have new ideas. But the heroine named Umi tried to find good things in old ones.She is very kind and a hardworker!!!”
Sounds interesting! Hope everyone can watch it soon!
Kirin’s part starts from here…
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I knew Kokuriko zaka…was released in July. But I have not seen it yet. I only saw NHK TV program that illustrated how this movie was created. As you may have noticed, it’s scripted by Hayao Miyazaki and directed by Goro Miyazaki, a son of Hayao’s. Speaking of Goro Miyazaki, you may remember Tales from Earthsea (Japanese title is “Gedo Senki”) was directed by him. It was his first work and unfortunately it was not evaluated as good as Hayao’s works. Then, this Kokuriko zaka (sorry I’m not familiar with its English title) was his second direction. I thought Hayao and Goro are working happily before I saw this program. (It’s possible the video will be deleted soon so watch it while it is available. Even though you don’t understand Japanese, you can see what Ghibli animation studio is like, how the animators of Kokuriko zaka were working for the movie, and the bad mood of Hayao and Goro…and etc.)
But the truth is…Hayao doesn’t admit that Goro is a good director. He seems so frustrated with his son because he knows how he would do it better when his son is suffering from how to express the feelings of the movie characters with subtle movement of animation. I didn’t know that Goro joined Ghibli animation studio after many years of working as a construction consultant. He is from complete different industry! But it was when Hayao decided to build Ghibli Museum that this father and son worked together, and then he was asked by the producer if he might be interested in working with them to make “Gedo Senki”…which means Tales from Earthsea in English. This totally surprised me because I thought he was working for Ghibli from the beginning with no doubt!
There was the 3.11 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami while they were making this movie. But they defended the deadline (its release date in Japan) to the death. They shifted their working hour from daytime to night time so that could use electricity with no problem. (Because of the radiation crisis in Fukushima caused by the malfunction of nuclear reactors from the earthquake and tsunami, we have to live with limited electricity. Especially in March, right after the accident, we had to suffer from scheduled blackouts region by region.) I think this illustrates how Japanese people are. What a big deal if the deadline is missed, because there was an earthquake and frequent blackouts then. But that’s the Japanese. We can even sacrifice our personal life, time with family and health if we can finish it before the deadline by working while people are sleeping. Well, honestly I am not always Japanese myself because I feel this is rather too much…haha.
Now let’s see how Hayao answered the interview: Why did he script this movie for us today?
What does he say? I can tell you…
“Japan has changed since the Tokyo Olympic Game (1964). Somehow from some stage of the time, young people feel like the world has been the same place. They don’t catch the sense there was some historical changes of the times in Japan. Naturally, people have wondered how we should live or how we should keep vision or a strong will, but look at what’s happening today. People worship money and matarial, we are talking about money and economy all the time. This change is remarkable especially since 1980, I guess. Then people nowadays find no way out, and for example a 20-year-old daughter is already worried about her pension.
How stupid it is! I wonder what the heck the young people think of their possibilities.”
The movie shows a high school girl who lost her father in the chaotic period of the war. She is a sturdy girl. Through this character, what does Hayao want to tell us?
“Young people changed a lot. When they fail job hunting at the first company, they feel they are desperate. Even if they successfully get a job, they say something so miserable that makes me feel sick. ‘I survived in this way’…for example. Isn’t it funny to set a job hunting as a goal when they have not even started working? Young people need training. But they don’t do it. They just watch TV, browse internet and think they can skip training. They only care about their day-to-day life. They don’t understand what it’s like to be independent as a human being. I wanted to make a movie to express something like that.”
I don’t know if the young people in your country have similar problems to what Hayao Miyazaki mentioned in the interview, but this looks like the background of the movie. I hope you liked our collaboration post. (In case you are a new reader and not familiar with Apple, she is a member of TKE. She sometimes writes interesting posts to TKE and she also has her own blog.)
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