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Culture through nature and the struggle to adapt : Isao Takahata s unique environmentalism in Pom Poko

If one had to name one popular and prolific source of environment-themed movies, it could be Japanese animation studio Ghibli. Director Hayao Miyazaki s movies Nausicaä, My Neighbor Totoro and Princess Mononoke are known for their environmentalist agenda, even if they contain traces of forced personification of the threat and a sentimental approach found in the mentioned western productions. While as concerned as his colleague Miyazaki about environmental issues, director Isao Takahata handles them in a more subdued manner in his movies, until bringing environmentalism to the forefront in 1994 s excessive tragicomedy Pom Poko. To get a grasp of Takahata s idiosyncratic environmentalism, which is on full display in Pom Poko, one has to take a brief look at the remainder of his filmography, before diving into Pom Poko s story and themes themselves Pom Pokosucceeds in creating a relatable and not too ham-fisted metaphor for the environmentalist cause. Director Takahata avoids excessive sentimentalities and abusing a straw man-type adversary as a cheap and easily disposable villain, which would do injustice to the complexity of the movie s environmental and social themes. It depicts a universal story in a strictly Japanese setting, about the fragile relation between humanity and nature as a cold war between two nations. The tanuki, as the voice of nature, can t find a way to reason with the humans. Since humans are blind to the harm their ambitions create and the loss of their own cultural heritage that vanishes along with it, the tanuki see themselves forced to resort to violence and coercion. This logic of war directs the story of the film and is told in the pace of a historical documentary, with elegant tone shifts from comedy to drama narrated by the tanuki themselves. To fully capture the symbolic weight of the tanuki, they are impressively animated in different styles, from realistic and detached to cartoonish and relatable. Their aloof personalities are not seen as hindrances in themselves, more like a key to their creativity and happiness. This doesn t, however, make them great warmongers. Before being able to deal with the humans at all, they would first have to make them realize that both of their realms are at odds in the first place. Humans are oblivious to the damage they re doing, so they are unable to understand the tanuki s often ridiculous attacks as a cry for help. Unfortunately, the movie offers no solution, no cure for the human s deafness; in the end, it is nature who has to take the high road and submit to humanity momentum. They also stand for the principles of humanity that modern societies seem to drown. It is the tanuki s ability to adapt and their sense of compassion that allows some of them to survive, by integrating human society – a thought that would have seemed ludicrous to them a couple of years ago. In the beginning, they believe that humans must be gods, considering their ability to form the land as they please. In the end, in a desperate outcry that illustrates the movie s central message of unity, tanuki Bunta claims that humansaren t allowed to transform the forest, only the tanuki can, concluding that the humans must be nothing more than especially selfish tanuki.