Isao Takahata died last week at age 82, but his legacy lives on through animated masterworks including “Only Yesterday” and “Grave of the Fireflies.”
In 1988, three years after they founded Japan’s celebrated Studio Ghibli, Isao Takahata and his friend Hayao Miyazaki unveiled one of the oddest double bills in animation history: “My Neighbor Totoro” and “Grave of the Fireflies.”
Even at this relatively early point in the careers of the two writer-directors, their strengths were clear: Miyazaki was the fantasist who would take viewers beyond their imaginations; Takahata, the poet who explored intimate, human moments with rare sensitivity.
Although Takahata, who died in Tokyo on April 5at age 82, was a director of exceptional versatility whose work ranged from the earthy slapstick of “Pom Poko” to the gentle nostalgia of “Only Yesterday” to the fragile beauty of the Oscar-nominated “The Tale of the Princess Kaguya,” he remained best known for the heartbreaking poignancy of “Grave of the Fireflies.”
The film opens as the ragged, undernourished teen Seita collapses in Kokutetsu Sannomiya Station with the chilling words, “September 21,1945… that was the night I died.” In flashbacks, Takahata shows how Seita attempted to care for his younger sister, Setsuko, after they were orphaned in the American firebombing of Kobe, Japan, during World War II. The film suggests a flower on the grave of countless children who, like Seika and Setsuko, died needlessly in wars they neither fought nor understood.
The name Ghibli comes from a hot North African wind that blows into Italy; Miyazaki and Takahata wanted to blow fresh air into the Japanese animation industry, which they felt was stagnating. That sense of freshness was evident in Takahata’s later features, which were less devastating than “Fireflies,” but equally human.
In “Only Yesterday,” 27-year-old Taeko remembers her first conversation with a boy she liked and how they were too tongue-tied to utter more than a few awkward words. Takahata underscores the authenticity of the moment by having the watercolor backgrounds fade into the surrounding white paper, suggesting the incompleteness of memory.
