1. INTRODUCTION
Hayao Miyazaki is widely considered to be the most influential anime artist of all time and one of the most accomplished filmmakers in the history of animation. Having co-founded the well-known and beloved anime studio- “Studio Ghibli”, with Isao Takahata in 1985, he would go on to create some of the highest-grossing and most critically acclaimed anime movies ever made, like ‘Spirited Away’ and ‘Princess Mononoke’.
In 1984, Miyazaki wrote and directed ‘Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind’, which released in Japanese cinemas to critical acclaim. The movie represents a highly influential moment in the history of anime since its success led to the founding of Studio Ghibli. Furthermore, although Nausicaa is not Miyazaki’s directorial debut, it is the first of his original artistic properties brought to the big screen. It is based on a manga of the same name that Miyazaki began serialising in 1982, three years prior to the movies release, and continued to work on for nearly a decade, finishing in 1994. The series has maintained a global cult following since its release and has even been described as Miyazaki’s magnus opus due to its epic scope, spanning seven volumes and over 1000 pages (STEVEM, 2021; Mullicane, 2021). Therefore, it is important we understand the meaning behind Nausicaa, given Miyazaki’s immense influence on anime and the foundational role Nausicaa played in his career.
Many analysts have highlighted an anti-violence sentiment running throughout Nausicaa (e.g., Zeria, 2019; Geekritique, 2019; DazzReviews, 2020). The story takes place in a post-apocalyptic wasteland ravaged by nuclear war, while the protagonist, princess Nausicaa, hates violence and attempts to prevent a future war between two kingdoms. At the same time, Nausicaa is deeply fascinated by the ‘toxic jungle’, a novel but poisonous ecosystem that has grown from the pollution of the old world, which is caught in the crossfire of the warring nations. In the movie, Nausicaa discovers that when the jungle grows, it eventually cleanses itself of pollution and turns into a stone forest which can restore the earth and make it habitable to people once more. As a result, most analysts have come to interpret Nausicaa through a traditional environmentalist lens, where nature, as represented by the forest, is a fragile and benevolent life support system that will restore the earth, if it can be protected from destructive humans (Kamimashita, 2020; Hanlunn, 2021; DazzReviews, 2020; Zeria, 2019; Joriam Ramos, 2020).
Although this interpretation is an accurate reading of the movie, it leaves me feeling unsatisfied, since it contradicts Miyazaki’s belief that nature has an antagonistic quality and does not require human protection to survive. It also leaves fascinating elements of the movie unaddressed, like how the toxic jungle can represent nature when it is in part a product of human pollution?
“…isn’t it the height of arrogance to keep showing nature as needing protection to keep from disappearing? This is what I don’t care for. Everyone depicts nature as being charming. But it is something more fearsome. That is why I think there is something missing in our current view of nature.” (Starting Point: Earth’s environment as metaphor, pg., 498)
The manga covers the plot of the movie in its first two volumes and then expands far beyond it, covering six more volumes. In this expansion, Miyazaki builds significantly on the world and characters of the movie. The work therefore provides a wealth of analytical content for determining Nausicaa’s overall meaning. However, few analysts make their interpretations with any reference to the manga, meaning that the majority of the Nausicaa story remains analytically unexplored. Those few that do reference the manga often do so without any detailed analysis of the plot or character development arcs, preferring to make broad-stroke impressions that try to capture the feeling of the work (STEVEM, 2021; Pause Between Panels, 2021; Mullicane, 2021).
Finally, a veritable bounty of insight into Miyazaki’s art, philosophy and creative process exists in the form of interviews compiled over 30 years in the books- “Starting Point 1979-1996” and “Turning Point 1997-2008”. However, like the manga, these resources remain largely unexplored, meaning that analysts are unable to directly substantiate many of the claims they make regarding Miyazaki’s beliefs.
Therefore, the aim of this project is to determine the meaning of Nausicaa, by: a) conducting a detailed re-analysis of both the anime and manga with reference to the Starting Point (SP) and Turning Point (TP) interviews; followed by: b) a re-interpretation of the Nausicaa franchise that takes into account the findings of this new analysis, a review of major character developments, and an interpretation of Miyazaki’s motivations and beliefs when creating Nausicaa.
2. PLOT SUMMARY
2.1. Shared background
Nausicaa takes place 1,000 years after the ‘Seven Days of Fire’, a nuclear war that devastated the globe. Earth is now a wasteland and humanity has been reduced to small feudal kingdoms and warring city states that fight for the last remnants of habitable land. In the place of the familiar ecosystems of the old world is a new ecosystem, the ‘toxic jungle’, which has evolved out of the pollution of the old world. The giant fungi and insects that inhabit the jungle work in symbiosis to spread deadly poison spores across the wasteland to further the forests growth. The forest expands and chokes out the last few communities, while the warring nations enrage the forest with their machines and gunfire, making the forest spread even faster.
2.2. Anime
The plot of the movie begins with Nausicaa’s kingdom, the peaceful and agrarian ‘Valley of the Wind’ being invaded by the far larger military nation of Tolmekia, led by the Warrior-Princess Kushana and her second in command Kurotowa. Her troops execute Nausicaa’s farther, leading Nausicaa to kill several of the soldiers in a blind rage. Later, the wise Master Yupa, Nausicaa’s mentor, finds Nausicaa secluded in a secret garden. She has discovered that the fungi of the toxic jungle are not toxic if they are grown away from pollution in pure soil and water, a finding that shakes Yupa to his core. Nausicaa is ashamed of her violent actions and is terrified of the anger within her. Knowing that she will soon be taken by Kushana as a political prisoner, Nausicaa turns off the supply of water to her garden, killing the carefully cultivated fungi.
Later, having crash landed in the toxic jungle, Nausicaa communicates with the ‘Ohmu’, giant sentient insects, who show Nausicaa a memory from her past, where as a child, she tried to save a baby Ohmu from being put-down by her farther. Afterwards, Nausicaa falls deep beneath the roots of the fungal jungle, finding herself in a forest made of stone. This ‘petrified forest’ is far older than the jungle above and is actively purifying the world of pollution, as the trees absorb the soils poison, turn to stone, and then erode into clean, fertile soil.
In the finale, Tolmekia’s enemy- the Pejite state- attempts to bait thousands of Ohmu into the Valley, where Kushana’s army is held up, by using a wounded baby Ohmu as bait. Nausicaa tries to save the baby and pacify the rampaging Ohmu, while Kushana activates a ‘God Warrior’, one of the anthropomorphic bioweapons that instigated the Seven Days of Fire, to kill the Ohmu and halt the spread of the forest. The God Warrior unleashes several nuclear blasts onto the Ohmu but disintegrates soon after, having been awoken from its embryonic state before it had fully developed. Nausicaa is seemingly killed by the stampeding Ohmu in her attempt to stop their rampage but is then resurrected by the insects. Her resurrection calms the Ohmu and humbles Kushana, ending the conflict. As the credits play, we see Kushana and her army leave, having presumably reconciled their differences with the forest, the Valley and the Pejite. We then see Nausicaa, and her people dig a well, harnessing the pure water from underground. Finally, we see a single green sapling growing deep in the petrified forest, signalling a return to a pure environment where humans will live sustainably and peacefully with nature.
2.3. Manga
The manga, for the most part, covers the events of the anime and then continues onwards. Soon after the Ohmu stampede, we are introduced to the ‘Dorok principalities’, a theocracy ruled over by the ‘Holy Emperor’ Miralupa and his brother Namulith. As the Dorok expand, they use religion to suppress native faiths and control the minds of the people. Nausicaa gets embroiled in this war, rescuing as many civilians as she can, gaining her a reputation as being a long-prophesised liberator of the people.
Miralupa has access to the ‘Crypt’, a huge cache of old-world technology and knowledge, governed over by an advanced AI called the ‘Crypt Keeper’. This allows the Dorok to unleash advanced bioweapons and a large part of the story is focused on the threat of one such bioweapon- the ‘giant mold’- a huge toxic fungus which the Dorok plan to unleash on Tolmekian land. The mold begins to engulf everything in its path, enraged in its knowledge that it was designed as a weapon. It is eventually pacified by the Ohmu who sacrifice themselves in order to calm the mold, which in turn births a new toxic forest. In a moment of suicidal weakness, Nausicaa tries to sacrifice herself alongside the Ohmu and allows herself to be engulfed by the fungus, but the Ohmu protect her. When Nausicaa emerges from the new fungal growth, she is crowned God the Forest by the ‘wormhandlers’, a scavenger people who live alongside the forest. Together, they form an army for Nausicaa, with she uses to fight the Crypt Keeper.
The manga is expansive, covering numerous battles and revelations. For the sake of brevity, I cover only the most relevant events here. Nausicaa meets the ‘Forest People’, a group of tribal nomads who live within the toxic jungle. They show Nausicaa the forest within her own psyche and lead her to the heart of the real jungle, the oldest part of the petrified forest, where the ancient stone trees have finished purifying the land, revealing a precious Eden. Nausicaa goes on to discover that the petrified forest was actually designed by ecologists, before the seven days of fire, to purify the world and make it habitable once again if it was ever destroyed by nuclear war. However, the people of the wasteland have also come to be polluted by the toxic jungles spores and they will not be able to survive in the clean air of the purified world.
Nausicaa eventually storms the Crypt and confronts the Crypt Keeper. The Keeper is guarding a race of genetically advanced human embryos, waiting to be born into the purified world. She boldly proclaims that the Crypt is an “affront to life itself”, corrupted in its attempts to dominate life for the sake of some misguided sense of purity. Nausicaa destroys the Keeper and with it all the embryos and advanced technology stored within.
3. ANALYSIS
3.1. Environmentalism
3.1.1. The forest: Although the stone forest can purify the earth over the course of hundreds of years, Miyazaki’s nature is a far way from being the entirely benevolent force that previous analysts have claimed it to be. The jungle is a hostile wilderness, an environment that is near-totally uninhabitable to humans due to the toxic fungal spores that fill the air. Human interference accelerates the spread of the toxic jungle, with gunshots and destruction angering the forest insects, causing stampedes (Volume two, pg., 212-214). However, the jungle still encroaches ceaselessly upon the last remaining habitable spaces, with or without the human interference, swallowing up innocents and leaving ruins in its wake. Even the people of the Valley of the Wind, who respect the jungle, still all inevitably succumb to the fatal stone paralysis disease which results from proximal exposure to the forest spores:
“It’s not enough to just go around saying how wonderful nature is; we also need to explain what sort of inconveniences and even harm nature can bring to us.” (SP: On the banks of the sea of decay, pg., 196)
Furthermore, the jungle is as alien as it is dangerous, devoid of any of the familiar animals and plants of the old world. In their place are insects and fungi, forms that could not be more estranged from humans, being commonly associated with disgust, fear, and decay. In Miyazaki’s own words:
“…I wanted this form to resist empathy. There are many people who don’t like bugs, so I thought bugs were just right to express a contrasting ecosystem.” (SP: Earth’s environment as metaphor, pg., 496).
However, to say that the toxic jungle is just a hostile wilderness, is as simplistic as when the environmentalists call it a benevolent mother earth. When we follow in the footsteps of someone who treads lightly through the forest, like Nausicaa (Volume one, pg., 6-10), we see that the dangerous jungle can be a sublime space, full of mystery and wonder, igniting both artistic and scientific curiosity:
“I think anyone who collected insects as a child had the experience of looking at the bumps on a cicada’s head and wondering why its shape is so interesting … The wonder one experiences in that moment is extraordinary…These are among the first awesome things children encounter…we feel like we’ve peeked into some of the secrets of the world.” (SP: Earth’s environment as metaphor, pg., 496).
There are also tangible resources found in the jungle, as long as you tread carefully. The worm-handlers and forest people make a living gathering parts from the forest. At the beginning of the story we see Nausicaa salvaging a shedded ohmu eye from the jungle to use as a viewing screen in the Valley’s gunship. We are therefore left with a view of the toxic jungle that is neither entirely good nor bad, but a mix that may appear more or less good depending on the subject:
“We see birds that harm humans as harmful and those that are useful to humans as useful. It’s all arbitrary. The impression we have of a landscape changes depending on the emotions of the person viewing the landscape. Nature that is generous is, at the same time, nature that is ferocious. This is why humans feel humbled in the face of nature and why they are able to realize its true abundance.” (SP: “Nature is both generous, and ferocious”, pg., 396).
Depending on the viewers emotion, they may see the jungle as a benevolent ecosystem that offers up beauty and resources, and at other times they may see its dark side which emanates human suffering and suffocation. The fact the jungle can be viewed under these different lenses and illicit such a range of emotions is testament to the fact that it is not a mere placeholder for mother nature’s purity and goodness.
Nor is the toxic jungle entirely natural in the classical environmentalist sense, i.e., free of the influences of humans, since it is either a) the result of human pollution, as in the film, or b) a genetically engineered ecosystem, designed by ecologists to purify the world of pollution, as in the manga. The jungle is as much a product of humans, as it is natural evolution, making it an ‘anthropogenic’ ecosystem. Nausicaa does not revere a pristine environment, but the exact opposite, a corrupted and wild environment, where the interactions of nature and humans have coalesced to create something new.
When Nausicaa discovers the stone forest, an ancient stand of toxic jungle which has, over the course of millennia, rid itself of human pollution, she sees what she believes to be a pristine ecosystem free of human influence, i.e., natural in the environmentalist sense. At first, she is awe-struck by the beauty of the forest, with its rivers and soils which sparkle in their purity. The great silvery tree trunks appear like mighty cathedral columns, far removed from the fungal labyrinths in the jungle above. Here, Nausicaa realises that the forest is working to purify the polluted earth by cleaning the air and producing fertile soil. However, this awe is short lived and Nausicaa becomes unsatisfied, questioning the environmentalists ideal by asking what good is this pristine place if it takes hundreds of years of lifeless stone before its restorative powers take effect?
“Maybe it’s beautiful down here, but what good is a lifeless world where even insects can’t live?” (Volume one, pg., 131)
Nausicaa wants to end the suffering taking place now, for both humans and the insects. For her, the people of the future are of secondary concern. As a result of this questioning, we begin to notice the lifelessness of the stone forest, the great hollow spaces and the coldness of its glassy tree trunks, petrified and dead. It becomes an environment that is, in a way, more alien than the younger toxic jungle above, since the jungle is at least familiar to us in its wildness and pollution, compared to the distant angelic purity of the stone forest.
3.1.2. Environmentalism in the manga: In the movie, Miyazaki ultimately gives into the environmentalist ideal by ending on a hopeful note. A seedling starts to grow in the pristine soil of the stone forest, indicating the beginning of humanities redemption by nature. However, in the manga, Miyazaki is able to expand on his critique of environmentalist ideals, where he ultimately rejects the idea of a benevolent and pristine nature in its entirety, and instead embraces the complexity and moral ambiguity of the natural world.
In volume four (pg., 4-11), Nausicaa comes across an oasis in the desert, filled with the kind of luxuriant herbs and trees that were once common in the old world, fed by a spring of pristine groundwater. She enters a tomb and finds the remains of some ancient mummies whose spirits linger on. In life, these spirits were shamans who worshiped the forest and came to give up on humanity due to their environmentally destructive ways. They now welcome the obliteration of humanity by the toxic forest, accepting it as being part of nature’s renewal of the world. Nausicaa however refuses to accept this anti-human stance:
“No! Our God of the Wind tells us to live! I love life! The light, the sky, the people, the insects, I love them all! I won’t give up! I won’t!” (Volume four, pg., 10-11).
In this sequence Miyazaki points out, the often-neglected tendency, that many environmentalists become anti-human in their love of nature, seeing humanity as nothing more than a blight on the earth:
“Often ecologists and nature-lovers turn into solitary persons who dislike human beings. They wind up negating human society. Nausicaa is someone who might go over to the insects world if left alone but who stops just at the last minute; someone who takes actions that could easily result in death, but open up a new path.” (SP: “Nature is both generous, and ferocious”, pg., 395).
Later, in volume six (pg., 4), Nausicaa meets the ‘Forest People’ a small society of egalitarian nomads who have relinquished fire and technology so that they can live in the toxic jungle in harmony with nature. They are hunter gatherers who revere the forest and take from it only what they need for survival:
“The forest people are the ancestors of the wormhandlers. They say, the most noble of bloodlines. People who have abandoned fire and shunned civilisation, to live deep in the heart of the forest...” (Volume three, pg., 85).
They are Miyazaki’s take on the ‘Noble Savage’, an idea which has been around since the 18th century, which argues that those people who live closest to nature like indigenous hunter gatherer groups, are the most free, wise and happy, since all the evils of the world are derived from civilisation. Nausicaa forms a deep bond with Selm, the group leader, who rivals her in his knowledge and empathy for the forest. Yet, when Selm proclaims his love for Nausicaa and asks her to live with him in the forest she refuses:
“Thankyou. You make me very happy. But you have placed yourself within the flow of life … whereas I find myself involved with every individual living thing. I love the people of this world too much… I’ll have out my life in the twilight of this world that humankind has polluted”. (Volume six, pg., 27-28).
As Nausicaa rejects life in the forest, Miyazaki rejects the notion that a harmonious return to our primitive, environmentally friendly roots are possible. For Nausicaa, living with the Forest People means abandoning the people of the wasteland in their desperate state. Although she has always dreamed of living in the forest, her responsibility for humanity will always outweigh her romantic dreams of returning to nature:
Miyazaki: “Forest people disappear into the forest… they throw away culture…their lifestyle is not connected to increasing population. Therefore, I don’t see how such a people can have a future.” (Comic box, 1995).
Finally, in volume six (pg., 16-25), Selm takes Nausicaa to the ‘Pure Lands’ at the heart of the jungle, where after centuries of purification, the oldest of the petrified forests have given way to a fertile Eden, where the animals and plants of the old world have finally returned. Nature has restored the wasteland, creating a landscape where people can now farm, fish and hunt sustainably, living in peace with nature. However, Nausicaa knows that if the people of the wasteland ever found this place in their current resource-hungry state, the land would be pillaged and destroyed by the warring factions before it could be put to good use. The paradisiacal purified lands must remain out of the reach of humans, until they can be trusted to manage it sustainably:
“In a thousand years or more you’ll spread and grow and if we can survive, become a little smarter then we can come join you here.” (Volume six, pg., 24).
These plot points force us to reconsider the simplistic environmentalist interpretation of Nausicaa. True nature free of human influence is almost entirely absent in Nausicaa’s world, and when we do find something approximating the pristine and benevolent nature that environmentalists champion, it is rejected by Miyazaki as an escapist fantasy that offers little to the everyman suffering in the present. Instead, Miyazaki’s philosophy on nature is as morally nebulous as the toxic jungle itself, sublime but polluted by savagery, inefficiency, and anti-humanity.
3. 2. Society
Previous analysts (e.g., Zeria, 2019; Geekritique, 2019; DazzReviews, 2020) have rightfully identified critiques of industry and nuclear weaponry which are presented in Nausicaa as forces which can degrade the environment and increase human suffering. However, our re-analysis reveals several other important points featured in Nausicaa relating to religion, science, and political ideology.
3.2.1. Religion: In the Dorok Principalities, the elite priestly class have broken the will of the peasants by eradicating their native tribal faiths and subsuming them under one single state-controlled religion. Their holy symbol is a great eye which Miralupa can use to peer into the minds of all that fall under its gaze using a twisted psychic power. The priests greatest fear is the return of the ‘Angel of Light’, a kind of prophet who will free the peasants from the dogmatic state controlled Dorok religion and reunite them with their old tribal faiths. Dorok religion mirrors the argument of many of those critical of state and church involvement- that religion is used as a tool to control the masses through the false belief in an ever watching, ever judging God.
3. 2. 2. Science and technology: However, it is not just faith that is corrupted by the state, but also science and technology. In the Dorok nation, a scientist class devoid of morality clammer for the approval of their emperor, by creating increasingly fiendish bioweapons for use in his war. Nausicaa’s world is full of strange and repugnant denizens, but none are treated with so much contempt and irredeemability as these Dorok scientists. Their abstract intelligence belies a complete lack of common sense as they bumble around and trip over themselves. Most occupy the Great Crypt, where all the knowledge of the old world is stored. They live here like maggots burrowing through the old world’s malignant corpse, reducing themselves to such a state in the desperate hunt for more knowledge:
“Ohh, so you’re parasites !! The bugs who cling to the crypt, the fool clings to the king !!” (Volume seven, pg., 12).
These scientists create the deadly weaponised mold, in service to Miralupa’s war (Volume 4, pg., 41-42). They plan to drop the mold on Tolmekian farmlands, crippling their economy, killing hundreds of civilians and permanently poisoning some of the last fertile ground left on earth. They rejoice in the destructive capabilities of their creation and give no consideration to the long-term suffering it will cause, not only to the enemy, but to their own people caught in the crossfire. The scientists fail to properly contain the mold and when it breaks free from its bonds the Dorok laboratory is completely engulfed by its growth and Miyazaki relishes the moment with great detail as scientists cower, scream and die at the hands of their own creation.
However, despite the evil of Miralupa and his scientists, it is important to highlight that Miyazaki does not think that science and technology is inherently bad. Miyazaki see’s these things as blank-slates, neutral tools onto which the user imparts their morality:
“I think that technology is by itself neutral, innocent. It’s like the automobile. Automobiles are extremely loyal to their drivers, and self-sacrificing, too. It may be safe to assume that machines don’t have souls, but in reality, people impart souls to machines.” (SP: On completing Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, pg., 469)
The god warrior and the weaponised mold best express this moral ambiguity towards science and technology. Both appear to be abominations on the surface, an unholy fusion of technology and biology, that have the potential to commit genocide. However, they are not inherently evil and begin life as innocent children. The god warrior literally imprints onto Nausicaa, believing her to be its mother, and Nausicaa teaches it how to be a noble person by channelling its immense power to help liberate the peasantry. The weaponised mold, on the other hand, is so distraught for having been birthed by the pathetic Dorok scientists and is so alienated from its fungal kin for having been born with the sole purpose to kill, that it lashes out in total anguish against the world. Miralupa uses technology purely as a means to increase his control over the world, leading to pain and anguish, while Nausicaa uses it as a means to liberate people, which in turn has an ennobling effect.
3. 2. 3. Marxism: Zeria (2019) argues that the Valley of the Wind is a Marxist solution to environmental issues, claiming it to be an egalitarian agrarian utopia where humans and nature live in harmony. However, Miyazaki is no Marxist and has even gone on record to condemn it as a mistake:
“As I was trying to complete Nausicaa, I experienced a change in my thinking that some people might regard as a political sell-out. It’s because I clearly abandoned Marxism. You might say I had to abandon it… Marxism was a mistake …I was simply no longer able to deal with the various doubts that had been accumulating as I wrote.” (SP: On completing Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, pg., 476).
Furthermore, although the people of the Valley of the Wind are good natured, their society is hardly an egalitarian utopia. For one, the Valley is not strictly egalitarian since it is ruled by a monarchy with apparently much greater material wealth compared to the rest of the citizenry, i.e., the royalty live in a castle and possess a gunship, while the citizenry live in small cottages:
“…I felt a little hesitation in the beginning simply because I had made Nausicaa the daughter of Jihl, the king of a small nation… But after a while I no longer cared about that. I’ve resolved not to think of things in terms of class consciousness. The idea that someone’s right just because he’s a worker is a lie. The masses are capable of doing an infinite number of stupid things.” (SP: On completing Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, pg., 476).
Secondly, although the people of the Valley live in relative harmony with their environment, cultivating rich fields and orchards, this harmony is extremely delicate, making life in the Valley profoundly precarious. All it takes is one or two spores to find their way in from the toxic jungle and it can spoil the entire crop, risking famine. Irrespective of the fragility of the Valley, all life here is remarkably short, since constant exposure to the toxic jungle means that all people inevitably succumb to the disabling stone-paralysis disease. The child mortality rate in the valley is extremely high because of the jungles poisons. Nausicaa was one of 11 other siblings, all of whom died in childbirth, and as we see near the beginning of the movie, a successful birth rate of one baby per year is considered a cause for celebration. Miyazaki does not romanticise the traditional agrarian lifestyle, and despite its beauty, this is no utopia.
4. RE-INTERPRETATION, MAKING SENSE OF NAUSICAA
Now that we have dispelled some of the falsehoods around Nausicaa, we can start to better pinpoint what Nausicaa is actually all about. To answer this question, we take a four-pronged approach that takes into consideration Miyazaki’s philosophy of nature, the development of Nausicaa’s main characters, a consideration of Miyazaki’s thought process while creating Nausicaa, and finally a comparison of the themes explored in the anime versus the manga finales.
4. 1. Miyazaki and nature:
Miyazaki’s view of nature is much deeper and expansive than previous analysts have given it credit for. This is already hinted at by the contradiction seen in the toxic jungle, where it is on one hand an ecosystem where non-human lifeforms flourish in the absence of human beings, but on the other hand, remains an anthropogenic ecosystem that evolved from human pollution and technology. Nature and humans are not always binary opposites in Miyazaki’s eyes but are instead interacting and intermingling agents. Even the most inhospitable wildernesses can have the imprint of humanity upon it.
This relationship also works the other way around, with the seemingly wisest and most caring of people having uncontrollable wildness within them. This is our inner nature, which shares with ecosystems the qualities of spontaneous and autonomous growth, no matter how much it has been tampered with by humans. It is a non-human realm that exists within humans, the animal instincts and emotions that bubble up uncontrollably from the unconscious part of the psyche.
I believe that this is the essential quality of Miyazaki’s conception of nature. It is the vitalistic “life force” that fills all living things, including humans, that pushes them to survive and thrive. Although Miyazaki has not made this definition of nature explicit, at least to my knowledge, it can still clearly be surmised through his biographies, where Miyazaki frequently speaks of both a more conventional kind of nature in the environment (i.e., outer nature), which is made up of non-human ecosystems and lifeforms with various gradations of human impacts, as well as an emotional human nature (i.e., inner nature) with various gradations of conscious awareness, which compels people to survive and grow:
“We human beings need both nature left as it is and man-made habitats.” (SP: A greeting of solidarity-afterward, pg., 167)
“I am sure that many of you are worried about a huge array of issues, but the moment your scenario is selected to be made into a film, you’ll be yelling ‘hurrah’ at the top of your lungs. It’s in the nature of humans to do so…it’s also human nature for our pulses to race when we see some good-looking person next to us, and to feel happy for a while…” (SP: The world of anime and the scenario, pg., 126-127)
“The first thing that caught my eye was a row of huge cherry trees…What an amazing life force these trees have, I thought…” (TP: The lights of Zenshõen, pg., 304)
“…she demonstrates an adaptability and toughness that even she had not been aware of; she realizes that she has a life force in her that makes her capable of bold decisions and action.” (TP: Chihiro, from a mysterious town-The goal of this film, pg., 212)
However, this does not mean that there is no human-nature dichotomy, since we still have a conscious capacity to reason and create which extends far beyond that of any other life-forms, making us highly distinct from the rest of nature. No other life form has been able to build an abstract realm of thought which so fastidiously characterises our surroundings, (i.e., science) and our inner natures (i.e., the arts), nor have any other lifeforms been able to construct their own artificial environments, (i.e., cities) to the extent that we have. Therefore, just as the toxic jungle is a place where non-human and human elements meet, our minds are the place where the non-human (i.e., unconscious intuition) and human (i.e., conscious reasoning) meet:
“…this forest is also inside your heart.” (Volume six, pg., 4)
“Jules Verne’s story of going under the sea overlaps with entering into one’s own internal world. The fascination with the sea the story depicts and the idea that the sea hints at a far deeper and richer world full of secrets- this is the wonder Captain Nemo feels. At the same time, the sea shows the depth of his mind and the depth of the entire world itself.” (SP: Earth’s environment as metaphor, pg., 502).
The inseparable link between the non-human realm of ecosystems and the emotional realm of the mind makes ecosystems and their non-human components powerful symbols for exploring the unconscious and for articulating emotional experiences. We need only look to the universal prevalence of animals and plants in mythology and storytelling from across the globe, in all cultures and time-periods, as evidence for this. Therefore, Nausicaa’s fungi and forest insects say as much about emotion as they do about the state of environmentalism and no character better exemplifies this connection than Nausicaa herself.
4. 2. The character of Nausicaa:
4. 2. 1. Nausicaa and nature: Nausicaa explores her emotions via non-human lifeforms throughout the anime and manga, and it is her ability to do this better than any other character, combined with her intense love for human and non-human life, that makes her the ultimate hero of the story. Miyazaki describes Nausicaa as being a kind of “miko” or “Shaman-maiden” who work at Shinto shrines (SP, pg., 483) and previous analysts have also pointed out the similarities between Nausicaa’s beliefs and those of Shintoists (Zeria, 2019; Geekritique, 2020). Shintoists and Shamans practice animism, that is- they both commune with non-human entities. Both see that the non-human world, the world of flora, fauna, rivers and rocks, are suffused with emotion and meaning. The Shaman is tasked with communicating these findings from the non-human world to the benefit of other members of the community, while the Shintoist is tasked with devout reverence. Nausicaa, of course, does both. In terms of emotional exploration, the toxic jungle means everything to Nausicaa. Despite its dangers, Nausicaa has learned how to navigate the fungal forest with ease and can lose herself in it as if in a waking dream, letting intuition guide her wondering mind. The forest symbols, the insects and fungi, illicit within Nausicaa and the reader a feeling of absolute wonder and mystery that comes with encountering something truly other. In volume six (pg., 4) Miyazaki makes this connection between ecology and the unconscious explicit, when Selm and the Ohmu guide Nausicaa through the jungle of her own mind. Selm is in awe of how similar Nausicaa’s internal forest is to the physical toxic jungle, in terms of its depth and complexity:
“…Your forest is deep. I’ve never been on so rich a journey” (Volume six, pg., 14).
Nausicaa’s love of nature and her openness to explore her inner emotional forest realm is what gives Nausicaa her power as a hero. Although completely removed from the anime, in the manga, Nausicaa has psychic abilities that allow her to communicate with non-human lifeforms and supernatural entities. As she matures throughout the story, so too do her psychic powers, which allow her to connect with increasingly powerful beings, from tiny teto the fox squirrel all the way up to the Ohmu, the mightiest and wisest of the forest insects, who in turn grant her greater insights into her unconscious.
Nausicaa is a wind-rider, a sacred and revered position in Valley culture. Her skill at riding the wind reflects her ability to adeptly interpret the currents of her intuition and her willingness to trust in natural forces greater than herself (Volume one, pg., 27). Her wind-glider then, demonstrates how her conscious mind has become attuned towards harnessing natures currents in the least detrimental way possible. The glider is elegant in its simplicity, a design which has abandoned all accoutrements non-essential to harnessing the wind, in the same way that Nausicaa’s consciousness is attuned to hearing the whispers of her unconscious. This contrasts with the monstrous metal sky-ships that the warring states utilise, who’s hugeness and arrays of whirling bits convey the doomed machinations of an overly conscious mind hell-bent on bringing nature under its complete control.
4. 2. 2. Nausicaa’s love of humanity: Nausicaa is not the only character who derives power from nature. Selm, the leader of the forest people and the shaman spirit Nausicaa encounters in the oasis are also wise psychics who revere the forest. However, Nausicaa differs from the other forest loving characters, and ultimately exceeds their levels of power, due to the great love she also has for human life. The spirit shaman gives up on humans for the damage they have done to nature, while Selm and the forest people have effectively abandoned humanity to live in harmony with the forest, but Nausicaa refuses to give up on the wastelanders out of a love for all life. Indeed, Nausicaa does not enter the toxic jungle just to explore her inner being, she goes there to try and help people. She enters the forest to scavenge vital resources for the Valley and it is where she goes to research the forest toxins so she can find a cure for the deadly stone disease that plagues her people.
Nausicaa does these things for people in spite of the fact that she has been hurt and ostracised by them for her love of nature. As a young girl, Nausicaa was singled out by the villagers for trying to protect a baby Ohmu that had wondered into the Valley. Her own farther the king, symbol of law and order scolds Nausicaa for sheltering the Ohmu, since insects threaten Valley life with their toxic spores. He snatches the Ohmu to have it put down, leaving Nausicaa traumatised. Here, Nausicaa learns how isolated she is in her love of the insects, and she experiences the coldness that comes from divorcing nature from culture. However, despite the emotional pain inflicted on her by society, Nausicaa understands why these laws exist and she does not harbour resentment. The cruelties of life and the responsibilities she feels towards other people will always prevent her from going over entirely to the fancy and mysticism of the forest. Instead, she turns her love for nature into a means to help other people and avoids the escapist trap that the other nature lovers fall into.
4. 2. 3. Nausicaa’s inner darkness: Nausicaa is brimming with a pure love for life and looks at the world with a kind of childlike awe that is often lost to adults. Her effervescence and spontaneity have a transfixing effect that pulls both the reader and those around her into support of her campaign. However, her child-like tendencies are balanced by an intense maturity. She has a knowingness in her eyes and an aura of wisdom that garners respect wherever she goes:
“A good child…a mix of tenderness and courage, very deep…” (Volume two, pg., 162).
This is because, in exploring her unconscious, Nausicaa comes up against the uglier side of herself, an inner darkness, or ‘shadow’ nature, that many would resist or deny, which she instead wrestles with and accepts. This shadow in Nausicaa’s soul is symbolised by the dark and grotesque elements of the toxic jungle that Nausicaa openly embraces.
Her first encounter with the shadow occurs near the beginning of the movie (i.e., volume one of the manga (pg., 80)). Nausicaa flies into a blind-rage and attempts to kill Tolmekian soldiers and, in doing so, she realises that there is a deadly aggression inside of her. Nausicaa does not deny or attempt to conceal this darkness, but instead integrates it into an understanding of her being. This wild aggression is something Nausicaa shares with the creatures of the forest and it actually helps her to further empathise with them:
‘There’s a terrible hatred hiding inside me…I can understand now how the Ohmu felt. The hate takes over and makes him kill. And then he cries.’ (Volume one, pg., 80).
In doing so, Nausicaa loses any comforting illusions that she is an inherently non-violent person. This revelation coincides with the burning of the ancient Valley tree, a symbol of the purity Nausicaa once cherished being destroyed (Volume one, pg., 65-68). As the tree burns, Nausicaa prepares to leave the Valley as part of a historic Tolmekian-Valley pact. She turns off the water supply to her secret garden, killing the fungi she had been growing in secret (Volume one, pg., 78-79). These fungi had been purified of their toxins by Nausicaa through scientific methods but would not be able to survive in the absence of her care. For so long Nausicaa had carefully cultivated an idea of herself free of darkness, in the same way she had long tried to scrub away the pollution from the jungle, but neither her inner-nature (i.e., the shadow) nor culture (i.e., the Tolmekians) will allow her to continue to cultivate this view, too precious and secluded from the world to be helpful to her. Nausicaa realises that there can be no return to innocence for her and that she is destined to confront her inner darkness in strange and foreign lands.
The Valley elders, despite revering the forest, still fear it greatly as a place where dark supernatural powers dwell. They worry that Nausicaa’s forest venturing’s border on harmful obsession and that she risks becoming possessed by evil forest forces:
“… there’s an old saying, ‘look not into the heart of the ohmu’. They say if you do you’ll never come back.” (Volume two, pg. 219)
Nausicaa is like a witch in this respect since her powers reflect something weird and obscure to common folks. Indeed, she is likened to a witch on more than one occasion by other characters (e.g., Volume three, pg., 50).
At her lowest point, overwhelmed by the cruelty of war and the seeming meaninglessness of life, Nausicaa attempts to commit suicide by diving into the depth of the toxic mold, to be fully consumed by nature, and rendered totally unconscious of suffering once and for all. She sinks into the depths of the mold but the ohmu refuse to let her die, coating her in a protective serum. Nausicaa stares into the abyssal heart of the ohmu and the spirit of growth ignites to protect her. She arises from the mold reborn just as a new forest begins to sprout. From this shadowy union with nature, she gains the ability to breath the toxic jungle air, representing the full maturation of Nausicaa’s strength:
“The mind of a fragile person would be destroyed by the sight of that abyss … because the one who looks into that darkness must endure the gaze returned by the darkness itself” (Volume six, pg., 30)
“… the greatness of a mind is determined by the depth of its suffering.” (Volume seven, pg., 22).
It is no coincidence that the worm handlers, of all people, should be the first to recognise Nausicaa’s newly found dark powers, proclaiming her their deity- a living embodiment of the forest (Volume six, pg., 27). Having spent so much time in the jungle, they have become ostracised by the more civilized world, reviled as filthy scavengers, polluted by spores. Like Nausicaa, the worm handlers blur the boundary between nature and civilisation, shadow and light, pristine and polluted.
To have one of these ‘maggot men’ so much as approach you is considered a dishonourable defilement of one’s character (Volume one, pg., 43). Even Nausicaa herself, the brightest symbol of empathy Miyazaki has to offer, is so disgusted by the mere presence of worm handlers in her kingdom, that she flies into a blind-rage (Volume one, pg., 49-56). Poetically, it is this same feeling of disgust which triggers her murderous anger, leading her to first reflect on her own shadow-side. In becoming queen of the wormhandlers, Nausicaa comes full circle, fully embracing that lowliest part of humanity that had once defiled her pristine Valley kingdom. With the worm handlers on her side, Nausicaa gains a shadowy army, as tainted by the pollution of life as she is, to lay siege to the Crypt Keeper. Having wrestled with the darkest aspects of herself, she now empathises far more deeply with other lifeforms, since she recognises that there is always a redeeming quality, even in the lowliest of experiences:
Crypt Keeper: “Life is light!!”
Nausicaa: “You are wrong. Life is the light that shines in the darkness!!” (Volume seven, pg., 9)
“The lowest caste was the race of worm handlers, but the question is why were they directly connected to Nausicaa? It’s because since ancient times, there has always been a profound connection between the Emperor and the lowest caste…At first Nausicaa couldn’t bring herself to use the worms…She didn’t accept them after studying and thinking on the problem. Her experiences and enlarged viewpoint enabled her to do so.” (Comic Box, 1995).
For the fully matured Nausicaa, her enemy is no longer the darkness found in the abyss of her soul, but the comforting allure that comes from her loftiest ideals. In volume seven (pg., 17-26), near the end of the manga, Nausicaa finds herself in a secret garden, filled with beautiful plants from the old world, peaceful animals and a vast ancient library. The place is like a paradise for Nausicaa, where she can live carefree in harmony with nature, while studying the secret arts and sciences of the advanced but long-gone societies:
“Where am I? heaven?” (Volume seven, pg., 19).
However, this garden is a trap specifically architected by the Crypt Keeper to ensnare Nausicaa by using her desires against her. Nausicaa becomes lost in pleasure and in forgetting all she strove for in the real world, she loses all sense of time and urgency. Eventually, an insidious feeling that things are too good to be true arises in Nausicaa and she attempts to escape the garden. The Keeper takes the form of Nausicaa’s mother, assuming that it would provide a comforting visage to pacify her with. However, this oedipal tactic backfires, since Nausicaa does not associate her mother with comfort, but is instead reminded of deep trauma. Nausicaa was never loved by her mother since Nausicaa only ever served as a horrible reminder of the eleven children who had come before her, all of which had died in childbirth, poisoned in the womb by the fungal spores. An awareness of this deep-seated pain liberates Nausicaa from the passive manipulation of the Crypt Keeper and allows her to escape:
“You enter their hearts and make them forget their sorrows and pain and turn them into your servants… I remembered my mother because you have the same scent of death about you as she did!” (Volume seven, pg., 8).
4. 2. 3. Comparing Nausicaa to other characters: It is Nausicaa’s combined emotional openness and unbending faith in life which elevates her above all the other characters, making her the hero of the story. The power of emotional openness can also be seen amongst many of the side-character, who’s personal trajectories often rest on Nausicaa’s teachings.
Both Kushana and Nausicaa bare striking similarities in terms of their appearance, position in society and character. Both have red hair and similar facial features, both are princess’s beloved by their people for their sense of fairness and justice, and both are fearsome warriors. However, it is in their relationship to nature, both inside and outside of themselves, where they starkly differ. Kushana, for all her bravery and martial prowess, is unable to process the trauma of her past. As a child, she was frequently exposed to the murderous infighting of her father’s court and her mother was emotionally absent, having been driven insane by the king.
Instead of facing the painful emotions of childhood, Kushana repressed them for fear of admitting to weakness, focussing her attention on getting revenge on her family. The strict control of, and denial for, her inner nature is mirrored by her destructive attitude towards the toxic jungle. The repressed emotions were projected outwards into the forest, which she believes to be a threatening wilderness, of no benefit to anyone. She disregards the laws of the forest as mere superstition and commits acts of violence against it in an attempt bring it under her control. When she loses her arm to an insect attack, an event that is almost always provoked, she does not question her approach but curses nature all the more. She replaces her arm with a powerful military prosthetic, in an attempt to replace nature with mechanism, which further cements her repressive and distancing attitude towards her emotional self.
At first, Kushana brushes off the emotional openness she sees in Nausicaa as mere naivety, a form of weakness in her eyes, but in time she comes to see that it is exactly this quality which gives Nausicaa her mystifying strength. Kushana’s character growth culminates in volume five (pg., 50-54), when in the midst of an insect attack, she finds herself dug in and at deaths door. Cornered and wounded, she comes face-to-face with an enraged insect. Instead of putting up one last exhausted fight, she thinks of the advice that Nausicaa had given her, that to quell the rage of the insect you must:
“…cast aside your hatred and fears, the insects won’t attack” (Volume five, pg., 50).
Faced up against nature’s fury, with her life truly on the line, Kushana finally lets her guard down, allowing the emotions to come forth, and instead of feeling pain, she feels immense relief. She frees herself from her self-imposed cage, reconnects with her inner nature and quells the insect’s fury.
Then there’s Kurotowa, who in many ways, is the exact opposite of Nausicaa. He is of common birth, as opposed to royalty, and has worked his way up through the ranks pragmatically, utilising a cunning intellect (Volume three, pg., 19-21). While Nausicaa gains respect through her emotional openness and intuitive acuity, Kurotowa gains it by maintaining a grounded, practical, and strategic mindset. He sees the details that the heraldic nobility, lazy in their privilege, often miss or disregard as beneath their station. As a result, Kurotowa has a great capacity for evil, but because of his great admiration for Kushana, he remains loyal to the cause, using his cunning only against those who would try and stop her. This principled utilisation of his shadow-side makes Kurotowa one of the most interestingly admirable characters in Nausicaa’s world.
Kurotowa shows Nausicaa that hands will always be dirtied in war, no matter the side. Circumstance force him to make strategic decisions that are so brutal that Nausicaa is unable to come to terms with them until she herself becomes a leader of her own army near the end of the manga. When a swarm of rampaging Ohmu threatens to destroy Kushana’s fleet of ships in volume two (pg. 179-180), only Kurotowa has the grit to abandon those men left on the ground, in order to save the majority of the crew.
Kurotowa’s pragmatism is necessary for his survival in a violent world, but he is distanced from his own emotions and the pain and suffering of others as result. He is a cynic through and through and it is this lack of emotional openness that ultimately places Nausicaa in a position to grow above and beyond Kurotowa. His hard pragmatic perspective creates friction between him and Nausicaa at first, as Nausicaa continues to defy his expectations of war by giving protection to increasing numbers of refugees, particularly children:
“Nausicaa? What do you think you’re doing, collecting brats like that?! They’re not coming with us, by God! … This war! Where we’re going there’ll be kids like that lying around by the hundreds!” (Volume three, pg., 36).
However, Nausicaa gradually breaks this seal within Kurotowa, culminating in an act of poignant self-sacrifice. In volume three (pg., 49-54), one of Kurotowa’s soldiers lies dying, having been poisoned by toxic jungle spores. While the other soldiers call out in desperation, Kurotowa coldly resigns this soldier to his fate, knowing that there is no cure for the poison, and instead tries to regain control of his men through a morale-boosting speech. However, to Kurotowa’s surprise, Nausicaa steps forward and tries to suck the poison out of the soldier. With this kiss of life, she knowingly takes the poisons into her own body, sacrificing herself for this lowly soldier in an act that completely defies Kurotowa’s cynical outlook. Nausicaa miraculously survives this encounter, but she had no way of knowing that she would. Having witnessed this miraculous act of self-sacrifice, Kurotowa opens himself up to a realm beyond practicalities and strategies, into Nausicaa’s realm of the unconscious and the emotional.
Master Yupa is Nausicaa’s teacher, confidant, and closest ally. He is a warrior sage, famed across all the kingdoms as the wisest and most deadly of the sword masters. He sees immense potential in Nausicaa and tutors her in the way of swordsmanship and statecraft. Like Nausicaa, he has a fascination with the toxic jungle and wants to uncover its secrets. No wastelander has explored the jungle as thoroughly as Yupa and none have accrued as much forest lore as he. However, for all his searching and knowledge, it is Nausicaa who uncovers the secret to the forest’s deadly toxins from the comfort of her own home, realising that when the fungi are cultivated in the clean Valley soils, they grow free of poison. The visionary far-sightedness that compelled Yupa to venture out and explore the world may have made him wise and strong, but he was still unaware of the soil beneath his feet, seemingly unremarkable in its earthy modesty. Nausicaa, on the other hand, although appreciating the power of knowledge, is never blinded by it, placing more faith in her unconscious intuition. She understands that a person need not travel to the edges of the world to gain new knowledge, since the greatest revelations in understanding come from within. For Miyazaki, all the knowledge in the world cannot replace a little intuition:
“What a fool I’ve been! I’ve spent half my life searching for the key to the mystery of the forest – and I never saw that it was inside this girl, right before my eyes.” (Volume one, pg., 80).
Finally, there are the brothers Miralupa and Namulith, the shadowy co-regents of the Dorok Empire who manipulate both science and faith in order to gain control of the world. Unlike Nausicaa, the brothers have given up all faith in human beings, seeing them as nothing more than materials to be brought under control. However, the older brother Miralupa was not always this way, in fact quite the opposite. As a young man Miralupa wanted to be a benevolent philosopher king, utterly dedicated to improving the lives of his citizens. In this way he mirrors his farther, the first Holy Emperor who spent years in tutelage with the Crypt Keeper, learning how to heal the sick, educate the poor and improve agricultural yields via bioengineered servants (Volume 7; pg., 10-11). However, when he returned and tried to enact his new enlightened policies, the people rejected them. The peasants were suspicious of the Emperor and his new technologies after having suffered so long under tyrannical rule. They did not care for the new policies, preferring their own traditions and wisdoms. Miralupa and Namulith, like their father before them, grew weary of the peasants and their festering resentment towards them grew. Miralupa’s idealised vision of himself as merciful king and his citizenry as innocent, yet malleable lambs faded quickly, revealing his benevolence to be little more than a façade. When the world failed to neatly conform to the his idealised self-image, he abandoned it outright as a lost cause in a misguided attempt at self-preservation, washing his hands clean of all the moral and practical complexities of real life. Miralupa then is the antithesis of Nausicaa, who in failing to integrate the darkness in himself and empathise with the darkness in others, is unable to mature and instead stagnates, becoming a resent filled antagonist.
4. 3. Miyazaki’s thought process while making Nausicaa:
Nausicaa then, is first and foremost, about the power of emotional growth and the balancing act between the protagonists’ inner emotions and her responsibilities towards her fellow humans. This forms the essential motivation and source of tension for Nausicaa, symbolised through her attempts to reconcile the relationship between the toxic jungle and the wasteland cultures. Any environmentalist themes, at least conventional ones, are secondary to Miyazaki’s psychological and vitalist perspective on nature, which places the emotional growth of individuals and the power of nature to convey and ignite this growth, above all else.
This relationship that Nausicaa has to nature, both in the environment and her inner-self, is drastically simplified in the anime, with Miyazaki crafting a highly artificial and unrealistic binary between benevolent ecosystems and the ignorance of humans, befitting a traditional environmentalist narrative. The nature of the toxic jungle is fundamentally good, since in its non-polluted pristine form, it exists to heal the world and make it inhabitable for humans once again. On the other hand, its deadly character, i.e., poison spores and insect rampages, are primarily the result of human provocation. Nausicaa’s reconciliation of nature and humanity is relatively simple under this framework, since all she has to do is stamp out the ignorance, greed and anger in people to fix the divide. In retrospect, the anime Nausicaa, champion of nature’s purity, is a complete betrayal of the fully formed manga character, who must learn to embrace the polluted nature of humans and ecosystems alike, in all their darkness:
“I’ve always felt that we blind ourselves by looking at the world simply in terms of ‘purity’ and ‘corruption’” (Volume seven, pg., 20).
The nuanced ideas that Miyazaki starts to explore in the first two volumes of the manga, the volumes that would go on to be reconstituted into the anime, are either brushed over, i.e., Nausicaa’s love of the polluted & often disturbing toxic jungle, or are simply removed altogether, i.e., Nausicaa’s ambivalence towards the stone forest and her psychic powers.
Since the release of the anime, Miyazaki has admitted that his framing of the pristine forest as an ecosystem that solely exists to clean the world for people was a regrettable mistake and that his views on nature developed radically over the course of creating the subsequent manga:
“The idea that nature is always gentle and will give birth to something like the sea of decay in order to restore an environment polluted by humans is a total lie. And I believe that the idea that we should cling to such a saccharine worldview is a big problem. That, at least, is what I felt while writing Nausicaa…From the very beginning, I suspected that I would arrive at such a conclusion…” (SP: On the banks of the sea of decay, pg., 201)
Miyazaki cites two reasons for having made this mistake: 1) that he was restricted by the medium of film as a means to explore complex themes, in a way that he was not with manga:
“…That’s all you can do with film. It’s important that Nausicaa, the heroine, discover the real role, structure, and significance of the fukai, or sea of decay, and as a result trigger a Copernican-like revolution in understanding. I had decided that was about all I could show in a film version, but there were too many elements still in my mind that wouldn’t fit into that simplified framework and it bothered me that I couldn’t make them work” (SP: On completing Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, pg., 467)
and: 2) that to voice his true feelings about ecosystems, i.e., that they are morally ambiguous, would be a betrayal to his readers:
“…There was always this thought that such a conclusion wouldn’t work for the story, that it would be a betrayal of my readers. But that thinking was flawed. Ecosystems can’t possibly exist for a particular purpose… Nausicaa, the heroine, learns the truth behind the sea of decay, but it’s almost impossible for her to explain it to people in words.” (SP: On the banks of the sea of decay, pg., 201).
In writing the manga something pushed Miyazaki to confront his more ambivalent and complex views of the nature of ecosystems and honestly spell them out to his readers. I believe that Miyazaki used the world of Nausicaa as a way to explore his actual feelings towards nature, as well as a way to confront his own inner darkness. This emotional exploration led Miyazaki to reject his idealised intellectual stances towards environment and society, and instead embrace a way of life that prioritises feeling.
First, Miyazaki has admitted that when he was working on Nausicaa, he felt a great deal of anger at the world, in terms of the environmental and humanitarian issues going on at the time:
“I was extremely irritated at the time. I confess I was angry at the general state of the world, among other things… “It was right around 1980. In addition to being upset by environmental problems, I was also concerned about where humanity was headed, and especially about the state of Japan…” (SP: On completing Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, pg., 465).
These feelings are clearly expressed in Nausicaa as cultural critiques of industrialism, war, religion, and science. However, Miyazaki admits that these feelings of anger towards the world were secondary compared to the feelings of anger he had towards himself:
“… Most of all, I suspect, I was angered by the state of my own self.” (SP: On completing Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, pg., 465).
We also know from Starting Point that Miyazaki used his ideals to repress his emotions, much to his own detriment:
“Using my own sense of what’s proper, I’ve twisted and suppressed my initial subjective impressions…” (SP: On completing Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, pg., 478).
This repression mirrors the experiences of Kushana and Miralupa in the manga. However, by focusing on himself, instead of the state of the world, Miyazaki was able to come to terms with his feelings, putting him on a new path, the same path as Nausicaa, where worldly knowledge is traded in for intuition and personal growth:
“…Well, I don’t do that anymore. Even when looking at today’s politicians, I just rely on my impressions… In other words, I’ve reverted to being a true simpleton…My position isn’t a popular one, but I say we’d be better off solving far more personal problems.” (SP: On completing Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, pg. 478-479).
Miyazaki has stated multiple times that in making the manga, he prioritised the expression of spontaneous ideas and feelings even if it was to the detriment to his initial plans, highlighting Miyazaki’s prioritisation of natural growth over artificial control:
“Even if not explicitly written or drawn in the original manga story, there were many personal feelings, as well as my own wild ideas…I wrote it thinking that maybe I should go in this or that direction, and then just followed my whim.” (SP: On completing Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, pg., 465)
“When creating a work like Nausicaa, all sorts of ideas, even random fragments of ideas, come to me. I just have to assume that they mean something. I can’t ignore these fragments even if they might destroy the story structure.” (SP: On completing Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, pg., 469).
The evidence for Miyazaki’s break with his old intellectual ideals does not end there. For one, we know that it was in writing Nausicaa, that Miyazaki abandoned the ideology of Marixism. Also, as previously discussed, Miyazaki takes a staunchly cynical perspective on intellectualism throughout the manga. He criticises various thought leaders, i.e., scientists, priests, environmentalists, and ecologists, while simultaneously raising the emotion led Nausicaa to a deific status (i.e., “Goddess of the forest”), further reinforcing the idea that Miyazaki broke from intellectualism:
“I don’t think I abandoned Marxism because of any change in my position within society, on the contrary, I feel that it came from having written Nausicaa.” (SP: On completing Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, pg. 476).
4. 3. 1. Comparing the anime and manga finale’s: This transition in Miyazaki’s philosophy is most clearly expressed in the finale of the Nausicaa manga. This ending represents a tipping point where Miyazaki finally rids himself of his repressive intellectual ideals (i.e., what’s “proper”) and gives into his more honest feelings. The result is a finale diametrically opposed to the anime ending, both in terms of the themes conveyed and the morality of Nausicaa. As a result, this ending represents a direct self-criticism of the mindset that underpinned the anime, with its dichotomy between an ideal state of pure nature versus corrupt human pollution.
In the anime, it is natures purity that offers the ultimate salvation for humanity, as we see a sapling growing in the clean soils of the petrified forest, ushering in a new age of environmental cleanliness. However, in the manga finale, it is the same desire for purity that drives the antagonistic Crypt Keeper. Nausicaa learns that the petrified forest is not a natural consequence of ecosystem development but is an artificial construct designed by the ecologists of the old world to bring about an age of purity (Volume seven, pg., 21-23). With this revelation Miyazaki and Nausicaa completely reject the idealised environmentalist basis of the anime, the idea that ecosystems could naturally develop with the sole goal of purifying the environment:
“…It was planned from the beginning. An ecosystem with a goal, its very existence runs contrary to the laws of nature!” (Volume seven, pg., 22).
It is also revealed to Nausicaa that the people who inhabit the wasteland have all had their bodies tainted by the toxic jungle (Volume seven, pg., 18-19). When the petrified forest ushers in a new age of environmental purity, all those who have been tainted by spores will die, since they will no longer be capable of breathing clean air. With this, Miyazaki does not just abandon the idea of purity as a benevolent force, but actually turns it into a direct threat to humanity. The message is clear, human beings are infused with pollution, just like the toxic jungle is, and to attempt to become pure is a folly tantamount to death:
“… although we may long for a purified world, we could never survive there - that the human body is different from what it once was.” (Volume seven, pg., 20).
In the anime finale, we see Nausicaa at her most virtuous. Her love for life is absolute and she’ll even sacrifice her own life to end the conflict between the insects and the humans. When she is resurrected by the ohmu, she arises as a prophesised angelic deity walking on a field of gold. This is Nausicaa the pristine hero, a shamanic peacekeeper ushering in a sustainable future where both humans and nature can live in environmental harmony.
However, in the manga finale, Nausicaa has fully embraced her shadow, transitioning from peacemaker to warrior queen, resolute in her quest to destroy the Crypt Keeper, who she sees as an affront to life itself. Instead of decrying the use of the God Warrior, as she does in the anime, she instead uses the Warrior as a weapon to storm the Dorok Capital. Instead of being covered in the blue blood of the baby ohmu she tried to save, she is bathed in the blood of her God Warrior child, who she sacrifices to achieve her victory. At the bottom of the Crypt, Nausicaa finally confronts the Keeper, who not only holds the key to all the advanced scientific knowledge of the past, but also the embryos of a new purified human race. They are waiting for the great purification to be complete, so that they may live in a world free of pollution, even if it means the deaths of countless more:
“We speak to you as representatives of the great many who died meaningless deaths because of their own folly. You are living in the long period of purification … but the day will come when the sea of corruption ceases to be and a pure, green land is reborn” (Volume seven, pg., 3).
Nausicaa is abhorred that the ecologists of the old world could happily sacrifice the corrupted wastelanders for the sake of some idealised state of purity. Having grown so much by accepting her inner darkness, Nausicaa now reviles the notion of purity, and believes that nature is inherently impure, as it is built on death and the necessity to survive. Nor does Nausicaa believe that nature can be so easily controlled, since no ecologist could have predicted the evolution of the toxic jungle, the self-sacrificing actions of the Ohmu and the immense emotion felt by the giant mold:
“I do not doubt that you were created out of idealism…Why didn’t those men and women realise that both purity and corruption are the very stuff of life?... because you were created as an artificial god of purity, you have become the ugliest creature of all, never knowing what it means to be alive…Are we supposed to believe that those who planned the reconstruction of the world could have predicted the actions of the Ohmu or the giant mold? I don’t think so. Something inside is telling me passionately that that isn’t true” (Volume seven, pg., 8).
Nausicaa thinks that the only way to break the cycle of control over life is to sever the link to the puritanical old world by killing the Crypt Keeper, who’s technologies will always attract immature and wicked people desperate for control over nature. She will do this even if it means killing the many new humans in stasis and destroying all of the advanced knowledge of the old world (Volume seven, pg., 7). Nausicaa would sooner let humans live out the twilight of their species corrupted in a polluted world, where they are free to grow, rather than have them sacrificed for some sterilized future controlled by the scientists:
“To live is to change. The ohmu, the mold, the grasses and trees. We human beings…we will all go on changing… but you cannot change. You have only the plan that was built into you because you deny death.” (Volume seven, pg., 6).
All the easily digestible idealism that Miyazaki projected into his anime protagonist has been stripped away, revealing Nausicaa in her rawest and most morally questionable form. This ending has been perfectly designed to challenge the readers relationship to the protagonist, to see that Nausicaa’s commitment to nature in all its forms, is so strong that she would act out murder to achieve it. A story that champions purity needs a pure hero and a story that challenges the notion of purity needs a corrupted one.
4. 3. 2. The true meaning of Nausicaa summarised: Miyazaki, like the trees of the petrified forest, was frozen in stone by his ideals and intellect, isolated from the wonderous toxic jungle of his emotional self. By exploring his inner forest and confronting it in all its darkness, Miyazaki, like Nausicaa, gained the once unconscious powers of the Ohmu, the vitalistic power of growth, the stuff of life itself. As a result, Miyazaki experienced revelations that shook the foundations of both his personal world and the world of Nausicaa, which were in turn expressed through Nausicaa’s own revelations.
On the other hand, the Crypt Keeper, Miralupa, and the scientists all hid from their emotions, deceiving themselves with false hopes that they could control nature, both within and outside of themselves, and bend it to fit their superficial ideals. They refused to admit any inner darkness, believing themselves to be pure. Instead, they feared the dark, and their insecurities drove them to seek more and more control. Miyazaki demands that we give up our intellectual frameworks and become ‘true simpletons’, embracing natures gift of sincere feeling, in the same way he did while writing Nausicaa. If we hold onto our love for all forms of life, we will have the courage to give up control to nature, peer into the darkness of ourselves and sacrifice our self-deceptions. Then we will realise how powerful we really are, and we will become much more aware of the responsibilities we have towards the environment, our fellow humans and ourselves.
5. 1. Legacy
This change in Miyazaki’s outlook, from intellectual idealist to emotional realist, would mark a profound shift in his artistic career, laying a philosophical foundation for some of the most significant anime’s of all time. Nausicaa the anime is, and remains, the only Miyazaki film that deals with environmental themes through a conventional environmentalist lens, i.e., good ecosystems versus destructive humans. All films following on from the publication of the manga, in which ecosystems are prominently featured, i.e., My Neighbour Totoro, Princess Mononoke and Ponyo, deal with the ecological-human relationship in much more emotional, and in the case of Princess Mononoke, ambivalent ways.
5. 1. 1. My Neighbour Totoro and Ponyo: My Neighbour Totoro and Ponyo expertly convey how much childlike joy and wonder there is to be found in nature, expressed through its ability to grow and its vast diversity of forms. In My Neighbour Totoro, Satsuki and Mei revel in delight when Totoro helps them to grow a gigantic camphor tree from seeds they had planted that very same day, while Ponyo and Sōsuke marvel at the many varieties of brightly coloured sea creatures that they can see when they sail on their little boat through the flooded town. However, neither film comments on environmental destruction in any explicit way, simply letting nature and people be, which is a far-cry from the tone set in the Nausicaa anime.
5. 1. 2. Princess Mononoke: In Princess Mononoke, Miyazaki’s brings his ambivalent perspective towards nature-human relations to the silver-screen, in an attempt to correct the mistakes made in the Nausicaa film. As in Nausicaa, the conflict in Princess Mononoke revolves around humans who destroy the forests, and the forest denizens who retaliate in response. However, unlike in the Nausicaa anime, Miyazaki instead presents strong cases for and against both sides and ends on an extremely ambivalent note.
On the side of nature is San, the human child raised by wolves, and the gods of the forest, gigantic, sentient animals who protect the forest and fill it with powerful magic. The forest is deep, mystical, and deserving of reverence. Giant trees are inhabited by spirits and forest springs can heal the sick. Indeed, life itself comes from a great forest spirit called the ‘Deer God’. Although humans abandoned San as a child, Moro the wolf god was willing to raise her as if one of her own. She gave San the strength to survive but also taught her how to care for all the creatures of the forest.
Although it was the humans who began the conflict against nature, by shooting Lord Nago the boar god, the forest denizens are far from being passive and innocent victims. The forest inhabitants are filled with an indiscriminate and murderous hatred towards humans, and constantly bicker amongst one another for the Deer Gods favour. For example, it was Nago’s hatred for humanity that turned him into a demon when he was shot and instead of turning his anger towards Lady Eboshi, the culprit, he instead went on a destructive rampage amongst the innocent Emishi people, who revere the forest:
“It grieves us that a demon has come from our tribe.”.
On the side of the humans is Lady Eboshi, the ambitious and progressive leader of ‘Irontown’. She exploits the forest to keep her forges burning and wants to kill the gods so she can take complete control of the ore-rich hills. Her ambition though, is not due to mere greed, but stems from a resentment of the social inequalities rife in feudal Japan, and a genuine desire to empower marginalised groups. She cares for lepers who would have otherwise been completely ostracised from society and she emancipates women who would otherwise be forced into prostitution. The people of iron town love and admire their Lady Eboshi and will even lay down their lives for the sake of her vision. Ultimately though, her lust for power gets the better of her and she commits single-mindedly to the killing of the deer god, in a blind attempt to gain complete control over the forests, risking everything she had built in the process.
In the end, when Eboshi beheads the forest spirit, the forest dies and iron town is destroyed in the process. Unlike in the Nausicaa anime, there is no comfortable reconciliation of nature and humanity in Princess Mononoke, and instead ends on an ambivalent note much more in keeping with the ending of the Nausicaa manga. Lady Eboshi and the villagers survive the destruction of Iron town and although Eboshi is humbled by the experience, her future intentions remain unclear, simply stating that she will start again and build ‘a good village’. Similarly, San is unable to forgive humanity for the destruction caused to the forest, and despite the protagonists’ efforts, she refuses to join civilisation and decides that she must continue to live away from people, in the wilderness. As with the Nausicaa manga, the only certainty we are left with, is that life will continue, in spite of any reconciliation between nature and man, and even in the absence of the forest gods, things will continue to grow:
San: “Even if they grow back they won’t be the Deer Gods woods. The Deer God is dead.
Ashitaka: The Deer God can’t die. He is life itself…he’s telling us we should live”.
5. 1. 3. Spirited Away: In Spirited Away, ecological explorations take a back seat and the focus falls on the importance of emotional growth as a means to survive and thrive in the world. Chihiro begins the story as a protected child who feels largely indifferent towards the world. However, when she’s separated from her parents and forced to work in the demon’s bathhouse, she has no choice but to embrace the horror of the situation and to learn how to be independent. Just as in the Nausicaa manga, comfort and denial are the true insidious villains of this story. Yubaba nurses the giant baby who refuses to grow up just as Chihiro nurses the infant inside of herself, until she becomes willing to openly confront the grim realities of life, mirroring Nausicaa’s realisation that she is not as innocent as she once believed herself to be (Volume one, pg., 80). As Nausicaa realises that she must escape from the oedipal care of the Crypt Keeper and his garden of delights, Chihiro learns that she will never escape the bath house unless she gains a stronger sense of self:
“Today’s children feel shielded, protected, and distanced from reality to the point where they only have a vague sense of what it means to be alive…Chihiro’s skinny limbs and her deliberately miffed and apathetic expressions are a symbol of this. But as reality sets in, and as she directly confronts danger from which she cannot easily extricate herself, she demonstrates an adaptability and toughness that even she had not been aware of; she realizes that she has a life force in her that makes her capable of bold decisions and action.” (TP: Chihiro, from a mysterious town- The goal of this film, pg., 212).
CONCLUSION
This re-analysis of the Nausicaa series leads us to question the traditional environmentalist and Marxist interpretations of the franchise. Both Miyazaki and Nausicaa are staunchly opposed to the idea of pure and benevolent nature, believing that natures power comes from its savage and polluted aspects, as embodied by the toxic jungle. Miyazaki criticises environmentalists for their tendency to become anti-human in their appreciation of nature, as expressed through the mummified shaman and the forest people. The idea that Nausicaa was intended to be Marxist is plainly wrong since Miyazaki has stated that writing Nausicaa actually made him give up the ideology.
Instead, the true meaning of Nausicaa lies in the power of ecology to capture and convey feelings and the importance of emotional exploration, particularly that of a dark and troubling nature. Nausicaa is an emotional ecologist, who uses her feelings, above all else, to guide her actions. This connection to the unconscious, the realm of spontaneous and uncontrolled growth, ties Nausicaa inextricably to nature, as symbolised by the toxic jungle of her mind. Nausicaa gains strength by looking deep into the darkness of her soul and accepting what she finds, no matter how painful. It is when she is at her lowest, driven to despair by the horrors of war, that she plunges into the depths of the jungle abyss and is reborn as a Forest God.
Previous to writing the manga, Miyazaki twisted his environmental and social ideals to repress an anger he felt towards himself. Nausicaa helped Miyazaki to embrace his true inner feelings, leading him to abandon his old ideological stances on environmentalism, Marxism, and intellectualism more generally. Miyazaki decries the intellectuals of his world, painting scientists, priests, and ecologists as power hungry, manipulative, and controlling antagonists whose growth is stunted by superficial idealism that all quickly falls away once they get hold of the Crypts technology. The traditional environmentalist narrative established in the Nausicaa movie, with its purifying forest endangered by arrogant humans, is completely walked back, despite Miyazaki’s fears that it might alienate his readership and disrupt his plans for the series. Instead, purity becomes the enemy, an ideal held by the antagonistic Crypt Keeper, who wants to cleanse the wasteland of pollution, including all its people, who have only been able to survive in this harsh environment by becoming polluted themselves. Nausicaa tells us that no person can mature without embracing the darkness in the world, and those who see the world in black and white inevitably deny something inside themselves.
By prioritising our feelings over our intellect, unconscious nature over conscious artifice, we will become “…true simpletons”, who never lose sight of that most fundamental emotional core that guides us through life, pushing us to grow. This reverence for growth, that was established in the Nausicaa manga, became the main philosophical underpinning for Miyazaki’s most influential movies, including Totoro, Princess Mononoke and Spiri
ted Away, all movies where traditional environmentalist themes are rendered ambivalent compared to the potency of growth.
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