Isao Takahata’s The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013) stands as the final masterpiece of one of Studio Ghibli’s founding fathers. Expanding upon the historic Japanese fairy tale Taketori Monogatari, it offers a poignant reflection on the impermanence of joy and beauty as it delves into the transient nature of human experience, commenting on Japanese national identity and its cultural idea of Mono-no-aware – the awareness of the impermanence of things (Miller, 2011: 7-8). This concept is located in the cultural environment of Japaneseness (Nihonjinron), but in Takahata’s animated work, receives translation into a universally available sentiment for global audiences.
The story begins with a bamboo cutter who finds a tiny girl inside a glowing bamboo stalk. He and his wife raise her as their own, naming her Kaguya. As Kaguya rapidly grows into a beautiful young woman, she attracts the attention of many suitors, including the emperor. Yet, Kaguya is burdened by a deep, inexplicable longing for her pastoral home. The animation explores themes of identity, impermanence, and the contrast between the natural world and societal expectations, as Kaguya navigates the pressures placed upon her by those around her. From her early childhood, Kaguya expresses an inconsolable melancholy while observing the natural world. A sentiment that resonates profoundly with Mono-no-aware. This aesthetic concept, deeply rooted in Japanese culture, literature, and art, refers to the gentle sadness and appreciation of the transient beauty in life.
In Princess Kaguya (2013), Mono-no-aware is intricately woven into both the narrative and visual style. The delicate portrayal of fleeting moments—such as the changing seasons and Kaguya’s time on Earth—embodies this aesthetic, with the characters’ experiences marked by their acute awareness of life’s impermanence. Stylistically, the hand-drawn animation is successful in defamiliarizing its audience from the natural world. This highly aesthetic use of animation also links with a more tangible awareness of flow, as scenes subtly transition from one moment to the next, reflecting the transient beauty of life itself, urging viewers to acknowledge the impermanence of each fleeting image.
A particularly evocative and climactic moment in the film is Kaguya’s dance beneath the cherry tree, a scene that epitomizes Mono-no-aware. See figure 1. The cherry blossom that is celebrated in Japanese culture not only for its beauty but for its tangible impermanence, serves as a powerful symbol of the fleeting nature of joy. Takahata’s use of hand-drawn animation with its distinctively sketchy style, allows the audience to participate in the aesthetic experience through defamiliarization that heightens the emotional impact of impermanence in the scene. See figure 2 and 3. It is worth pointing out that this scene is not part of the original fairy tale. As Susan Napier notes, to the ageing director, for whom transience and rumination on the passing of time always provided tangible inspiration, the cherry blossom dance likely served as a reflection of his own experience (Napier, 2020: 131-32).
In the face of the eternal that in the animation is represented by the Buddha-like paternal figure who eventually summons Kaguya home – meaningful experience naturally is attained through rapport with the individual’s everyday experience of the mundane world. For example, the scene is juxtaposed with Kaguya’s strenuous relationship to her new and imposed regal duties in the city. Kaguya feels confined by the societal strains of Heian-period (794-1185) life in feudal Japan. Authentic experience is only enabled in direct relation to the natural realm, into which the human characters she grows fond of are implemented without taxonomical superiority. This rejection of culture-nature taxonomy and anthropocentrism is also at the heart of Takahata’s early anime adaptation of Heidi (1974), which notably also features a juvenile female character frequently dancing for pure joy at the experience of the natural flow of life.
Kaguya’s eventual return to her celestial home, losing all of her earthly memories in the process, mirrors the brief and transient bloom of the cherry blossom. Her tale in Isao Takahata’s animation is a meditation on the ephemeral nature of beauty and joy, offering its viewers a profound reflection on the human condition and thus enabling a consciousness for Mono-no-aware that ignores cultural boundaries. Similar to how its protagonist holds no regard for arbitrary human distinctions between societal places. For those interested in Japanese aesthetics, Princess Kaguya (2013) provides a masterful exploration of impermanence, standing as a luminous example of Mono-no-aware in cinema. With the dance serving as its prime example, Takahata’s animation conveys notions about the transience and poignancy of the seemingly mundane: the cherry blossom serves as a crucial symbol in Japanese culture and the progression of the year not on account of its superior beauty, but because it underlines the ubiquity of transience as a palpable illustration of Mono-no-aware. It also illustrates how animation enables a defamiliarized gaze at the world that envelops the viewer. As Hui notes, Takahata’s animated film employs a hand-drawn style that frequently rejects the conventions of modern animation by blending its characters with the enveloping backgrounds, emphasizing their implementation in the natural world (Hui, 2020: 115-16). Kaguya’s dance underneath the cherry blossom underscores the ephemeral nature of joy, and its juxtaposition with her forced return to the moon, home of divine and celestial beings, bespeaks the human condition in a cultured, but universal way.
References
Heidi, Girl of the Alps (1974). [DVD]. Directed by Isao Takahata, produced by Junzō Nakajima and Shigehito Takahashi. Japan: Zuiyo Eizo.
Hui, G.S. (2020) ‘Stimulating Thought Rather Than Appetite: On Takahata Isao’s Animation Aesthetics’, The Japanese Journal of Animation Studies, 21(1), pp. 111-125. DOI: 10.34370/jjas.21.1_111.
Miller, M. (2011) ‘Japanese Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art’, in Edelglass, W. and Garfield, J.L. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of World Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195328998.003.0028.
Napier, S. (2020) ‘“I’ve Seen this Place Before:” Memory, Exile and Resistance in The Tale of Princess Kaguya’, The Japanese Journal of Animation Studies, 21(1), pp. 127-135. DOI: 10.34370/jjas.21.1_127.
The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (2013). [Blu-Ray]. Directed by Isao Takahata, produced by Yoshiaki Nishimura. Japan: Studio Ghibli.
Christian Wilken is a research associate and lecturer at the University of Koblenz and a lecturer at the University of Düsseldorf, who specializes in weird fiction, gothic, and postmodernism. Christian is involved in the “Traveling Bodies” network founded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), exploring themes related to corporeality in traveling literature. He is also a member of the “Hauntology and Spectrality Research Network” at York St John University. His interdisciplinary and transcultural research is supported by a PhD in Anglophone Studies, and degrees in Comparative Literature and Japanese Studies. His monograph Reading Lovecraft in the Anthropocene is forthcoming with Routledge in 2025.