Fwd: Japanese Religion in Film

[Michael E Kerpan Jr.]

On Tuesday 12 April 2005 20:32, tim.iles at utoronto.ca wrote:
> Miyazakai Hayao's films all seem to have a definite religious
> (spiritual/Shinto) component, with _Tonari no Totoro_ (_My Neighbour
> Totoro_) working almost as a Shinto how-to manual. _Sen to Chihiro no
> kamikakushi_ (_Spirited Away_) of course, set as it is in a bath house for
> _kami_ comes immediately to mind.

Isao Takahata's "Pom Poko" deals much more explicitly with religious themes 
and symbolism than any of the work of his colleague Miyazaki.

> A not-too recent film by Nagasaki Shunichi, _Shikoku_ (_Land of the
> Dead_), while not a groundbreaking work, features shamanism and Shinto
> symbolism in a vaguely creepy ghost-story package.

Shikoku - kind of a stinker, I'm afraid.  No genuine treatment of religious 
issues -- just appropriation of certain folk beliefs for local color. Yui 
Natsukawa's lead performance (and the inland Shikoku scenery) are about all 
this film has going for it.

> Kore-eda Hirokazu's _Wandafuru raifu_ (_Afterlife_) from 1998 is set in a
> "waystation" for the recently deceased, but while this may be an
> interesting work in terms of its imagining of the afterlife, it doesn't
> have a religious focus per se.

I would say that "After Life" does have a religious focus -- but not any 
specifically Japanese one.

The most religious (in a theological sense) Japanese work I've run across is 
"Haibane Renmei" (by Yoshitoshi Abe et al.).  It juggles Buddhist and 
Christian concepts in a remarkably sophisticated fashion.

MEK