Princess Mononoke

I spent this watch interested in the people of Irontown and how the city is reminiscent of post-war Hiroshima. The imagery reminded me of Kaneto Shindō’s Children of Hiroshima, a film that shows the city’s (ongoing at the time) reconstruction and how the survivors process the lingering effects of the atomic bomb. In Shindō’s film, we see women taking up laborious (and traditionally male) jobs to revive the city and its economy. We also see the hibakusha wrapped in bandages, not unlike the people affected by leprosy in Miyazaki’s film. The women in both films mourn their husbands—in Hiroshima they fall to radiation poisoning; in Irontown to the ongoing war. Perhaps I was reaching at this point, but the way Irontown is wiped out at the end of the film (after a great force falls from above, no less) seemed to speak for itself. I can’t seem to find any source of Miyazaki talking about this connection; maybe it was unintentional. It’s also possible that the course I took on post-war Japanese cinema has made me hyper-aware of any possible resemblance.