Review of “Nostalgia for a Lost World” (1979)

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Miyazaki Hayao (writer).

Read in Starting Point.

Miyazaki discusses nostalgia as a force observable even in three-year-olds and connects it to unattainable and undesirable situations in fiction, the “narcissistic” enjoyment of which is a “surrogate emotion for something they [the audience] have lost”. He concludes that animators must study hard to produce visions that are not derived from entertainment, but from life.

References here: Starting Point: 1979–1996 (1996/2009), “Memories of Lost Landscapes: On Genzaburō Yoshino’s Kimitachi wa Dō Ikiruka (2006), The Secret World of Arrietty (2010).

text non-fiction Japanese production