I can’t read that sentence because I do not read, speak or understand Japanese. It is only now, after my childhood imagination has faded, that I care. There was a time when understanding words like these simply didn’t matter.
I was no more than five or six years old when my father brought home a videocassette called Tonari No Totoro for my brother and I to watch. The film was our distraction from the holiday party full of old people that was going on in the rest of the house. The music began and an animated country landscape rolled across the screen, as a father and two children drove in a car packed to the brim with luggage. The voice of a high-pitched singer in the background faded as they arrived at a clearing in the woods
The children ran around in and out of the rice paper sliding doors. Their father chased them, and after catching them, they all settled down for a good laugh. As they started to unpack the car, the children came across some gray, floating puffballs. The puffballs seemed to come alive whenever light flashed over them. A puffball led the children outside to a hopping creature that they followed down a path leading into the woods. They fell down a hole in a tree, and landed on a giant, friendly, furry creature called Totoro. I could not avert my eyes from the screen. I did not leave the room when my brother got up to eat dessert. I had been sucked in. I, too, had fallen down the tree trunk, into a fantasy world of my own.
Watching the film, my mind filled with questions. Were those two children boys or girls? They wore gender-ambiguous culottes, had short haircuts fit for boys or girls and spoke in high voices typical of their youth. And what were those puff balls? Why did there seem to be a dramatic edge to the story surrounding them?
At some point, I realized that the characters were speaking Japanese. There were no subtitles to clue me in. Perhaps I knew from the beginning that it would be in Japanese. But regardless of when I realized this, the observation was secondary to my immediate awe. I wanted so much to stumble across my own Totoro who I could fly with, trust in and befriend. I wanted Totoro to pick me up from school and turn himself into a bus to ride whenever it rained.
I watched the film again and again throughout my childhood. Every time the theme music came on, I floated away on an adventure with those children. I shared their secret that adults could not understand. I stumbled down that tree repeatedly in dreams and flew through the forest in my waking moments. What might have been meaningless foreign speech became the canvas for my own creations of conversation and conflict. And because I could not tell whether the children were boys or girls, they became my brother and me.
Ten years went by and I forgot about Totoro. The tape was lent to another family, or perhaps my interest just waned. I was first reminded of my childhood fantasies with Totoro when I saw the film Spirited Away, by the same filmmaker, Hayao Miyazaki. The memories came rushing back. I was flying and again felt the hesitant belief that I really had lived the story first hand.
At a Thanksgiving dinner that year, I came across Totoro at a friend’s house. It was the same video, but instead of having a handwritten label and transparent box, the film was in a colorful case covered in English words. My curiosity got the best of and I decided to watch the film, convinced that finally knowing the details would be enlightening.
I saw the winding road once more, the car loaded up with luggage and the two children. But like me, they had changed. They spoke in horridly boisterous English voices. They laughed about everything, capping each line with jolly giggles. I could understand the words they spoke and I learned their genders and ages. A hole wrenched open in my stomach as I watched them playing with the puffballs. I became an observer, no longer an active participant in the story. Where had my friends gone? And more importantly, what had become of my own tumble down the tree trunk? I could no longer feel the bark of the tree on my skin. The warmth of Totoro’s furry belly evaporated and the rug of imagination I had played upon was yanked out from under me.
I asked myself, after the disappointing film had ended, why I had cared to see it in English. Why had I wanted to change it? I had not considered the consequences of watching it as a young adult and more importantly, of seeing it in English. Japanese words gave me the freedom of imagination. As a child I had embraced the ability to create my own storyline. As an adolescent that was not enough. I wanted answers.
Now, just a few years after my return to Totoro, I cannot remember whether the children were little boys or girls. But I can still smell the fresh air as I race up into the sky, cutting through the dark trees and holding on to the fur on the back of that friendly creature, ready for a night of adventure.
