Pom Poko And Doomsday Cults (1)

Well, I have to mention in the beginning that Studio Ghibli's wonderful animé Pom Poko (平成狸合戦ぽんぽこ 港譯：百變貍貓) has basically nothing to do with any doomsday cults. It simply reminded me of these. When I happened to watch this movie last night, I felt it gave me a clue to the reason why there are so many doomsday cults in America.

I am not a big fan of Isao Takahata’s animés as I feel his works are overly nostalgic about Japan of 1950-70s. (The 70s, the first ten years of my life, happened to be the worst time for me…) But Pom Poko is an exception.

This movie is about a failed uprising of small wild animals called tanukis (often translated as racoon dogs) against human to protect their homeland in the western suburbs of Tokyo. It is about the nature’s revenge against excessive urban development. However, thanks to tanuki’s comical nature, their uprising in this movie is extremely funny and cute.

(Although both foxes and tanukis play trick on people in Japanese folk stories, tanukis' tricks are usually described as dumber and cuter than foxes'. Foxes are supposed to be more sinister than tanukis but at the same time they are also revered as messengers of certain Shinto deities.)

But why does this comical uprising remind me of very scary doomsday cults? It’s the monsters, the spirits of forest, into which tanukis disguised to scare humans off from their habitat. Well, their big monster parade to spook people ended up with entertaining them, though…

These monsters reminded me of a night near woods in Minneapolis with my friend, an ex-refugee from Laos and her boyfriend, a grandson of a Lutheran missionary to India. While he said that that it was the most relaxing kind of moment, his girlfriend was so spooked that she wanted to go home immediately. But he did not understand what spooked his sweetheart, at all.

I was a bit spooked, too. Although I did not believe in monsters or spirits of forest, I shared collective memories of them with my Japanese parents and ancestors. So I asked her “Are you afraid of the spirits of woods?” Her answer was “Yes.” Indeed, Asian lives are still surrounded by many invisible monsters or spirits even though we are reluctant to admit…

I pondered why Americans did not feel the presence of spirits. Not just Asians but Europeans have fairies and monsters of woods in their collective unconscious mind. I know it from Nordic troll stories (Moomin by Tove Jansson) or Irish fairy tales. I do not think it is a bad thing…

Then I realised that Americans had exterminated the spirits that had lived with Native Americans from the time immemorial… So there still should be the spirits that had accompanied Sioux or Ojibway Indians but White Americans could not feel the presence of! And now I feel it is one of the reasons why Americans have produced more doomsday cults than any other Western nations… I am going to tell you more about this tomorrow.

(Continued to the next post)

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Tags: Pom Poko, 平成狸合戦ぽんぽこ, 百變貍貓, fairy tale, doomsday cult, Jung, Studio Ghibli