My Neighbor Totoro

This was a great film and served as my introduction to Anime. I found the film to be quite enjoyable. I was able to pick out many of the recurring themes of Anime within this film and it reinforced what I learned at a recent lecture about Anime. I watched this film with my children who are 5, 7, and 8 years old. They all enjoyed watching this with me. At the same time, I do believe that older children would be engaged by this film. "Totoro" could be used in any class setting either in parts or as it is intended.

Phil Bohn, Freshman English, Central Catholic High School
My Neighbor Totoro is the third film by Japan’s Studio Ghibli and the second directed by acclaimed director Hayao Miyazaki in conjunction with the studio. It is an animated film that tells the story of two young girls, Satsuki and Mei. Their father is a university professor and their mother is sick in the hospital with a long-term illness. To be closer to their mother, the family moves into a new house and the girls quickly discover that it is inhabited by small spirits that live in abandoned dark houses. This starts their interactions with various spirits including the titular Totoro, who appears to be a forest spirit of some kind. Throughout the film, Totoro shows the girls the power that he has as a spirit and helps them with various things. Gorgeous scenery and animation as well as an incredible score help to make this movie easy to enjoy and get wrapped up in.
As for its application in the classroom, it showcases major components of the Shinto faith in Japan. Shinto’s regard of kami, spirits that live within objects, items, and natural phenomena and landscapes. Satsuki and Mei have a direct interaction with these spirits and we see how the spirits, in turn, do things that affect the human world. The girls do something or give something to Totoro and he gives them something or does something for them in return. The idea of paying homage or giving gifts in return for favors or luck is prevalent in the film as it is in Shinto. This movie, due to the age of the main characters, subject matter, and the fact that it’s animated, lend this move easily to younger viewers, possibly lower middle school. If the lower middle school route is taken, I would use it is bits and pieces, showcasing specific scenes to illustrate areas of Shinto. As an alternative, showing it to older students who can delve more deeply into the film without the social stigma of watching “anime” could be an option. Juniors and seniors in high school would be good at that, especially if they are studying world religions or world history. Either way, the movie is a benchmark in animation and storytelling and features a world religion that may not be highlighted as much as the major worldwide ones, giving students of any grade level or age a chance to explore it in an easy to understand, engaging way.

Name: Kimberly Adams
School: Southminster Childcare
Grade: Pre-K
My Neighbor Totoro is an animated Japanese film that was released in Japan in 1988 and as an English version in the United Sates in 1993. The main characters in the film are two young sisters named Satsuki and Mei, Satsuki being the older of the two. The main setting of the film is a small mid 1950’s Japanese town. The story opens with the two girls going to live with their father in a rather old Japanese style house while their mother recovers in a nearby hospital for some unmentioned illness. Almost as soon as the girls arrive the plot takes on a slight fantasy element, and the girls discover little house spirits that resemble dust bunnies which like to inhabit dark and empty houses. Later when the girls meet their elderly neighbor, the woman assures them that the house spirits are harmless and that they will leave to find another empty house.
Given that the girls’ father is a professor and spends much of his time working, the girls are left to spend much of their time entertaining themselves. One day when Satsuki is at school, Mei chases a bunny looking spirit which eventually leads her to Totoro. Totoro is yet another spirit who seems to become fond of helping the girls in a variety of ways throughout the remainder of the film. One of the most significant scenes is when the girls plant seeds from a Camphor tree. Every day the girls wait and watch faithfully to see if the seeds have sprouted. One night Totoro and his friends do a ceremonial dance around where the seeds were planted, and magically a massive tree grows from the ground. The girls witness this and go outside to celebrate with Totoro and his friends. The next morning the tree is gone but the seeds have indeed started to sprout. At this sight the girls and their father do a ceremonial dance to thank the deities for helping the seeds to grow.
Overall I find this film to be most suitable for children in preschool and early elementary. As a Pre-K teacher I would use this film as an introduction to Japanese deities as well as to discuss Japanese family structure and respect for elders. It would be fun to teach the children about different types of ceremonial dances performed in Japan. While browsing YouTube it was easy to find a slew of accurate videos to supplement this topic. For a science lesson the children could plant their own seeds and record how they sprout. For a language arts lesson the students could journal about which character they liked the best and why. For older students this video could act in comparing and contrasting modern day Japan to Japan in the 1950’s. Also comparing and contrasting 1950’s rural and city life could also be a topic of interest.

My Neighbor Totoro is useful in the classroom for a few different academic purposes and can reach across many different grade levels, depending on the teachers purpose.
As an introduction to anime, it offers many of the stereotypical characteristics of the genre: visually stimulating, character description and the blurring of lines between the magical and the, without question from the audience or characters. This type of 'magical realism' is not often seen in western film and literature. However, the narrative does an excellent of hitting on some of the major themes/values of an American audience. I speak both as a teacher and a consumer - because I watched the film both in this class and as a child.
Further, and where I find it may be useful in the secondary classroom, is as an introduction to Japanese religious culture. When the daughters, Satsuki and Mei, begin got explore their home and start seeing these "dust bunnies:" small black fuzzy creatures, I am reminded of the idea of uncovering something very old but very new to the audience. The majority of secondary students, regardless of age, will be only children to the ideas of Buddhism and Shintoism. Throughout the movie, opportunities are awarded to the audience to discuss these major religions. Further, it offers the opportunity to introduce a western audience to foreign values in a safe environment, which I find to be its greatest accomplishment.

"My Neighbor Totoro" provided a glimpse into a child-like perception of complex ecological processes, and could be a tool in a ecology or environmental science class to introduce concepts such as competition and ecological disturbances. Early in the film, the children admired the large Camphor tree in the forest near their house. The Camphor was significantly larger than every other tree in the surrounding area, and ecologically, the existence of only one large tree can be attributed to resource inter- and intraspecific resource competition. As individual trees in the fictional forest competed for resources, the competitive plants took up increasing amounts of water, nutrients and space, which over time, led to a thinned population composed of only a few large individuals. The survival of a single lone tree could also be attributed to human disturbance within the forest. When the father sees the large Camphor, he remarks that the tree is "from the time trees and people used to be friends." This statement, although it anthropomorphizes the trees and their capacity for friendship, allows insight into the ecological history of the film's setting. The agrarian neighborhood that the family lives in was likely once covered by forest. As more humans settled into the area, they likely cut down the trees for lumber and fuel, and likely did so at an unsustainable pace. Removal of the largest and oldest trees would shift the age distribution of the populations and create a population dominated by small, young individuals. In addition, when the children discovered the "Totoros" inside the Camphor tree, environment within the tree was portrayed as a much more vibrant and colorful environment compared to the bleak rice farming fields surrounding the girl's home. The rice paddies and mowed fields were representative of highly disturbed areas, and thus had reduced diversity of species. In the film, rather than the monotonous green hillsides in the agrarian neighborhood, which were likely composed of a very limited amount of species, the Totoros' home, which was previously "untouched" by people, was carefully illustrated and the many distinct plants gave the appearance of a greater species richness composed of late-successional species. Although it is a film intended for children, "My Neighbor Totoro" is appropriate for all ages and provides some ecological situations that could be used to spark a classroom discussion. While the existence of "spirits of the forest" may come across as a bit silly to older students, the Totoros served as a plot device to introduce several questions about the "natural" world.

Danielle Fox
Falk Laboratory School
This film would be appropriate for any age level. I showed it on a rainy day at the K-8 after school program I help direct and students of every age level (including the college staff and me) sat and watched in wonderment. Many of the older students had already seen the movie and were so excited to watch again. The younger students who had not yet seen the movie loved it so much that they asked their parents if they could stay until the end. Everyone was captivated. My Neighbor Totoro would be a great film to show during a Japanese study unit, or even just for fun. The movie is so beautiful to watch, and is full of representations of Japanese culture. There are so many examples of Shintoism, nature "worship", and spirits throughout the movie that it would pair perfectly with a religious or world view unit. The students could have fun picking out the different examples of Shinto in the movie and connecting it to what they have already learned. It also places a heavy emphasis on the environment and the family’s interaction with it. Other aspects of Japanese culture could be addressed and used to prompt discussion, like how the Japanese home and day to day lifestyle (food, work, play, bedding, bath time, school, etc.) shown in the picture differs from our own.

This is a film that even college students can watch with enjoyment. There are many teachable moments: there is an aesthetic beauty to the backgrounds and use of sound that is different from Disney animation, but the question is, in what way? The use of silence or only music (no talking) is very Japanese and students can be asked why this is so effective. Images and ideas of Shinto abound in the movie, making it a study of contemporary Japanese ideas about the relationship between humans and nature. Language arts teachers can ask students to talk about the story line (typical for a Hayao Miyazaki film) where young children, particularly girls, find themselves growing up through a series of challenging experiences. Science/environmental studies teachers can use segments from this film along with other Japanese animated films to discuss the strong messages about environmental destruction that underly many of these films. Princess Mononoke, Pompoko, and numerous other anime deal directly with this issue. Finally, for younger children, the interactions between children in the film, the food served, the way the children sleep, etc. are all teachable moments about another culture (although this story is set many years ago, not long after WWII). One caveat is that there is a scene where the father baths with the girls in the family ofuro (bath). This is a good teachable moment, because Japanese consider it completely natural to bath together as a family. However, teachers in this country will have to consider their audience before showing this scene.