 It's almost impossible to glance at your phone, turn on your TV, or even drive down the street without seeing something about the Russian government's invasion of Ukraine. There's no shortage of commentary and analysis surrounding that conflict. But to be honest, I'm not an expert on what's going on there, and as I've sifted through the alarming amount of misinformation and straight-up propaganda flying around the internet about it, I don't really think it's possible for me to become one at this point. What I do know is that the videos and imagery out of Ukraine I'm seeing from reporters and bystanders alike is heartbreaking. Buildings bombed to rubble, the tear-streaked faces of children broken and bleeding bodies. As much as some people seem to want it to be, war is not romantic. It is horrifying. Ernest Hemingway, who saw some of the final months of World War I first hand, once wrote, Never think that war, no matter how necessary nor how justified, is not a crime. Personally, I question the very idea that war is ever truly justified. But in our desperate need to make something as completely insane and unreasonable as industrial-scale violence makes some semblance of sense, we tend to create simplified narratives, reducing combatants to heroes and villains. We have to. If we didn't, it would be too much to process. But when we simplify something like war into a romanticized battle of unalloyed good against unmitigated evil, we run the risk of allowing and even sometimes endorsing doing whatever it takes to destroy that evil. Now, I want to be clear. In this case, the Russian government committed an act of aggression and the Ukrainian people have every right to defend themselves against violence. It is heroic to protect your home and family from the people attacking you. But this is not the forces of Mordor against the armies of Middle Earth, and we should not overlook the very real human cost that everyone anywhere near this kind of conflict is forced to pay. And that brings me to one of my all-time favorite filmmakers, the highly awarded Japanese animation director and co-founder of Studio Ghibli, Hayao Miyazaki. It's no secret that Miyazaki has embedded overtly anti-war themes throughout his impressive body of work. In Studio Ghibli's inaugural film, Castle in the Sky, Miyazaki shows the destructive power of war. Ghibli co-founder Isayo Takahata tackles similar subject matter with his beautiful and devastating grave of the fireflies. The physical desolation of war is not hard to demonstrate. The dead bodies, the missing limbs, the burned out husks of once productive buildings. But there are three films for Miyazaki in particular that perfectly illustrate the intangible psychological destruction that is caused by war. Princess Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle, and The Wind Rises. We're going to talk about all of these films and more as we take a deeper look at Hayao Miyazaki's beautiful dream of a peaceful world on this episode of Out of Frame. Fair warning, there will be plenty of spoilers for Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli's films throughout this video, so if you haven't seen them, I'd recommend doing that first. In fact, I'd recommend going through their entire catalogue as it is truly phenomenal. But either way, you've been warned. It would be an incredible mistake to brush aside Miyazaki's animation as just anime. It's true that these films are all animated and they are Japanese, but they are almost without exception, cinema. Miyazaki crafts beautiful, rich stories, often with fantastical yet grounded settings that are rendered in some of the most gorgeous hand-drawn animation you'll ever see, bolstered by sweeping lyrical scores that call back to an older time in moviemaking. And as Americans, we owe a huge debt of gratitude to the now canceled former head and co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios, John Lasseter, who brought Miyazaki's films to the United States. I know there are a lot of purists out there who can't stand to watch anything that's been dubbed, but even the English language versions feature solid translations and talented actors giving strong performances. So there's really no barrier to entry for anyone to check them out. What's striking about a lot of Miyazaki's films, for me, is how consistent the themes are. Most, I would argue, are centered around two core ideas that come back again and again. Pastoralism, which I'll explain briefly in a second, and pacifism. Pastoralism, as a philosophy, emphasizes a regression to a more simplistic, natural state of existence. For Miyazaki, this is reflected in his frequent rejection of modernity and technology and his focus on stories that highlight the conflict between the spirit-filled wildlands and the often gritty industrialization of urban development. Miyazaki is often considered an environmentalist filmmaker, but his films are rarely preachy and he never imposes any kind of partisan politics or specific public policy demands in his stories. I think that speaks to his humility as a human being and a lot of American filmmakers could probably take a lesson from this approach. Instead, Miyazaki's films depict the beauty of nature in contrast to the apparent ugliness of technology. Now, in general, I have pretty profound disagreements with the idea that nature, which is, in fact, quite brutal, is somehow superior to the world human beings have created. And yet, I almost always agree with the main point of Miyazaki's films. This is because all the ugliness they express rarely comes from individuals bettering their lives through entrepreneurship and markets, which he actually treats rather lovingly in many cases, but from a corrupt, war-mongering state, building up armies and destroying both the natural world and peaceful commerce in the name of power. Anti-war themes are pervasive in Miyazaki's films, but it's easy to understand why. He was born in Tokyo in 1941. That was the same year that Emperor Hirohito's army attacked Pearl Harbor, dramatically escalating the Pacific front in World War II. That means that Hayao Miyazaki was just four years old when the US used nuclear bombs against the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He grew up in the epicenter of one of the most horrific wars the world has ever seen and watched as it ended in the fiery destruction of his entire society. His films are personal, and it shows. Princess Mononoke is set in a fantastical feudal era Japan where gods, demons, and spirits roam the forests and hills. These powerful forces of nature are more and more often coming into conflict with the humans on the cusp of industrialization, who keep expanding into the wilds. One of these conflicts, far to the west, sends out ripples that eventually touch and curse the young warrior prince Ashitaka. Ashitaka is merely defending his village from a rampaging boar spirit that had been driven insane by an iron ball lodged in his chest. The spirit became a nameless god of rage and hate. Ashitaka initially attempts to turn the boar spirit away, but fails and ultimately ends up killing the creature after being touched by its disgusting infection. So the young prince is exiled from his home and sent out on a quest to possibly find a cure for the curse before it turns him into the same kind of monster. Ashitaka does eventually find the source of the poison that changed the boar spirit into a demon, the destruction of the forest in service of violence and war. The humans of Iron Town are mining the surrounding hills for ore and the forest spirits are angry at them for logging their trees and digging up their earth. Each side is unshakably convinced of its moral high ground and of the other side's unjustified aggression. Ashitaka seems to be the only one who is able to see both the concerns and the mistakes of each side. Unfortunately for him, it's difficult to get either the humans of Iron Town or the god spirits of the forest to listen to his pleas for peace. All either group seems to care about is repaying slight for slight, constantly escalating the conflict, regardless of how it might affect anybody else. Look everyone, this is what hatred looks like. This is what it does when it catches hold of you. It's hitting me alive and very soon now it will kill me. Fear and anger only make it grow faster. Miyazaki's point is not just that the destruction of nature will curse humanity. It's that everyone's inability to coexist peacefully creates monstrous results. And by the way, he does all this without mocking or belittling people on either side. And the primary characters, Ashitaka and San in particular, bridge the gap between both worlds. In other words, the story itself models the kind of interaction that's actually necessary in order to avoid conflict and war. If only people and forest spirits would listen. Of course, in many of Miyazaki's films it's too late to avoid war. On the surface, Howl's Moving Castle is the story of a young woman, Sophie, who has been cursed by a witch to live as an old crone after a contentious interaction at her hat shop. Sophie is so upset by the curse that she heads into the waste to find a cure and gets taken in by the mysterious wizard Howl and comes to live in his moving castle. Sophie's story is the heart of the film but it's all set against the backdrop of a nation at war. In Sophie's hometown there are grand military parades and cheers for brave soldiers who aren't actually all that heroic. Despite Sophie's run-ins with the soldiers, warplanes flying overhead and tanks being transported through the city, the war itself mostly seems like a distant, abstract thing until she meets Howl. All the kingdom's wizards are conscripted into the army only to be turned into flying monsters that harass the enemy. After the war, they won't recall they ever were human. Howl, who actually disguises himself as two different wizards, is summoned by the king's mage and his former mentor, Madame Suleiman. For most of the film, he finds clever ways to evade the request while secretly trying to end the war on his own. Howl keeps going missing for hours and hours at a time only to return half a beast and covered in wounds. It turns out that despite quite literally having no heart, he's been doing his best to keep both of the warring armies from causing too much damage, but to no avail. Eventually, Sophie's hometown is firebombed and Howl has no choice but to meet with Madame Suleiman. Of course, it's all a trap to strip Howl of his powers and we learn that Suleiman has been manipulating the king and controlling the war all along. Howl helps Sophie escape and when they are eventually reunited, they finally find the love that breaks her curse and simultaneously the bouncing scarecrow that helps Sophie find Howl's castle in the first place is able to break his curse as well. That reveals him to be the foreign prince whose disappearance was the cause of the war. Unlike Princess Mononoke, Howl's moving castle is much more about love than it is about the natural world, but the theme of war as a dehumanizing act that destroys humanity is infused throughout every frame. And when describing his reason for making the film, Miyazaki cited the great deal of rage he felt as a pacifist seeing the Iraq war. If you look at it from that perspective and think about what Madame Suleiman's manipulation of the king represents, the metaphor of a war started under false pretenses adds a layer to an already beautiful complex film. But finally, there's Miyazaki's last film, The Wind Rises. While the other two are magical adventure stories, The Wind Rises is an artful biopic of aeronautical engineer Jiro Horakoshi, who designed the famed Zero Fighter plane for Japan in World War II. When we meet Jiro as a young boy, he dreams of becoming a pilot. Once he finally accepts that his poor eyesight means that he'll never achieve that dream, he shifts his focus to airplane design. His passion and diligence for his studies are matched by his talent and vision. And it's not long after university that he gets a job with then airplane manufacturer Mitsubishi. As the years pass, it becomes clear that Japan is years behind European countries when it comes to airplane and engine technology. The Germans seem to be the furthest ahead with the Nazi government pouring huge amounts of money into the development of fighters and bombers. Throughout the film, Jiro has dreams about conversations with the legendary Italian airplane designer Giovanni Battista Caproni, who states one of the movie's central themes. But remember this Japanese boy, airplanes are not tools for war. They're not for making money. Airplanes are beautiful dreams. Engineers turn dreams into reality. All Jiro wants is to design beautiful airplanes. That's it. But with Japan struggling to dig itself out of the Great Depression, the only real client his employer has is the government. And all the Japanese government wants are fighters and bombers that can help them expand their empire. It's a disheartening situation for Jiro. He doesn't want his designs used for war, but warplanes are the only thing he can be paid to engineer. It's shameful. And I bet it gets worse before it gets better. I don't understand why this country is so poor. Poor Jiro, stuck in his happy dreams. What Japan is paying the Germans, they could feed every single man, woman and child a mountain of sponge cake. But if this country wants airplanes, then I'm going to make the most of it. The fact is this poor country pays us a lot of money to design warplanes. Embrace the irony. It's either design warplanes or don't design planes at all. He concentrates so hard on solving the technical issues involved in creating fast, nimble, sturdy airplanes that he can almost forget the fact that his beautiful creations are being used for death and destruction. The whole film pines for a simpler time. Miyazaki's pastoral themes are subtle, but everywhere. What are the oxen for? Oh, they haul the prototypes to the field. Takes them two days to drag it out there. Believe that? That's how backwards we are. I don't know. I like them. Even Jiro's fiance, Naoko, paints landscapes. And it seems that all of Jiro's happiest moments are either spent outside with her or at his desk bringing new life to his incredible aviation innovations. The whole film is very sad. Jiro could be designing planes for the sake of families traveling to see each other, for the sake of young couples on vacation, for the sake of business people actually creating wealth for Japan instead of destruction. But the imperial government controls all the resources and they decide that instead, Jiro must build planes for war. This is why even though there are elements to Miyazaki's personal philosophy and politics that I'm sure I disagree with, his films deeply appeal to me. All these fictional and historical stories hold deeper truths, but cost of war isn't only the lives, property and resources that are lost. Even those who might come out the other side alive lose something. Even those who should never have been involved at all lose something. We all lose something. In Princess Mononoke, the negative emotions involved in physical violence manifest like a disease, eating away at the host very sanity until there's nothing left but a violent beast of hate and destruction. In Howell's Moving Castle, the conscripted wizards are turned into identical beasts who only know how to attack and kill with no way to go back to the way they were. In both cases, war and violence has turned otherwise peaceful people into monsters. And in The Wind Rises, the government's thirst for conquest subverts a brilliant young man's dreams into being just another cog in the war machine. The secret police are looking for you. What might Jiro have accomplished had his government not used him only to make weapons? What might he have built had he the freedom to design what he really wanted? Instead, the movie leaves us with a sense of loss, broken dreams and wasted potential. War is the broken window fallacy at the largest scale. The constant activity and development of technology misleads people into thinking that it is a net gain. But all that activity is in the service of destroying lives and property, which is always a net loss. Yes, perhaps the research and development that goes into creating weapons of war do in fact push the leading edge of science and technology in a few areas. But at what cost? What else could have been made with those resources and capital? What else could those brilliant minds have invented and what of the people touched by war? What could they have done with their lives that they not been dragged into conflict? Who would they have become if they like Ashitaka or Howl or the gods of the forest not been poisoned by anger and fear and hatred and violence? This is not just a theoretical question about people who live in a different hemisphere from us. How many veterans do you know? How many of them saw combat and how many of them talk about what they experienced during battle? How many of them struggle with depression, anxiety, PTSD or substance abuse? On any given night, around 40,000 veterans in the United States are homeless. About 17 veterans per day take their own lives according to the VA. And for what? What of the wars of the last 70 years accomplished? North Korea and Vietnam are still communist countries. After two decades of fighting, the US managed to replace the Taliban in Afghanistan with the Taliban. The myth of the humanitarian war is just that, a myth. No matter how justified we feel, all fighting can ever do is destroy. And we will never fully know what that destruction truly cost us, what it cost everyone. There is no simple or easy solution to what is happening in Ukraine right now. There's no simple or easy solution to the at times violent nature of humanity. But perhaps the first steps are to remember that the costs of war cannot be avoided. To remember that the opposite of war isn't simply peace, but trade and cultural exchange. And most importantly, to recognize the humanity even in our so-called enemies. Hial Miyazaki lived through the disaster of war. His passionate anti-war themes come through loud and clear in so many of his films. But so does the redemptive power of love and friendship. So does the almost painful beauty of life. War is horrifying. And if there's one thing I think Miyazaki can teach us, it's that it will turn us into monsters if we let it. Hey everybody, thanks for watching this episode of Out of Frame. I'm sure a lot of you have strong feelings about Miyazaki and about what's going on around the world. So let's talk about all that in the comments. I wanna say a huge thank you to all our supporters on Patreon and Subscribestar. If you love the show, please consider sending us a couple bucks a month to help us keep making it. And a special shout out goes to our associate producers. To Connor McGowan, Dan Rich, Matt Curtis, Matt Tabor and Richard Lawrence, thank you. For everyone else, be sure to leave a comment, like this video and subscribe to the channel. Join the continuing conversation on Discord and follow us on all the social media. I'll see you next time.