From up on Poppy Hill
Directed by Goro Miyazaki
2011, 92 minutes
currently out on release in UK cinemas
Review by Mike Sullivan
The latest Studio Ghibli movie is based on the manga series of the same name by Tetsurō Sayama and Chizuru Takahashi, the screenplay was written by Hayao Miyazaki and Keiko Niwa. It follows a common theme in Studio Ghibli movies of innocent romance and the coming of age of teenagers, this time set in 1960s Yokohama. As might be expected this film also evokes feelings of nostalgia with an undertone of sorrow, with references both to the past and the future.
Umi Matsuzaki is a sixteen year old high school student who every day wakes up before the other members of the household, which includes her siblings, a sister and a brother, as well as boarders, and raises a signal flag in the garden for her deceased sea captain father. She then prepares breakfast for everyone else before setting off for school. She is shown as a very responsible and independent person, taking care of the running of the household for her grandmother, but at the same time there is an obvious empty gap where her mother and father should be. Her grandmother as well comments on how sad it is to her that Umi sends up the signal flags every day to help guide her long dead father home and she wishes for there to be someone in Umi’s life.
Unbeknownst to Umi, every day a passing tugboat answers her signal flags, from her garden she can’t see it, and from that tugboat a young man disembarks every day to cycle to school. His name is Shun Kazama, he is one of the school newspaper’s journalists and also a ring leader in the campaign to save their old, but beloved club house. By chance Umi is invited to help with the newspaper and thus starts to get to know Shun, she begins to understand his passion to save the clubhouse and in the process starts to realize a life outside of her deceased father and running her grandmother’s household. This is shown as she starts to make mistakes with her chores and suggests a plan to renew the student’s clubhouse which she gets actively involved in.
As the story develops we learn about how Umi’s mother and father didn’t have permission to marry and eloped, at the time of Umi’s birth they lived in a very small and simple flat and as a small child Umi hung the signal flags from a window. In the Korean War her father’s ship hit a mine and died, after which it seems that the whole family moved in with her grandmother while her mother carried on pursuing her career in medicine and now was staying short term in America. After Shun hears her story it sets off developments for Shun which Umi couldn’t have expected and which would make both of them question not only the past, but also their own feelings. In the meantime the grand clubhouse, a relic of the past, is threatened with demolition in order to construct a new building; students are torn between regarding it as an old, unwanted building or as a historical monument which represents the heart of Japanese culture. After all of the students work together to clean it, repair it and repaint it they overwhelmingly decide to keep it and to fight against the Board of Education’s decision to tear it down.
From up on Poppy Hill is a movie which touches upon a number of different perspectives and meanings, besides the main story around Umi and Shun we constantly see reminders of how Japan was going through a process of renewal. The student’s argument over the clubhouse is reflective of an argument nationwide, when an old building is cared for, looked after, then it becomes beautiful and keeps people rooted within their cultural past, however if it is allowed to fall into disrepair then of course people will vote to tear it down. The students are outraged when the Board of Education decide to demolition the building without even looking at it after all their hard work to renovate it, which implies a criticism of the eagerness for new buildings in the 1960s and afterwards. It is an interesting point that the students are well organized, have meetings and votes on matters important to them and actively lobby each other, as well as the chairman of the Board of Education. It is again an undertone which reminds us of the intense, yet well organized, student protests of the 1960s in Japan. Authority in this movie is relatively unrepresented, the students criticize the headmaster but he is only seen once, the Board of Education as well is relatively invisible apart from the chairman.
Another constant theme in the movie is the obvious transformation Japan was going through, this part of Yokohama is shown as very traditional and at the beginning of the movie you are almost misled into thinking it could be 1920s Japan as wooden boats are moored to a wooden jetty, cars are relatively absent and Umi is seen cooking using vegetables stored in a cellar. As the movie progresses more and more cars can be seen, out at sea there is a constant flow of huge cargo ships and smaller tugboats and again there is a special moment involving the clubhouse’s huge chandler getting cleaned and the lights switched on. When the students go to Tokyo we see the forerunner of the Tokyo of today with electric signs everywhere as well as seeing Tokyo Tower. As such there is a clear linear line from the small wooden boats shown at the beginning of the movie to a huge and modern liner ship at the end.
It is a very beautiful movie with a clear representation of Japan when it was at a crossroads of time, there are still links to the horrors of World War Two and the Korean War, but at the same time there is a bright future that can be seen which in many ways is represented by Umi and Shun. Their past and present is complicated by factors entirely out of their control; however it has to be resolved so that they can face the future, and the movie makes it very clear that these two children on the cusp of adulthood are Japan’s bright future.