Howl's Moving Castle

I wrote earlier about the Studio Ghibli adaptation of a classic of English children's literature, The Borrowers. It's not the only English book they have adapted. MIYAZAKI Hayao himself adapted the Diana Wynne Jones novel Howl's Moving Castle (1986) to make a film with the same title ハウルの動く城 (Hauru no ugoku shiro, Howl's Moving Castle, 2004). I never came across Diana Wynne Jones as a child, and only got to know her children's books as an adult. Better late than never, I've read almost all of them. She seems to have written an incredible number of very good books. Although all of them are fantasy, and all contain some humour, they do quite different things. Howl's Moving Castle is certainly likely to be somewhere  on any list of her best books, though there are quite a few that I like more: The Power of Three (1976) which starts with what seems to be a conventional fantasy with elf like figures, then develops into something else; Charmed Life (1977) an Edwardian world in which magic is part of everyday life; Drowned Ammet (1977) a conventional but well realised fantasy world, as backdrop for a story of political resistance turning to terrorism; The Magicians of Caprona (1980) a sequel to Charmed Life, set in an Italy modeled on the warring city states of the renaissance (and the Elizabethan dramatists' perceptions of them); The Time of the Ghost (1981) a horror story really, narrated by a disconnected and helpless ghost watching the approach of terrible events; Witch Week (1982) set in a world where witches are common but persecuted, mixing the comic adventure of fictional boarding schools with the fear of authority and social pressure of a real boarding school; Archer's Goon (1984) a science fiction flavoured comedy fantasy set in an English provincial town, secretly ruled by feuding wizards.

Howl's Moving Castle is another world in which magic is an only slightly uncanny part of everyday life. In this case, the land of Ingary is meant to resemble a world in which fairy tales like those of the Brothers Grimm are real. The technological level and character of society feels like the eighteenth or early nineteenth century, the time when such stories were first seriously collected. Sophie, the eldest daughter of a hat-maker, is convinced that she is destined for an uninteresting life (it is the youngest child that succeeds in fairy tales), resigned to working for ever in the hat shop. All this changes when a witch whose emnity she has somehow attracted turns her into an old woman. Unable to bear the thought of her family seeing her like this she secretly leaves home and sets out across the moors above the town.

There she ends up seeking shelter in the wandering castle of the wizard Howl, feared as a monster who eats girls' hearts. Howl turns out to be not quite as bad as his reputation, but with enough bad qualities (vain, irresponsible, evasive) to irritate Sophie. Sophie's transformation, though, has given her an opportunity to change her own character. Previously she had defined herself as a dull, shy and unconfident person. Now as an old women she feels quite ready to boss people around and is generally more free of the anxiety she had as a young woman.

The story is an adventure story of course: Sophie is trying to break Howl's contract with his fire demon Calcifer, who in exchange will restore her youth; Howl is trying to escape from the Witch of the Waste, the same witch who turned Sophie into an old woman. But it is a very domestic adventure: Sophie finds a new family in Howl's castle and secretly falls in love with Howl.

Miyazaki's version of the story departs from the original far more than The Borrowers or Kiki's Delivery Service. Like most adaptations, it starts close to the original, then gradually diverges. The major change of setting is that the feel of society is now somewhere around 1900. Instead of "what the fairy tale world would be like if it were a real working society" we have "what the Edwardian age would be like if it had magic". For the most part this means only the trivial loss of some whimsical humour, but it also means that we no longer have the idea that Sophie is trying to live down to her archetype, as she sees it. The change of setting is not so great that the film cannot take over most of what is in the book, even in odd little details. For instance:

At that moment two empty cake racks were pulled away at the other end of the room, and an apprentice stuck his head through from the back somewhere. "Thought I heard your voice, Lettie," he said, grinning in the most friendly and flirtatious way.

The other major innovation is that the country is at war in the film. In the book there are a couple of points where we see that Howl's services are wanted by the kingdom for essentially military purposes; but this is just background, and there is no war actually taking place. When the film was being prepared, the Iraq War started, and it unsurprisingly took a grip on Miyazaki's imagination. While the book Howl is avoiding serving the king chiefly for self preservation, film Howl becomes an antiwar figure. This, combined with the aesthetic of Japanese animation, seriously changes his character. Book Howl is selfish and self dramatising and tries to push those in his household around (generally without much success). Film Howl has excessively gentle looks, voice and manners.

The two stories really go there separate ways once the war becomes a major element of the plot, crossing each other's path intermittently for the rest of the film. Occasionally whole scenes are taken over (the transfer of the castle to a new home, for instance), but more often little details are used in a new way. Making room for the war, most of the subplots are stripped out. Losing the subplots (mostly involving Sophie's sisters) is probably not such a bad thing. One gets the feeling that Jones was very fond of how the parts of a complicated plot worked together and enjoyed seeing all the elements working out more than most readers. None of these subplots are bad or unenjoyable, but their real value is more in showing us Sophie's character and its development, which Miyazaki handles in a different way. We also lose Howl's background in Wales. Probably many readers will not miss it. In the book it really only throws a little more light on Howl, as someone fleeing a dull, unhappy background who has decided to invent himself as a new character.

In contrast to the book, the film becomes less complex towards the end. That includes one horrible over-simplification in the final scene, where the war is done away with in a couple of sentences; but on the whole the increasing simplicity is a gain, especially since the war plot never seemed properly integrated. As often, a key scene is something not in the original, but takes its inspiration from a different episode. In the middle of the book, Sophie and Howl's apprentice Michael (a teenager in the book) are trying to catch a falling star in the marshes outside town. The episode starts as comedy, then takes a different tack.

Michael was stalking the star with soft steps, both arms out to catch it. Sophie could see him outlined against the star's light. The star was drifting level with Michael's hands and only a step or so beyond. It was looking back at him nervously. How odd! Sophie thought. It was made of light. It lit up a white ring of grass and reeds and black pools round Michael, and yet it had big, anxious eyes peering backward at Michael, and a small, pointed face. ...

Sophie tried to say to Michael, Do stop, it's terrified! But she had no breath left to speak with.

"I only want to catch you," Michael explained. "I won't hurt you."

"No! No!" the star crackled desperately. "That's wrong! I'm supposed to die!"

"But I could save you if you'd let me catch you," Michael told it gently.

"No!" cried the star. "I'd rather die!" It dived away from Michael's fingers. Michael plunged for it, but it was too quick for him. It swooped for the nearest marsh pool, and the black water leaped into a blaze of whiteness for just an instant. Then there was a small dying sizzle. When Sophie hobbled over, Michael was standing watching the last light fade out of a little round lump under the dark water.

"That was sad," Sophie said.

The Borrowers

Mary Norton's 1952 novel The Borrowers is a classic of British children's literature. The book and its sequels have been read by generations of children now, and adapted for television and film many times. One such adaptation is a recent Studio Ghibli film, 借りぐらしのアリエッティ (Karigurashi no arietti, The Secret World of Arrietty, 2010).  Ghibli is the studio of MIYAZAKI Hayao (宮崎駿), who directed many of Japan's best animated films. Arrietty is directed not by Miyazaki, but by YONEBAYASHI Hiromasa (米林 宏昌). Still, Miyazaki was one of the writers of the screenplay. As with other Ghibli films where Miyazaki was screenwriter, but not director, the story is better constructed, but perhaps less imaginative. I suspect that as director he can change his mind more and follow his own ideas, even when it's too late to work them into the story properly.

The Borrowers is a story of little people. Borrowers live under the floorboards or behind the panelling of human's houses. They take small amounts of human food and put unwanted or unnoticed little objects to new uses for their furniture and tools. Little people stories are popular in Japan: I wrote earlier about INUI Tomiko's 木かげの家の小人たち (Kokage no ie no kobitotachi, The Little People in the House in the Tree's Shadow, 1959) and SATOU Satoru's だれも知らない小さな国 (Dare mo shiranai chiisana kuni, A Little Country No-one Knows, 1959). The Borrowers itself had been translated into Japanese in 1956; and it's easy to imagine that it had an influence, particularly on the character of Inui's family (who are after all English fairies, thought living in Japan).

When I saw the film, it had been decades since I read the book; and my impression was that the two were quite similar. The only difference I noticed while watching was that the boy had been made older, so that he looked the same age as Arietty, allowing viewers to see it as a kind of romance. On rereading the book, I found that the film actually makes lots of changes of plot and detail, though both the outline and the ideas are still largely derived from the book.

My memories of the book were quite vague, so rereading brought some surprises. In particular, it's very well written, in a particular way – with a love of small, accurate detail. This is the kind of thing that appeals to some children and not others, I think. It's certainly less common in recent children's books. Conveniently, the children it does appeal are probably going to be the kind of children who like stories about tiny people hiding in human's houses. The careful detail is partly in the dialogue, partly in the description of the little world the characters live in, and the things they adapt to their needs. I also had no memory of the elements of satire in the story, which comes from a more class conscious age (and is set somewhere around 1900, where class was even more an issue). Here is Arrietty's mother talking about the other borrower families that had once live in the house.

'Who were the Overmantels?' asked Arrietty.

'Oh you must've heard me talk of the Overmantels,' exclaimed Homily, 'that stuck-up lot who lived in the wall high up – among the lath and plaster behind the mantelpiece in the morning-room. And a queer lot they were. The men smoked all the time because the tobacco jars were kept there; and they'd climb about and in and out the carvings of the overmantel, sliding down the pillars and showing off. The women were a conceited lot too, always admiring themselves in all those bits of overmantel looking-glass. They never asked anyone up there and I, for one, never wanted to go. ... I don't know whether it's true but they do say that those Overmantel men used to have a party every Tuesday after the bailiff had been to talk business in the morning-room. Laid out, they'd be, dead drunk – or so the story goes – on the green plush tablecloth, all among the tin boxes and the account books –'

'Now, Homily,' protested Pod, who did not like to gossip, 'I never see'd 'em.'

'But you wouldn't put it past them, Pod. You said yourself when I married you not to call on the Overmantels.'

'They lived so high,' said Pod, 'that's all.'

There's something in a story about tiny people that invites writers to look at the petty side of the human character, in Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726), for instance, and in Terry Pratchett's Truckers (1989), which incidentally is a very good children's book, in a different way. Pod and Homily both have a limited outlook on the world and are to some extent figures of fun for the author, but still impressive, as they face the constant dangers that their lives involve. Here they are discussing Arrietty's education.

'Now, now,' said Pod, 'don't bring up the past.'

'But you've got to think of it! they got the cat and –'

'Yes,' said Pod, 'but Eggletina was different.'

'How different? She was Arrietty's age.'

'Well they hadn't told her, you see. That's where they went wrong. They tried to make her believe that there wasn't nothing but was under the floor. They never told her about Mrs Driver or Crampfurl. Least of all about cats.'

'There wasn't any cat,' Homily pointed out, 'not till Hendreary was "seen".'

'Well, there was, then,' said Pod. 'You got to tell them, that's what I say, or they try to find out for themselves.'

'Pod,' said Homily solemnly, 'we haven't told Arrietty.'

The Ghibli film changes the emphasis in several ways. Homily is much the same houseproud, fearful character as in the book, Pod is significantly changed. In both book and film, he is gruff and straightforward; but film Pod is more dour and more heroic and the film makes more of Arrietty's relationship to him. Arrietty is a similar character in book and film, but book Arrietty is more stifled. At the beginning of the book, unlike film Arrietty, she has never been outside the little home under the floorboards. As I said above, the boy in the book is much younger than Arrietty, so that the character of their friendship is very different. Two new elements are borrowed from later in the series, Spiller and the voyage in a kettle. The borrowers riding the tin kettle is on the cover of the Japanese translation of The Borrowers Afloat.

Kiki's Delivery Service

Kiki's Delivery Service (魔女の宅急便, more literally "Witch's express home delivery service") is a 1985 children's book by KADONO Eiko (角野 栄子, born 1935). It was a successful book in its own right, with several sequels; but it is best known as the book on which the Japan's most famous cartoon director, MIYAZAKI Hayao (宮崎 駿), based his 1989 film of the same name. For once, there is an English translation (which I haven't seen), by Lynne E. Riggs in 2003. It seems to be out of print at the moment; but second hand copies are easy to find.

It's hard to fairly judge a story when you've first got to know it in a different form. The few films that I've ever walked out of have been adaptations of books that I had read. In this case I knew the film before I read the book, and I couldn't help judging it in the light of the film.

In the world of the story, witches are a part of everyday life, but much rarer than they once were. Kiki, the daughter of a witch, has the choice of becoming a normal girl or a witch, and chooses the latter. Witches' skills have grown fewer over the years. Though Kiki's mother can both fly and make potions, Kiki herself has only learnt to fly. Her one other piece of magic is that she can talk to and understand her black cat Jiji, born at the same time as Kiki. In the year when she reaches thirteen, the custom is for a witch to spend one year living independently in a strange town. Kiki leaves the little town between wooded mountains where she grew up and sets off southwards, towards the sea. Following a river she comes to a large coastal town, with an improbably high clocktower, and decides to try making that her home for the year. The cool reception from the townspeople is a shock to her; but kinder treatment from a baker, Sono, persuades her to stay and earn her living by delivering parcels for the townspeople.

So far, those who know the film should find a lot that they are familiar with. Many of the strengths of the film come from the book. Kiki and other named characters are much the same in both. Kiki's parents are the same combination of stricter mother and more indulgent father. Jiji has the same cautious outlook on the world, but also a more childish side in the book. The themes are very similar; but Miyazaki makes the film more a story of a child coping with having to rely on their own emotional resources. The book is far more episodic: it follows the year that Kiki spends in the town with a series of seasonal episodes. Miyazaki selects a few of these (often radically changed) and puts them together to tell a story which does not attempt to fill the whole year. The film also shifts the emphasis towards realism, with its loving creation of a beautiful but plausible Scandivian town. The book allows itself a lot of deliberate comic absurdity, of which very little gets into the film (only the episode where Jiji must pretend to be a stuffed cat, I think). For instance, when the mayor discovers that the clock is broken on New Year's Eve, he wants to 'borrow' a gear from the clock of a nearby town, which has the same mechanism.

As soon as Kiki landed on the clock tower, the mayor spoke agitatedly, 'The fact is, this largest cog wheel of this clock is broken, you see? ..... If you cross three mountains west of here, the town over there ..... You could make an appropriation and come back to us, hmm? .... um, um, it's really urgent. ..... hmm? hmm? hmm?'

'Appropriation?' Kiki asked round eyed.

In response the mayor shrugged his shoulders and said in a small voice, 'In other words, just for the time the clock is sounding midnight, borrow it without telling anyone ..... is what I mean.'

'In other words, steal it?'

'Shhh! That's a bad word. That's not a word that a girl should be using. Definitely, definitely "borrowing" is what we want to call it. After all, we'll give it back when we're done."

By some accounts, Kadono was not happy with the film's changes to the book. But the character of the story is not massively changed beyond what I have described. Those who like the film would probably find the book interesting too.