Grave of the Fireflies 火垂るの墓

Released in 1988, Grave of the Fireflies is an anime adapted from Nosaka Akiyuki’s 1967 book of the same title.  Directed by Takahata Isao, the anime recollected the final months of Seita as his spirit narrated the story.

 

Seita, a 14-year old boy, lived with his much younger sister and mother in Kobe towards the end of the Pacific War, while his naval captain father served the Japanese military effort.

As American bombers dropped fire bombs on Kobe, Seita stayed behind with his sister to secure their house and belongings while their sick mother went to the bomb shelter.  The siblings were safe from the fire bombs, but not their mother who died shortly.  With no other relatives, the siblings went to live with an aunt, bringing with them their possessions of food and their mother’s kinomos, which the aunt compelled Seita to sell in exchange for food.  Despite surrendering all their food (except for a tin of candy which Seita stashed for his sister, their aunt soon grew resentful of sharing food with the siblings.  Seita took his sister away from their aunt and moved into a cave/bomb shelter in the outskirts and started to fend for both of them by foraging and stealing food.   The children released fireflies caught in their dwellings for light, and Seita’s sister was distraught when the fireflies died the following day.  Despite his best efforts to protect his sister, she grew increasingly weak from malnutrition and died.  Seita gathered his sister’s ashes in the candy tin after her death and carried the tin around, until his own death from malnutrition shortly after the Japanese surrender.

 

I’m not really sure which genre this anime belongs to. 

War/anti-war?  Perhaps not, as Seita did not seem to have much emotions against the American bombers.  However, he was distraught upon learning news of Japanese surrender, and more so as he concluded that his father had perished in the war.  Again, he did not rant against the Americans who forced a Japanese surrender.

Children’s tale?  The focal of this anime is the protective sphere Seita built around his sister and isolated them from the reality of war.  The colours of the anime are drab and despairing, and certainly no soaring songs akin Disney’s cartoons.  I had great difficulty understanding the anime myself, and I doubt, despite being an anime, that post-war children could identify with Seita.

 

Not having read Nosaka’s book, I have no idea how faithful the anime is to the book.  If it is, I would think the book cannot be complete fiction.  Nosaka could have dug into his own experience during the war to paint the despair Seita experienced.  When political and military leaders considered their options going to war, I wonder if they ever cared to think how they could have let children down by allowing them to experience the pain that war brings.