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Japan PM: Women, advanced technology key to restoring economy: Japan’s economy has been in the doldrums for decades, but prime minister Shinzo Abe’s set of economic policies known as “Abenomics” has been trying to fix all of that. Part of Abe’s plan to jump start Japan’s economy includes accomodating mothers in the work place, encouraging shorter working hours and on-site daycare centers for workplaces. While it all sounds good in theory, whether or not Japanese companies will implement these practices remains unclear. [via Reddit]

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Revisiting a Constitution Crafted ‘in a Week’: It’s always struck me as odd that while the US has amended its constitution a whopping 17 times, the modern-day Japanese constitution has remained exactly the same since its inception in the postwar years. But now, Japanese Prime Minister and his LDP are considering changing the cornerstone of Japanese law for the first time in more than seven decades. First amendment planned? “Soft subs only.”

Majority oppose 24 hour buses and trains: Even though the newly-proposed later bus hours have been getting a lot of favorable press in the West, Japanese people aren’t as keen on the prospect. In fact, a majority of Japanese people polled in an online survey say that 24 hour public transit is unnecessary. What makes them say that? Noise, traffic, or price, nobody knows for sure; all we know if that you may still have to catch that early bus home from your nomihodia.

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Live Action Kiki’s Delivery Service: Studio Ghibli has been known for decades as an animation powerhouse, but now the house that Miyazaki built is trying its hand at something new—live action. For its first foray into the live action, Ghibli is revisiting an old classic, Kiki’s Delivery Service. What comes after live action movies for Ghibli? Maybe a 4DX version of My Neighbor Totoro where you can feel like you’re actually riding the cat bus. One can only hope.

AKB48′s Tomomi Kasai in fling with president of AKS management agency: Japanese idol groups sometimes forbid its members from any sort of romantic relationship, as was made extremely clear last year when an AKB48 starlet was demoted for a relationship with Koichi an unknown man. But it seems when the relationship involves a group’s manager, the rules can be bent a bit. Somehow , I’m unsurprised that idol group management plays fast and loose with the rules.[via ]

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Scientist Says Pollution From China Is Killing a Japanese Island’s Trees: As China’s air slowly turns into a toxic grey soup, Japan might be beginning to feel real consequences from its neighbor’s pollution. Ancient trees are dying off in the southern islands of Japan and some scientists are beginning to believe that China’s industrial waste is to blame. It’s chilling to think that what’s happening to trees hundreds of miles away must pale in comparison to what’s happening in China.

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To be more precise, this is a post about the food depicted in Studio Ghibli films – always mouthwateringly detailed and remarkably true to life. Grave of the Fireflies, for example, featured candies in a rectangular can: they’re Sakuma Drops, still manufactured to this day. Then there was all the fuss about eating a pineapple in Only Yesterday – because at the time, imported fruit was rare and expensive.

Yeah Studio Ghibli food appreciation for the win! How many do you recognize?

Although food is certainly a scene-stealer in so many Studio Ghibli films, in no other film does it play a more important role than in Spirited Away. Think about it: if Chihiro’s parents weren’t such gluttons, they wouldn’t have become pigs and there would have been no story.

The neat thing about Spirited Away is that much of the food shown is typical Japanese fare – and boy, is there a lot of it. This movie makes for perfect Introduction to Japanese Cuisine 101 stuff. So why not?

First the Savories…

Onigiri (おにぎり) are rice balls. They’ve been around since at least the Heian period, and nowadays are easily available from any convenience store. They’re often triangular with a filling of some kind and wrapped in nori seaweed, although there really aren’t any hard and fast rules when it comes to onigiri. They’re also considered comfort food, so it’s no surprise that Haku consoles Chihiro with them after she finds out her parents really were turned into pigs.

Of course, the most food-centric event in Spirited Away must be when the bathhouse workers are falling over themselves to serve No-Face. Check out the following scene:

Can you spot the sushi platter? Sushi (寿司) is another classic Japanese dish, made of vinegared rice and some sort of topping or filling. There are loads of different types of sushi, but the ones shown in the screencap are: nigirizushi, rice topped with prawn or tuna or something; and makizushi, a roll of rice wrapped around whatever fillings you fancy and then sliced to serve.

Next to the sushi platter we have ishi yaki-imo (石焼き芋), or sweet potato slow-roasted on hot stones. This is a typical autumn snack in Japan, sold by peddlers from food carts or small trucks. Apparently you can hear the peddlers coming from miles away thanks to the peculiar singsong announcements they make.

Ikameshi (イカ飯) also turns up in this scene. This is a Hokkaido dish of rice-stuffed squid simmered in soy sauce. Ikameshi was born out of necessity: during WWII squid was plentiful but rice was not, so ikameshi was the ideal way to compensate.

… Then the Sweets

Chihiro’s first encounter with Lin, her soon-to-be ally, was when the latter was feeding the soot sprites konpeito (コンペイトー). These knobbly candies are basically just sugar and coloring, and easily available nowadays. Back when they were first introduced by the Portuguese, though, they were considered really posh. In fact, a Portuguese missionary allegedly bribed Oda Nobunaga for permission to preach Christianity in Japan with a bottle of konpeito.

As a human, Chihiro wasn’t exactly welcomed with open arms by the other bathhouse workers – that is, until she proved herself by successfully bathing the Stink God (who turned out to be the God of Rivers). As a “Hey, you’re all right,” gesture, Lin gives her an anman (あんまん) later that night. This is a steamed bun with a red bean paste filling, originally from China.

The sponge cake, castella (カステラ), also makes an appearance. Once again, this is a foreign dish that the Japanese have adopted and made into their own: like konpeito, castella is also Portuguese in origin. There are lots of variations on it now, like green tea castella and chocolate castella, but the textbook example is still the plain, bright yellow castella with brown edges.

Honorable Mentions

The foods I’ve mentioned so far are just the tip of the iceberg, really. There are many more dishes in Spirited Away that I don’t know (or don’t consider typically Japanese). So I won’t try to describe them all, but here are a few more that I recognize:

At the far left you can just make out green peas rice. This is a type of maze gohan (混ぜご飯), basically just rice mixed with some other ingredient. Another variant is matsutake rice – matsutake mushrooms are damned expensive so mixing it up with rice is one way to make the meal go further.

At the bottom middle there is nishime (煮しめ), a typical New Year’s vegetable stew with carrots, mushrooms and konnyaku, a grey, jelly-type thing with practically no calories and full of fiber. Last but not least, right next to the nishime there is some form of katsu (カツ): a chicken or pork cutlet, breaded and then deep-fried.

There you have it! A whirlwind introduction to various Japanese foods, modern and traditional, sweet and savory, of foreign origin or a Japanese original.

Can you spot any other typical Japanese foods in Spirited Away? Or in any other Studio Ghibli film for that matter? Let us know what they are in the comments!

Over the years Studio Ghibli has won many awards for their whimsical creations and in 2002, Spirited Away won a Golden Bear and an Oscar for Best Animated Feature. To this day it remains the only film made outside of the English-speaking world to have done so. Do you know the secret that makes all of Ghibli so magical? No? Read on to find out.

Ghibli and Friends

So where does the name Ghibli come from anyway? Well, Ghibli is based on the Arabic name for the sirocco (Mediterranean wind). During World War II the Italians used the sirocco for their Saharan scouting planes. Although pronounced with a hard g in both Arabic and Italian, the Japanese pronunciation of the word is with a soft g (ji-bu-ri).

The reason the studio chose to go with this name was because they wanted to “blow a new wind through the Japanese anime industry” changing things up and offering a breath of fresh air – pretty ambitious to say the least. But the studio has certainly lived up to its namesake. Check out this quick list showcasing some of the studio’s top highlights.

• The first real box-office success in Studio Ghibli’s history (just over $18 million) was Kiki’s Delivery Service in 1989, four years after the studio’s creation.
• The highest-grossing film of 1992 in Japan was Studio Ghibli’s very own Porco Rosso (¥2.8 billion in distribution income).
• The first ever Studio Ghibli film to use computer graphics was Pom Poko in 1992, starring a group of tanuki.
• The first Miyazaki film featuring computer graphics, and the first Studio Ghibli film featuring digital coloring was Princess Mononoke in 1997. Roger Ebert placed the movie sixth on his top ten movies of 1999 (after it had been released in the US) and it was also the highest grossing movie in Japan (overtaking E.T.) with $134 million in box office revenue until the achievement was claimed by Titanic several months later (but not for long!)
• The first Studio Ghibli film made entirely with digital processing was My Neighbors the Yamadas in 1999.
• Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away was the first film to gross $200 million worldwide before opening in North America (eventually making about $275 million in total), and it was the only anime film ever to win an Academy award for Best Animated Feature, and it took over Titanic ($135 million) at the Japanese box office, becoming the top grossing film ever in Japanese cinema.

The achievements above, along with a lot of other information can be found on Studio Ghibli’s Wikipedia page. And for those of you who are unfamiliar with the history behind the origins of Studio Ghibli, a good synopsis can be found here.

What Makes Ghibli Special

So what makes a Studio Ghibli film a Studio Ghibli film? Well, their works most often feature common motifs, themes, and imagery for one. These commonalities include female leads (usually younger), (talking) cats, sweet old ladies, things related to aviation, trains, boutiques, characters with multiple forms and identities, flocks of birds, birdlike creatures, misunderstood male characters, secret or hidden places, and in many cases a lack of a clearly defined antagonist.

These were things I never really thought about much before I actually took the time to look back on the films, but once you realize the commonalities they’re pretty easy to spot. Take Spirited Away for example: its setting is in a secret place, we’ve got a young female lead, a sweet old lady, birdlike creatures, characters with multiple forms and identities, and a misunderstood male character. Studio Ghiblianism at its finest.

But did you know that the “first Studio Ghibli film” isn’t actually a Studio Ghibli film at all? Even though Nausicaä of the Valley of Wind was written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki himself, the film was created one year prior to the creation of Studio Ghibli. Nausicaä was actually published by a studio known as Topcraft. So even though it’s not technically a Studio Ghibli film, it is often credited as one due to how influential it was to the studio’s creation in 1985.

Another fun fact is that Studio Ghibli has adopted a strict “no cuts” policy. This policy was introduced after the unfortunate butchering of the American release of Nausicaä which can be read more about here. The policy was brought up again after the release of Princess Mononoke in 1997 because Miramax wanted to make changes to the film in order to make it more marketable to the United States when it was released over here in 1999. Apparently Studio Ghibli responded by sending Miramax an authentic katana with a simple message reading “no cuts” attached to it. That’s certainly one way to get your point across.

I really respect this about Studio Ghibli. I don’t know about you, but I’ve always hated it when localized films are cut or altered from their original forms by someone other than the actual creator of the film. Knowing that all of Ghibli’s films are now brought to the United States exactly as they were meant to be viewed is a very comforting feeling even if the American production companies insist on having them dubbed into English. But hey, that’s what multi-language DVDs are made for, right? Right.

Studio Ghibli was even nice enough to give a shoutout to Pixar for their 25th anniversary. How kind! Both studios have collaborated with Disney, drawn inspiration from one another, and have even visited each other on various occasions. Both Pixar and Studio Ghibli are argued to be two of the best animation studios in the world today and are right up there with Disney in my opinion.

Upcoming Films

Is that a berry in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

The next film due to hit the States from Studio Ghibli is The Secret World of Arrietty/The Borrower Arrietty (借りぐらしのアリエッティ). I was lucky enough to get to see Arrietty and it was pretty good. Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away are definitely still my favorites from the studio however, but Arrietty was pretty solid as well.

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If the song at the end of the trailer sounds familiar, it’s probably because you heard it from the Imaginary Flying Machines album I posted about a while back. If you haven’t checked it out yet, you really should. It rocks.

Studio Ghibli’s From up on Poppy Hill (コクリコ坂から) came out in Japan earlier this year, (trailer can be found here) and The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter is currently in the works.

The Studio Ghibli Museum

The Totoro went thataway!

Did you know that Studio Ghibli also has its very own museum? Well they do, and from the looks of it, it’s a pretty cool place to be. Located in Mitaka, Tokyo, the museum promises to make all of your Studio Ghibli dreams come true. Unfortunately I haven’t actually been there myself, but you can read all about it over here.

Have you been to the Ghibli Museum before? Tell us about how cool it is in the comments!

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So tell me – what’s your favorite Studio Ghibli film of all time?

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