Turning Point: 1997–2008 by Hayao Miyazaki

Author:Hayao Miyazaki
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: VIZ Media
Published: 2021-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

The Heart That Accepts a “Lonely Man”

Tokiko Katō (Singer)

Hokkaido Shimbun, April 27, 2001, evening edition

I’ve been aware of Katō-san’s songs ever since “Hitorine no komoriuta” (Lullaby for Sleeping Alone, 1969). Even she’s probably forgotten all about it by now, but I sometimes still find myself humming the song or listening to a tape of it while working.

I first met Katō-san while creating Porco Rosso (1992), when I asked her to play the part of Gina, the madame of the bar where the pilots always congregate. We used her “Tokiniwa mukashi no hanashi wo” (Once in a While, Talk of the Old Days, 1987) as the end theme for Porco Rosso, because for a certain generation the song has incredible resonance, and there’s an overlap in theme. In the story, Madame Gina also sings the song “Le Temps des Cerises” (The Time of Cherries), which emerged during the Paris Commune and was also played at the funeral of President Francois Mitterand, so I knew I had to get Katō-san for the part. For the film, I used the section where she just starts singing a bit (actually at Sungari, the Russian restaurant run by Katō-san’s older sister, Sachiko). She has a fabulous sense of intuition and was able to understand the hidden messages in the film, and I’m really glad that we could work with her.

Katō-san is a very domestic person. And that’s one of the great, and somewhat unfortunate, things about her. Were she the type who fell over and over again into self-destructive romantic relationships, exhausting herself, her love songs might have demonstrated a particularly interesting development. But she’s a very rational person, and that’s also good. The secret behind the fact that, rather than focusing on the songs she has already sung, she is focused more on the future, is that she has a good husband and very dependable daughters. When I once met her with her husband and daughters, I really enjoyed seeing how much the daughters supported their mother. Katō-san is the type who might say, “Well, even if the men aren’t up to it, I am, and I’m not going to let anything get me down,” and that’s the way she’s probably always been. I suspect that the men around her think that she’s really tough. But she’s also got a very gentle spirit that can be very accepting of lonely men too. She’s always telling me I grumble too much, or that I shouldn’t go around moaning and groaning all the time.

Katō-san’s songs have an element of narcissism, but the fact that they don’t have any self-pity is one of the great things about them. The songs “Shiretoko ryojō” (Traveling Moods in Shiretoko) and “Biwako shūkō no uta” (A Song for Sailing Around Lake Biwa) hold out just to the right point and are very refreshing. And their logic keeps them from being sappy. It’s okay for them to contain an element of traditional Japanese folk music, because it’s appealing. And to have this without self-pity is pretty good too.

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