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CrankyCritic: My
gut feeling, after seeing the subtitled version, was that there
were many intrinsically Japanese things in the story that were going
to be very difficult to translate for America. A couple of months
ago and you told me that, before you would sign the contract, you
had Miramax hunt down every book on Japanese fantasy they could
find.
Neil Gaiman: It wasn't so much the fantasy. It was much
more the culture and myth. One thing that I think is interesting;
they've actually said that in many ways the Japanese didn't
understand a lot of the stuff that's intrinsic to Japanese, built
into Japanese history and culture. In some ways, they may get a
better understanding of what's going on in some of the stuff from
the English dub. One of my jobs was to slide and sneak cultural
information in there as invisibly as I can, such that you will know
what's going on. There are moments all the way through where we
are giving you information. Whether it's giving Lady Eboshi the
first line "if we don't get the rice home we don't eat"
or the cutting of the hair....
CrankyCritic: Or
Jigo calling his soup "donkey piss".
Neil Gaiman: That was something else. We have Jigo.
He is a nasty, rough, evil little priest. His first line in the
Japanese is "this soup tastes like water." I wanted to
give him an opening line that would tell us that he was coarse and
crude and didn't care what other people thought of him, and that
gave you the kind of relationship with that character that the Japanese
got from the "water" line. You wouldn't get it from a
direct translation. For a Japanese audience "this soup tastes
like water" is insulting and bad mannered. From a New York
perspective, it just shows that Jigo is a remarkably well mannered
little priest. I just turned the volume up. It's the first laugh
of the thing and it also tells you who he is.
CrankyCritic: Back
to the haircutting. Maybe you can explain it to me. Once Ashitaka
is cursed, why is it that he essentially has to become dead to his
tribe to  find
the cure. Why can't they say "go off and find the cure..."
Neil Gaiman: ... and come back. In the Western tradition
that is what would happen. In the Western storytelling tradition,
the hero's quest kind of thing, what happens is: A Prince is Cursed.
A Prince is Forced to Leave his village. He has Adventures and Meets
the Girl he loves. You could probably add fifty million to the US
box-office on Princess Mononoke if you could talk Mr. Miyazaki
into doing a scene where: You're back in the village at the end
of the film.. Everybody is shouting and cheering as Ashitaka rides
back in on Yakkul. We pull back to see San padding in on a giant
wolf by his side. They're holding hands and Ashitaka looks up and
everybody shouts and we end the film. That's where the Western storytelling
arc takes you. What I had to do was try and tell people, as efficiently
and as early as I could, that that is not going to happen.
The action of cutting his hair... If you were a warrior and you
decided to become a priest, if you suddenly realized that the way
of the Buddha was the right one, you would cut your hair. You would
put your top knot down and by this action indicate that you are
now a dead person to your friends and family ...
CrankyCritic: To your former profession ...
Neil Gaiman: ...to your former world. It's very literal.
You have become a priest. Your former identity is no more. In one
of the early dubs Ashitaka's first line, when he calls to San across
the river, got changed to "I am Prince Ashitaka!" I said
"No. He's not! Prince Ashitaka is dead. Calling him 'Prince'
implies that he will be going back to his village." I did a
lot of stuff in the scene where the little old Emishi man talks
about how Ashitaka is going to have to cut his hair and leave the
village, never to return. The wise woman says "Now you are
dead to us." A lot of it was just me going in and amplifying
what would be implicit to a Japanese audience in what was happening.
As for the "why" of it, you'd have to ask Mr. Miyazaki.
NEXT:
We talk of violence, and Mononoke's place in the world of
animation >>
Copyright
© 1999 Chuck Schwartz except All images and music © 1997
Studio Ghibli.
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