Thirty years ago, Isao Takahata and Studio Ghibli released one of the greatest war films ever made. Even within a genre known for films tugging on your emotions and asking tough questions on the nature and morality of war, Grave of the Fireflies has touched and moved me more than just about any other. As heartbreaking as it is beautiful, as brutal and unyielding as it is sweet, it’s a movie that doesn’t fail to powerfully remind viewers of the children caught in the economic crossfire of wars, and the little tragedies that occur regularly as a result of their waging.
There’s no shortage of things to praise about Grave of the Fireflies. I could expound on its stellar animation, its contrast of richly detailed warmth with broad, dim plainness; its technical choices like its gradual pace, moments of silence, and pauses that Roger Ebert favourably compared to Ozu; I could touch on its themes of arrogance and the failure of isolation; or the implications of its story and characters against how we see war and war movies; perhaps even I could write at length on the risk of how it opens, beginning quite literally at the end of the story with the death of our main character, yet in so doing creating one of the best and most stunning opening sequences in all of cinema (also the music by Michio Mamiya is highly underrated). But what I want to talk about here and what’s arguably the movie’s main theme is how it defines Loss of Innocence. It’s a theme that’s charted over the course of the movie as the war takes an increasingly heavier toll on the two children unprepared for it both psychologically and physically. Specifically, it identifies five points that create the overall complete loss of innocence for siblings Seita and Setsuko.
It begins with the Loss of Home. Sometime before the start of the film, Japan declared war on the United States. Shortly after that, the ideal of family life in Japan was lost. This in itself is a theme explored further in movies like Tokyo Story, Late Spring, and In This Corner of the World. But where Grave of the Fireflies is concerned, by the time the chronological story begins, our protagonist, the teenage Seita, is already used to life in wartime to some degree. Perhaps largely due to his naval father, he’s prepared for what to do during the air raid, where to go and what to pack, but hasn’t had to confront the possibility until the sudden firebombing of Kobe. The first-hand look at the chaos and destruction inflicted on his neighbourhood takes a heavy toll on him, though he tries to act mature, letting out anger rather than despair at the enemy bombers. His role as an adult is something that’s expected of him in return from other survivors and community leaders, emphasizing the swiftness with which he must grow up. He and his toddler sister Setsuko, after making it through the attack alive, are stricken by the desolation of their community. And it’s when Seita is shown his mother, heavily scalded and barely breathing, that he realizes the full cost. When she dies the following day, the two children, Setsuko ignorant to what happened to their mother and unable to comprehend the meaning of all the calamity, are already in a place no children should have to be in. Seita must be the grown-up, and so to distract his sister from her misery and himself from the impetus to break down, he aggressively shows off his gymnastics, channelling his pent-up emotions into physical exertion.
But despite Seita attempting to maintain a grown-up attitude, on his part a Loss of Responsibility takes effect. It starts with his decision to keep their mothers’ death a secret from Setsuko to preserve her hope and innocence. He initially lies about it to his Aunt too, when she takes them in. His irresponsibility flourishes during this time where he tries as best as he can to ignore the war and live like a child again. But clinging on to immaturity in such a brutal time is not only uneasy, it’s unwelcome -especially when it results in Seita taking for granted the support of their Aunt. Throughout their entire stay with her she isn’t exactly reasonable, sometimes she’s downright mean. But she’s been shaken by the war too, mostly through its economic disparity, and while Setsuko can’t be expected to do much, Seita could certainly be doing more to alleviate than he does. His efforts to find a sense of normalcy are thwarted by other things too -like Setsuko discovering a body on the beach, or watching a mother reunite with her daughter, or their Aunt selling their mothers’ kimonos, reinforcing to Seita that she’s not coming back and completely devastating Setsuko. But he’s unable to accept that normality and the innocence of childhood is impossible as long as the war rages and the country suffers. The most irresponsible choice Seita makes in the movie is when he decides to support himself and Setsuko alone, once more lying to their Aunt about where they’ll be staying, choosing instead to live in an abandoned bomb shelter. In leaving the only person capable and willing (even if begrudgingly so) to look after them, Seita may well have directly doomed himself and Setsuko.
Seita loves and really cares for his sister, but he doesn’t know how to take care of her. In his eagerness to be grown-up and with everything else going on, he overestimates his ability. The third point, the Loss of Resource is something he didn’t take into consideration, and it’s understandable why he wouldn’t, being so young, but the signs were there. On a greater scale this is what directly leads to the animosity their Aunt develops for them: food is in short supply, and they’re not earning their keep. The fruit drops that Setsuko was so fond of ran out after not too long as well. In the shelter, the siblings must make food for themselves, the vicinity only providing soy beans, frogs, fish, and grain -and this is abused at one point by some neighbourhood kids just as the rice depletion among farmers hits its worst. For Seita, still stubborn and not thinking maturely, this leads to the loss of his moral strictures, as, too prideful to return to his Aunt, he begins stealing rice and tomatoes, and raids houses for food and supplies during bombings. When he suffers the consequences for this, being beaten and turned in to the police by a farmer who catches him, his embarrassment and desperation show through. It doesn’t prompt him to stop with what to his mind is likely the only option, but the veneer of maturity breaks down after this incident when he sees Setsuko has followed him through the streets, and he has an emotional outburst. The loss of resource also has a more serious effect on Setsuko, who in addition to suffering emotional trauma birthed out of the first two points, begins to suffer physically. Her health is hit hard by their way of living and she begins to suffer malnutrition, and when Seita can’t acquire the food to curtail it, even returning to their Aunt seems like a vain effort.
The pivotal moment of Seita’s arc comes with the Loss of Illusion. What keeps him going throughout the film is an unwavering belief in the Japanese chances of winning the war. He’s very attached to and relies on his father in the Navy, telling Setsuko, “Dad will get them for this” upon seeing the destruction of Kobe. He also has a strong sense of patriotic fervour, and hero worships the navy as displayed in his reminiscence of seeing the grandness and pomp of the Naval Review. And then he learns about Japan’s surrender, and that the Naval fleet has been all but obliterated, and it breaks him. Everything they had suffered for, all that he and Setsuko had lost has seemed to be in vein. This and Setsuko’s revelation that their Aunt told her the truth about their mother is shattering for Seita, no longer having the light at the end of the tunnel he depended on. And by the time this clears his mind and he can understand the dire situation of Setsuko, it’s too late.
These points illustrating loss of innocence are not necessarily unique to Grave of the Fireflies; many show up in other movies with that as a principal theme. But Grave of the Fireflies goes further than most with the final stage for Seita being the Loss of Hope and complete Death of Innocence that comes with the death of Setsuko. With her passing he has nothing left. One by one his home and family life, his sense of responsibility, his resources and means of living, and his illusion in returning to the world he once knew, the family that happily took that photograph, and his cherubic perception of a strong, undefeatable Japan have vaporized. And now the one person he’d dedicated himself to protecting was gone. The emptiness and grimness with which he cremates her is palpable, and then he leaves the shelter to go out and die, bringing his journey of misery to an end. What might be the most tragic in all of it, is the raw meaninglessness; the men who found Seita in Kobe Station neither knew nor cared that each member of his family had died. He was just another kid, his mother was just another victim, his father was just another soldier, and his sister died without anyone but Seita knowing.
It’s all incredibly melancholy and depressing, but Grave of the Fireflies is far from a movie that just exists to torture you with sadness. In addition to its message about war and children, poverty and loss, it’s a movie about love and indeed hope. After Setsuko’s death, the one memento Seita keeps is the long empty tin of fruit drops. Setsuko’s happiness and innocence was directly tied to this tin throughout the movie, and in keeping it, perhaps Seita had a sliver of hope left in him after all. That’s why Grave of the Fireflies opens on Seita’s death; not to give us a warning of what is to come, but to reassure us that his last thoughts were with his sister and that he would find her again.
What the movie is saying about the loss of innocence is that it’s both circumstantial and psychological, and that the former exacerbates the latter. Tragedy and loss beyond ones’ control not only instigates harm to adolescence, but provokes further harm through subsequent mindsets, actions, and beliefs. And it emphasizes the environment of war as one in which this kind of loss of innocence thrives. Though Takahata denied it fervently, Grave of the Fireflies is most certainly an anti-war film, easily one of the greatest. And its message on the importance of preventing the loss of innocence that befell its protagonists and numerous children like them couldn’t be clearer than when Setsuko mourns the only source of magic she knows in her harsh reality: “Why do the fireflies have to die so soon?” Why indeed.
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