peterpayne:As with any culture, the Japanese are susceptible to urban legends, the (usually mistaken
peterpayne:As with any culture, the Japanese are susceptible to urban legends, the (usually mistaken) beliefs that people seem to accept because everyone else believes them. For example, there’s a persistent conviction in Japan that the “Lucky Strike” cigarette logo is supposed to represent the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima as seen from above, although the logo has actually been in use for a quarter century. Then there’s the odd urban legend, still hotly debated on Japanese websites, that there’s a dark tale hidden inside the classic My Neighbor Totoro. It’s almost certainly wrong, but may nevertheless be interesting if for no other reason than as a study of how ideas like this spring into being. It might be disturbing to some Totoro fans, so I’m hiding the paragraph. Highlight if you want to read.According to the theory, Totoro (whose name may have come from a child’s mistaken attempt at pronouncing the English word “troll” from the classic Billy Goats Gruff story) is really a shinigami (god of death) who has come to collect Mei. When Mei goes missing she actually dies by falling into a ride paddy and drowning, and when Satsuki asks Totoro, “Please take me to where Mei is!” she too, is brought to the land of death. (Some say that after this scene no shadows are drawn under the girls, though it’s hard to tell for sure.) There are similarities to an event called the Sayama Incident on which a girl was tragically murdered on May 1, 1963. The names of Mei (“May”) and Satsuki (the old name for the month of May, before Japan adopted the Gregorian calendar) both seem to mirror. Finally, in the last scene of the film, if the girls are not dead, why don’t they go to talk to their mother? -- source link
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