The Sunday Read: ‘Spirited Away to Miyazaki Land’

The Daily

The New York Times

Daily News, News

4.4 • 102.8K Ratings

🗓️ 19 March 2023

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As an American, Sam Anderson knows what it feels like to arrive at a theme park. “The totalizing consumerist embrace,” he writes. “The blunt-force, world-warping, escapist delight.” He has known theme parks with entrances like “international borders” and ticket prices like “mortgage payments.” Mr. Anderson has been to Disney World, which he describes as “an alternate reality that basically occupies its own tax zone.” In November, when Ghibli Park finally opened, Mr. Anderson made sure to get himself there. The park is a tribute to the legendary Studio Ghibli, first started by the animator Hayao Miyazaki in 1985, out of desperation, when he and his co-founders, Isao Takahata and Toshio Suzuki, couldn’t find a studio willing to put out their work. Miyazaki is detail-obsessed. He agonizes over his children’s cartoons as if he were Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel, insisting that, although few viewers will be conscious of all this work, every viewer will feel it. And we do. Those tiny touches, adding up across the length of a film, anchor his fantasies in the actual world. And so, after many years, and much traveling — at long last — Mr. Anderson found himself stepping into the wonders of Ghibli Park. His first impression was not awe or majesty or surrender or consumerist bliss. It was confusion.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I grew up going to what I think of as very American theme parks.
0:11.8	Roller coasters everywhere, bright lights, carnival games, overpriced food, entertainment
0:20.1	literally in every direction you look.
0:22.7	I guess I always just think of it as this big festival of capitalism.
0:30.1	And that felt very natural to me and I just assumed that every place in the world was like
0:35.2	that.
0:36.5	So when I went to this new theme park in Japan, it really flipped all those expectations
0:41.2	upside down.
0:42.6	Hi, my name is Sam Anderson and I'm a staff writer for the New York Times magazine.
0:49.9	For this week's Sunday read, I'll be reading my article for the February 19th, 2023 issue
0:55.9	of the magazine about a trip I took to a new Japanese theme park.
1:01.4	It's called Ghibli Park.
1:03.6	It's a long awaited celebration of the legendary animation of Studio Ghibli, which is run by
1:09.7	Hiami Azaki and some others.
1:12.9	I've been imagining this theme park for a long time as I've been watching these films and
1:19.0	I have to say, I always expected it to be strange, but it was much stranger than I ever
1:25.8	could have imagined.
1:28.3	So here's my article from the February 19th, 2023 issue of the New York Times magazine.
1:36.9	As an American, I know what it feels like to arrive at a theme park.
1:41.5	The totalizing consumerist embrace.
1:45.3	The blunt force, world warping, escapist delight.
1:50.5	I have known theme parks with entrance gates like international borders and ticket prices
	...

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