No spoilers ahead, but if you haven’t seen it yet, Whisper of the Heart was Japan’s top movie in 1995 and has a 91% on Rotten Tomatoes, so get going! The movie’s protagonist is Shizuku Tsukishima, an imaginative and bookish 14-year-old student tasked with translating “Take Me Home, Country Roads” for chorus club, to be performed at the middle school graduation ceremony.
In 1995, Miyazaki wrote Mimi o Sumaseba (耳をすませば, “If you listen closely,” or Whisper of the Heart in the English edition), an animated romantic drama focusing on two junior high school students in West Tokyo. How did this 1971 breakout hit about the beauty of West Virginia wind up becoming a Tokyo salaryman karaoke classic? And what does it have to do with my current emotional state? Well, dear reader, it all begins, as all good stories do, with Hayao Miyazaki and a Ghibli film. So please humor me as we talk about one of the most beloved Japanese songs, “Take Me Home, Country Roads” by John Denver. Finally, I landed on a fusion: self-reflection with a nice dollop of cultural research on top.
I could have talked about how the blog has changed over time (we are all glad that I stopped that odd inner-monologue introduction style!), or I could have stayed stoic and stuck to the regular format, introducing readers to little-known aspects of Japanese culture. When thinking about my topic for my last blog, I ran through a few options. Hello from West Shinjuku! As seen (from left to right) in the above image, it’s home to the luxurious Tokyo Park Hyatt of Lost in Translation fame, the DoCoMo Tower (the Empire State Building’s vaguely sinister twin), and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government buildings, or the pair of towers that holds the Tokyo JET offices.Ĭurrently, West Shinjuku is also home to me, as I type away at my final JETcetera post.