Right off the bat, I promise this review will be spoiler free. However, in this age of increasing troubling times, this seems like a good time to revisit Michio Mamiya’s score for 火垂るの墓, Hotaru no Haka (otherwise known as Grave of the Fireflies). Now, for those that have seen Isao Takahata’s animated masterpiece one can’t help but feel all sorts of emotions and memories come back when the first few strains of melody stream in. Much like Joe Hisaishi’s score for Kichijoutennyo/Kisshō Tennyo, on this OST the main theme “ほたる (Firefly)” was made based on drawings of the story and not the entirety of animation from the movie itself.
Set in the immediate aftermath of post WWII Japan, Grave of the Fireflies tells the story of two children (Seita and Setsuko) in reverse. It’s a gripping story that uses the discovery of the older brother, Setsuko, in a Kobe station, carrying just a single tin of Sakuma candy drops, to envelop you with themes that go beyond being a mere anti-war movie, into themes that are deeply personal. Touching on societal feelings of shame, pride, subserviency, abandonment, and isolation, Akiyuki Nosaka never imagined Grave of the Fireflies (his original story) to be something that could properly be filmed as a live action movie anything. Dreamlike, yet unflinchingly realistic, it’s a dual story meant to convey the way we dream of the world versus how the world really unfolds, largely, out of our control.
For many, like the author of Grave Of the Fireflies, surviving as a child during war time involved creating new, imagined worlds, that could use to cope with the real one storming around them. It wasn’t until twenty years later, in 1988, that Isao Takahata (co-founder of Studio Ghibli) showed Akiyuki some rough sketches of that story he’d like to tell, that would convince him this was the way to bring the story out of his life in the worlds of others.
“ほたる (Firefly)” by Michio Mamiya from Grave of the Fireflies Image Album (火垂るの墓 イメージ・アルバム集)
The selection of Michio Mamiya, in hindsight, appears to be an inspired choice. Rather than go with a younger composer, Isao went back to someone from their generation. Born and raised in the same milieu of post-WWII time as a Isao and Akiyuki, Michio understood intimately the themes they were trying to impart on what would be a largely, younger audience. Originally, Michio had worked as composer for Isao and Hayao Miyazaki’s first production together, The Great Adventure of Horus, Prince of the Sun (太陽の王子 ホルスの大冒険, Taiyō no Ōji Horusu no Daibōken).
A brilliantly gifted pianist, Asahikawa native, Michio Mamiya blossomed as an orchestral conductor and composer, leading iconic orchestras like Japan’s Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra and writing countless operas, or pieces for instrument ensembles and chorales. Rarely, if ever did his deep his toes into soundtrack writing and when he did, Michio seemed to do it with friend Isao’s asking at heart.
“Hotaru” by Michio Mamiya from Grave of the Fireflies Image Album (火垂るの墓 イメージ・アルバム集)
Just years before he had written the score to Isao’s 1982 film Gauche the Cellist, a decidedly lighter affair that touched, musically, on the way nature (or man’s relationship to it) drives the way we create music. Here, it seems the opposite was asked of him. Here, Michio was tasked with driving music to steer you into a nature and an atmosphere much like these children. To drive you musically experience the world the way they did.
Much like Tom Jobim’s Matita Perê, so too did Michio mutate all that learned music of the Baroque, of the modernists and impressionists, back into nature, rather than let it remain a reflection of it through grandiosity. Going outside of mere greenery, compositions like “戦争又は空襲 (Another Air Raid, The War Continues)” invoke human nature in all its shocking creation. Others like “Episode II「節子」(Episode II “Setsuko”)” derive inspiration from the better side of our creative human spirit. Odes to “母 (Mother)” swoop in, hovering with uncertainty and intensity, with bittersweet tones, that musically resonant things unresolved for the listener.
My suggestion: carve out some time to watch the movie and catch cues that would drive whole compositions like the one’s co-written by someone like fellow pianist Masahiko Satoh. Coming back to the album you’ll hear ideas get expanded upon in a way they couldn’t on the movie.
Here, on “Hotaru”, strains of jazz, neoclassical ideas, and whispered things that coalesce into a mass of remembrance with the forcefulness of bass lines and distant bell tones. Even divorced from the movie, the music is a vivid portrayal of certain things humanity itself remains struggling to divorce itself from or be forced to comprehend. Then again, Michio was just given a few cell drawings to go by and out came this towering collection of melancholia. To have it feature as music for the second movie of a double-header following Miyazaki’s own towering, Hisaishi-composed, My Neighbor Totoro, perfectly encapsulates the width of the horizon view found in any adolescent mind.
“母 (Mother)” by Michio Mamiya from Grave of the Fireflies Image Album (火垂るの墓 イメージ・アルバム集)
Michio, much like his creative, generational brethren in Grave Of The Fireflies lived through this story (some way). Perhaps that’s the reason we owe it to them to see a version of this world, through an aspect of those visions (at least once) through our own eyes.