Pom Poko is Studio Ghibli’s weirdest anime film by a wide margin. This 1994 top box office smash in Japan was directed by Isao Takahata, the studio’s master animator who is often overshadowed by its other founder, Hayao Miyazaki. Most anime fans remember Takahata best for his heartbreaking war film Grave of the Fireflies and the beautiful, nostalgic tale of self-discovery Only Yesterday. Hee also directed one of the most aesthetically unusual Studio Ghibli movies (with its stylized, crude comic strip aesthetic), My Neighbors the Yamadas, and made the Oscar-nominating animated historical fantasy The Tale of the Princess Kaguya.
At first glance, his Pom Poko is an odd tale of testicle-flipping raccoon dogs (called tanukis) fighting for their forest with magic powers. But if you dig deeper, you will find so much more than this.
Tanukis Have a Special Place in Japanese Folklore
Studio Ghibli
Takahata’s underrated treasure centers on a community of tanukis, which are actual animals from Japan often called ‘raccoon dogs’ (of the species Nyctereutes viverrinus, and perhaps most represented by the character Tom Nook in the game Animal Crossing). These real animals have been incorporated into Japanese folklore in a very odd way as Bake-danuki, one version of mythical yōkai creatures that were first imagined in the 8th century.
These tanukis are capable of transforming themselves into almost anything and creating illusions in utterly amazing ways; they are also always depicted as having huge, magical testicles. Japanese folk tales about shape-shifters like tanukis, foxes (kitsune), and some old cats inspired not only Pom Poko but also such Studio Ghibli’s masterpieces as My Neighbor Totoro and Howl’s Moving Castle.
It is hard to appreciate Pom Poko without being aware of the tanukis’ significant place in Japanese culture since ancient times. In Japan, the tanuki is always considered as a symbol of luck and prosperity. Everything from old woodblock prints, statues all across Japan, and songs for children are dedicated to these jolly creatures. Much of folklore revolves around tanukis’ big testicles, which are seen as wealth signs (and, in Pom Poko, are used to attack people, bounce the animals around, spread out as wings, and more). Tokyo Weekender explains the seemingly odd correlation:
It all goes back to a funny linguistic quirk. Testicles have many different colloquial names around the world like “nuts” in the West or “eggs” in Central and Eastern Europe. In Japan, they are called “kintama,” which means “gold,” “gold balls” or “gold and jewels,” not unlike the Western expression “family jewels.” It didn’t take a long time for a storeowner or whomever to eventually make the connection that big sacks = big stacks (of money).
There are those who think that this aspect is inappropriate in Pom Poko – but a Japanese American from Reddit explained why is it normal for Japanese people, saying, “I know it can seem super weird from a foreign perspective, but when you grow up singing songs about tanuki and reading scary stories with them as the main character, it’s not all that strange.”
There’s Sadness Under the Cute Fun-Filled World of Pom Poko
The main plot of Pom Poko involves tanukis from the forest outside of Tokyo and their battle with the humans destroying their habitat to make way for a new gigantic suburb. With his animated tale, Takahata combines the real history of the largest housing development in Japan, Tama New Town, and the magic of folklore.
Faced with a threat, frisky tanukis band together and decide to develop their shape-shifting powers. To save their forest from bulldozers, magic raccoon dogs trick humans in various surprising (and often legitimately disturbing) ways, including staging a massive parade of phantoms through the streets of Tokyo to scare away the humans. Over the course of the film, funny and adorable cartoonishness takes a dark turn. Tanukis who are unable to transform are losing hope; a group of tanukis led by hotheaded Gonta become eco-terrorists who kill humans; another group wishes to understand how to win the battle peacefully without violence, and the creatures fight amongst each other due to these ideological differences.
The character Shoukichi expressing sentiments which possibly echo how many people feel about climate change, corporate takeovers, and gentrification:
Somehow, this silly movie about raccoon dogs and their weird testicles will surely move you; the tanukis’ struggle, lasting almost 30 years (the tale begins in late 1960s Japan and resumes in the early 1990s), is a painful and relatable one.
What if our little pranks aren’t doing any good at all? What if the humans leveled the entire forest? Then where are we gonna go? Maybe Gonta’s right. The only way to stop them is to get violent. I don’t want to have to hurt any more humans. It just doesn’t seem right to me. But what if they won’t stop? Then what? - Shoukichi, one of the central characters in Pom Poko
Surprisingly enough, the phrase Pom Poko in the title comes from the sound that tanukis make by drumming their bellies. The anime film has a lot of cute details like this one – but there is always sadness under the comedy. The narrative moves between playfulness and disturbance, weirdness and seriousness, silliness and statement.
Pom Poko is an Animation with a Powerful Environmental Message
Pom Poko has a lot to say. Using humorous protagonists, Takahata’s film reflects about the ecological balance – something we also see in other Studio Ghibli animated films, especially in Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and Princess Mononoke. In its nature vs. man plot, Pom Poko condemns the ‘progress at any cost’ ethos of capitalism and makes us aware of how green areas are turning into concrete jungles. When humans destroy animals’ forest habitats, animals lose food sources, homes, and often life. The result is harmful not just to them and their surrounding environment, but to humans and the planet itself.
Presented as a kind of documentary in animated form, Pom Poko also compares the tanukis’ struggle with the disappearance of folk cultures and traditions as a consequence of modernization (something also seen in Ghibli’s Spirited Away). Traditional and indigenous peoples once experienced the same destruction as the tanukis. A tale of disappearing worlds, Takahata’s film comes to terms with disjunction from the natural world – but despite a bittersweet final note in Studio Ghibli’s style, Pom Poko shows that ultimately nothing can stop humans.
Pom Poko was made in 1994, but its call for action to protect the environment is vividly relevant today. The animation finds an even stronger resonance now, and history will likely judge that Takahata’s masterpiece is one of Studio Ghibli’s most important works.
