The stigma against discussing mental illness in The Boy and the Heron

Grief drives Hayao Miyazaki’s long-awaited 2023 film, The Boy and the Heron (or, How Do You Live? in Japan). Yet, media outlets have shied away from discussing its devastating undertones. While the theme of grief is commonly addressed in analyses, these discussions are compact, shallow, and shoved aside in favor of metaphors about how the Great Uncle in the magical world is a stand-in for Miyazaki himself.

Here, I will explore how the depiction of grief in the film drives its main conflict, rather than acting as a vehicle for reflection on the art director’s life and career alone. Trigger warning, there will be discussion of self-harm and suicide ahead.

Finding our footing in the spiritual world

Arguably, the opening scene of How Do You Live? (as I believe this title suits the film more) is one of the most iconic Studio Ghibli has ever produced.

A young boy’s face is distorted by smoke, ash, and fire as he runs blindly through the streets after an air raid. He calls out for his mother, dodging the cross-hatched, ashen faces of adults in all shades of brown, black, and grey. Everything is backlit only by the gold-orange sparks enveloping the city and soon the hospital where the boy’s mother is in intensive care. People solemnly pass buckets of water between each other in hopelessness as he approaches it. Our protagonist, Mahito, is pushed and pulled by forces he cannot control to find the hospital—only, it is consumed by raging flames. His mother is dead.

In the next shot, Mahito and his father stare blank-faced before a procession of street tanks. Mahito’s disembodied voice informs the audience that his mother died during the war. The young boy is then shipped off to his aunt Natsuko’s mansion to live in a rural area of Japan, where he will be safe.

Mahito Maki is not the most expressive protagonist, even among Miyazaki’s oeuvre. Prince Ashitaka is another Miyazaki protagonist that Western audiences criticized as unemotional and blank-faced upon its release. However, even with Princess Mononoke (1997)’s intense history surrounding movie cuts and a Western marketing campaign that warped the original meaning of the film entirely, Mahito stands out as a particularly blank Miyazaki protagonist.

The thing is, the medium of anime is rife with protagonists meant to serve as the audience’s stand-in rather than a character in their own right. So Mahito invites the audience to experience his grief and journey into the unknown in search of his mother. Through Mahito, we, the audience, are offered insight into a child’s trauma, and his experience of a deadly and uncaring war.

The grey heron leads Mahito (and the audience) into a magical realm via the tower that is said to have appeared on the mansion's property from nowhere when Mahito's mother was a child. But this magical world, while exhibiting a multitude of familiar elements of what Japanese animation theorist Susan Napier calls Miyazakiworld—the art director’s signature characters, imagery, and otherworldly wonder he is known for—How Do You Live? offers a stark departure from Miyazaki’s previous films.

Unlike Spirited Away (2001), which had Chihiro venturing into the world of the spirits within the first 10 minutes of the film, How Do You Live? is centered in the real world for the entire first third of the movie’s 2-hour runtime. This grounds the film on the events of the past—the war and Mahito’s relationships with his father, mother, and aunt.

The tower that the grey heron leads him to is said to have been visited by Mahito’s great grandfather, who became obsessed with uncovering its secrets and never returned. No matter how many people searched for him, his entire family and all the servants who lived in the mansion never found him once he ventured inside.

Plainly put, the tower is a metaphor for grief-induced depression.

Mahito is cautioned never to venture near the tower, or else he will disappear into it too.

The second titular character of our film, the grey heron, has been called a stand-in for grief itself. But I believe the heron has symbolism that is simultaneously more complex and more specific than that.

The grey heron is an antagonist at the start. It possesses a ghoulish voice, facial expressions and features that are twisted and horrifying, mirroring the trickster and silver-tongued yokai of Japanese mythology. Many of these yokai lure unsuspecting villagers into forests with promises of riches, true love, honor or glory—never to be seen again. Which, the grey heron does to Mahito at one point in the movie.

Rather than leading Mahito to his death, though, the grey heron leads Mahito to the tower. Immediately, Mahito finds his mother within, reclined on what appears to be something like a deathbed. She is turned away from him, her eyes closed. When he gets close and touches her, she melts away into empty water. She was nothing more than a mirage. This angers and horrifies Mahito, who turns his violent anger upon the heron after its promise that his mother was alive within the tower.

It is at this point in the film that the magical elements take hold, and slowly, Mahito’s relationship with the heron becomes more begrudging and friendly: The yokai-like heron is given a human head and face, rather than the foreign, natural head of a heron with twisted features. But it is before this shift that the film sets up the conflict between these two characters, as a representation for the trauma and mental illness that Mahito is going through after the death of his mother.

Japan’s culture of emotional austerity

When I first watched How Do You Live?, what struck me was the candid meta-commentary about how mental illness is treated in Japan, especially by family members. A young child, Mahito, has just lost his mother and is bullied as the new kid in school. In the first half-hour of the movie, we witness, wordlessly, as the other students scrunch their noses in derision as Mahito takes a seat in the back of the classroom.

Later, wordlessly, Mahito is walking on the path home and encounters his classmates. He gets pushed down, and what follows is a cropped-short scuffle. When we see Mahito again, he is again walking on the path home. Surprisingly, there aren’t more than a few smudges on his face and clothing to indicate the fight he just got into.

But he picks up a large stone, and smashes it against the side of his face. It starts to bleed profusely, and he clutches himself as he bends over in pain before stoically placing his hat back on his head and continuing down the road.

Naturally, his mother’s sister and the other aunties at the mansion are aghast when they see his bloody, stoic face. Mahito’s father believes that the other students at school did this to him, and he demands to know who so he can confront their parents and protect his son. Mahito does not answer, waving it aside as inconsequential.

The scar remains throughout the remainder of the film. Though Mahito’s father is never discussed in film analyses, his gung-ho attitude and inability to understand his son's grief is a focal point of the film.

Out of everyone else around Mahito, you would think Mahito’s father, the man whose wife was killed in the same fire that has caused his son so much grief, would offer comfort to him. They might share a kinship, or even have a conflict over their different responses to grief. On the contrary, Mahito’s father never mentions Mahito’s mother. He is barely in the film at all, except when in pursuit of Natsuko as a lover, or when trying to save Mahito from the tower.

At one point, Mahito even dips out of the tower halfway to find his father rushing madly toward him with a katana. His father proclaims that no matter what, he will defend Mahito from whatever has yanked him into the tower. But Mahito turns away from him, back to the inside—choosing to face his grief, and continue his journey into the unknown.

The tower is dangerous. Mahito almost loses himself and gets killed multiple times, but he witnesses sights and meets people—including the grey heron and a younger version of his mother—that change his view of himself and his grief.

Rather than being fearful, like his father and the rest of the family, Mahito faces what’s troubling him head-on to process his feelings. Eventually, he comes out on top, but it is before all of this that the reality of Mahito’s situation takes a turn for the worst.

The media’s avoidance of discussing suicide

Sometime after Mahito’s family fusses over his well-being after he plunged a large stone into his own head, the grey heron visits Mahito again. It lures him outside and toward the tower and the river behind the mansion. Here, Mahito and the grey heron argue. The grey heron tries to convince Mahito that his mother still lives, cackling maniacally as it says so. Its face twists with ghoulish features, asking if Mahito won’t join the grey heron so he can see his mother again.

At the grey heron’s proclamation and Mahito’s refutation that his mother still lives, a menagerie of toads and fish rise from the river and scream “Join us!” at Mahito’s feet. They crowd his body, climbing all over his face. It is an iconic scene used in the Western marketing material for the film. Mahito’s skepticism and anger dissolve as he starts to doubt whether the grey heron is speaking the truth.

What if his mother is still alive? What if he can see her again?

Clearly, Mahito is considering the validity of the grey heron’s words, hesitating by the riverside. Maybe it is better to join the grey heron in its own world, to let go of this one, and follow the fishes and frogs into the river. The creatures chant in deafening, imposing, droning unison, obscuring Mahito's body and face. It isn’t until Natsuko and the other aunties arrive on the scene that Mahito turns around and all the creatures, including the grey heron, flee him. Mahito faints.

This intense scene is followed by an extended near-silent shot of Mahito rising in water. He rises into his own bed, and huge droplets fall like tears over the creases in his face. He opens his eyes, and after asking the one auntie present where the grey heron went (she gives him a blank look), his father traipses into the room in good spirits. He assures Mahito that he will find the boys who attacked him at school. That he will get revenge on Mahito’s behalf.

Let’s break this down.

Why the water motif? Well, water is the opposite of fire. It smothers the flames—aka, the grief and trauma—that killed Mahito’s mother. At this point, we the audience know that Mahito has self-harmed. Onscreen, he caused himself to bleed profusely after being bullied, and then denied his father taking action against those perceived to be responsible. We know that Mahito hitting himself was not an act of revenge against the other boys at school, otherwise he would have urged his father to find the boys and punish them. Instead, he waved it aside and told his father to forget about it.

Mahito smashing the rock against his head was an act against himself. He blamed himself for being in his current situation of grief and suffering alone.

In the magical world, too, a character known as the Parakeet King is a stand-in for Mahito’s father. He parades around in a glass box Himi, the younger version of Mahito’s mother in the spiritual world, and he destroys the building blocks that the Great Uncle has painstakingly built over centuries.

Mahito’s curiosity and openness to the tower’s secrets are what lead him away from his father in the real world, to eventually befriend the grey heron, meet his mother as a young woman, and save Natsuko from her own grief and loneliness. But before this, Mahito is forced to process his grief alone. He is driven to try and see his mother again—in the afterlife.

Other family members refuse to acknowledge Mahito’s curiosity toward the tower (his depression) and his self-harm as an act against himself. They also cannot see the unnerving threat of the grey heron in his life.

You see, in Buddhist cosmology, nature’s other creatures—like frogs and fish—represent different tiers in the path to Enlightenment. Depending on what kind of creature you are reincarnated as, you are more or less likely to be able to achieve Enlightenment. What you are reincarnated as indicates your level of “deservedness” of Enlightenment, based on karma from your past life or lives. A human lifetime is said to be rare and precious, as this is the best (or only) lifetime that someone can achieve Enlightenment. Meanwhile, lower rebirths—like insects, dogs, fish, etc.—have different meanings for “how well” you lived your previous lifetime.

In other words, the fish and frogs that were beckoning Mahito to “join them” are not just nature’s other creatures who decided to aid in the grey heron’s urgings for Mahito to meet with his mother. They are former humans who failed on their path to Enlightenment.

They were urging Mahito to take his own life.

Mahito rises up in water in the shot after his family finds him near the river. Surely, they should have seen the grey heron and all the creatures crowding around him. That is, if it was happening in actuality.

They likely saw a scene entirely different.

Mahito, urged by the grey heron and other creatures, tried to drown himself in the river because of how isolated he was with his grief.

Final takeaway

How Do You Live? or The Boy and the Heron as it’s called in the West, is not a movie that focuses solely on dealing with suicidal ideation. It is colorful and stock-full of the masterful craftsmanship of art and scenic direction that Miyazaki's oeuvre is known for. There are even new elements: a real world tone, surrealist sequences, and avant-garde flair that his previous films wholly lack.

However, what I enjoyed most was how it didn’t shy away from addressing grief, depression, and suicide in obvious but inexplicit terms. Rather than showing a graphic suicide attempt that would allow the audience to distance themselves from Mahito and the topic of self-harm, as well as be triggering to anyone who has struggled with self-harming tendencies in the past, the film uses metaphors and context to portray its powerful and symbolic stance on grief and mental illness.

As someone who wrote an undergraduate thesis on Miyazaki’s animated oeuvre and has studied Buddhist cosmology for 8 years, the symbolism was readily apparent. Cultural context and knowledge about the medium of anime, surely, helped in understanding the film’s deeper meanings. Still, the fact that audiences and media outlets have refused to dive into Mahito’s grief with him, even when his point of view is so readily apparent, showcases a grander refusal to discuss it (like Mahito’s dad) and perhaps a child-like ignorance (like Mahito at the start) on how to even begin.

Grief is not something to be shied away from. You will find beautiful and terrible things on the path to healing, and not all of them will serve you. But you will get more out of life if you keep on trekking, and in the end, you will find out how you want to answer the question: How do you live?