on NAUSICAA

by Hayao Miyazaki

Nauiscaš was a Phonician princess in The Odyssey. I have been fascinated by her ever since I first read about her in Bernad Evslin's Japanese translation of a small dictionary of Greek Mythology. Later, when I actually read The Odyssey, I was disappointed not to find the same splendour in her there as I had found in Evslin's book. So, as far as I am concerned, Nausicaa is still the girl Evslin described at length in his paperback. I can tell that he was particularly found of Nausicaa, as he devoted three pages to her in his small dictionary, but gave only one to both Zeus and Achilles.

As Evslin described her, Nausicaa was a beautiful and fanciful girl, quick on her feet. She loved playing the harp and singing more than the attention of her suitors or pursuing earthly comforts. She took delight in nature and had an especially sensitive personality. It was she who, unafraid, saved Odysseus and nursed his wounds when he drifted ashore covered with blood. Nausicaa soothed his spirit by improvising a sing for him.

Nausicaa's parents worried that she might fall in love with Odysseus and pressured him to set sail. Nausicaa watched his ship until it was out of sight. According to legend, she never married, but traveled from court to courts as the first female minstrel, singing about Odysseus and his adventures on his voyage.

Evslin concludes, "This girl occupied a special place in the weather-beaten heart of the great voyager Odysseus."

Nausicaa reminded me of a Japanese heroine - I think I read about her in The Tales of the Past and Present. She was called the "princess that loved insects." She was regarded as an eccentric because even after reaching marriageable age, she still loved to play in the fields and would be enchanted the transformations of a pupa into a butterfly. Her eyebrows were dark and her teeth white - unlike the other girls of her era, she did not follow the custom of shaving off her eyebrows and blackening her teeth. According to Tales, she looked very strange!

Today she wouldn't be perceived as an eccentric. Even though she might be considered a little peculiar, she would be able to fit into society easily, accepted as a nature lover, or just as someone with individualistic interests. In the era of The Tale of Genji and The Pillow Book [early c11], however, an aristocrat's daughter who loved insects and who would not have her eyebrows would be shunned. Even as a child, I couldn't help but worry about the princess's fate.

This princess was not daunted by social restrictions; she ran about as she pleased in the mountains and fields, moved by the plants and tress and the floating clouds ... I've always wondered how the princess survived as an adult. Today she would be able to find someone who could love and understand her. What was her fate then, in the Heian period [794-1185], with all its conventions and taboos?

Unfortunately, unlike Nausicaa, the "princess that loved insects" never had an Odysseus wash up on her shores, nor songs to sing, nor foreign lands to wander in, to escape society's restrictions. If she had met the great voyager, I'm sure she would have had the same illumination as "man covered with blood."

Unconsciously, Nausicaa and this Japanese princess became one person in my mind.

The people at Animage [a premiere Japanese animation magazine] encouraged me to do the comics, so I went ahead and set down my own concept of Nausicaa. Now I am "doomed" and have to learn the hard way again why, a long time ago, I concluded that I had no talent for comics and gave them up [Miyazaki is being overly modest here]. Now I just want this girl to attain freedom and happiness.

This article appeared in volume one of the original Japanese version of Nauiscaa of the Valley of Wind. It was transcribed by myself, Michael Mifsud.