My Neighbor Totoro is a imaginary story which is based on Japanese time of 1958. That time, Japan was still trying hard to recover from the damage of the war in both economy and spirit of people. Although the material world in Japan is not at all as enough as present time, some kind of pure hope and dream for the future filled the hearts of the people. Now urban city lost communication among people in neighbors, but at this age, Japan had very intimate and kind community around ourselves.

This movie is based on that time and casting is very heartwarming for Japanese. All of them have very good personality and try to help each other in the family, which used to be ( and still hope it IS ) the good aspect of Japanese people’s mind in the family or community. When I look at this movie, I firstly remembered my childhood because I was born in 1960. The world I saw then was almost similar to this movies colors and atmosphere.

Traditional Japanese heart and Japanese country scene are really tear dropping scene for us because we still want them in spite that the good old days are fading away from our heart recently.

TOTORO is a monster of imagination which can be seen only by pure kids’ eyes or through their heart. TOTORO helps kids if they are purely hoping the future happiness. TOTORO is a master that inhabited in Japanese country side long time ago. When children go out, they could see TOTORO with wishful heart and friendship with beautiful nature.

TOTORO now disappeared in Japan. Of course it’s a imaginary story.

What we Japanese think is that THE HEARTS of JAPANESE PEOPLE to see TOTORO are disappearing unfortunately. Maybe that’s why Mr. Miyazaki wanted to show the new kids in Japan that we should not forget this beautiful mind.

At the theaters in Japan, chirldren were very happy to see this movie. When I saw that, I noticed that I could not laugh at the same scenes as they laughed. I understand I lost something in the past, but I was also happy to know again that my childhood was like that and I spent very precious time like this movie.

I think this movie is the BEST movie for family watching with kids among Miyazkai works. In Japan, this movie is the trigger for Miyazaki to become Japan’s national animation artist because all of Japanese, no matter if they are kids, adults, man or woman, came to know him and like him. Before that, his works were of course known to animation fans in Japan as superb works. But this movie spread the fan area to nation wide.

For the first time, TOTORO was not a big hit at theaters. But again, gradually it expanded reputation and finally, TOTORO became one of Japanese top family movies.

Mr. Hayao Miyasaki produces a wide range of movies from concept animation movies to family movies. This movie, MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO, is the TOP family movie.