Grave of the Fireflies

*** OPEN ACCESS ***
Yamamura, Takayoshi. (2022). Travelling Grave of the Fireflies: The gap between creators’ intentions and audiences’/tourists’ interpretations.
In Takayoshi Yamamura & Philip Seaton (eds.). War as entertainment and contents tourism in Japan (pp. 106-110). Abingdon, UK: Routledge. 

"The anime Grave of the Fireflies was based on a novel by Nosaka Akiyuki that fictionalized much of his own war experience. However, when the novel was adapted for the screen, director Takahata Isao used the same attention to historical detail, actual locations, and faithfulness to the original work that characterized his earlier works. This created a contrast between the fictionality of the novel and authenticity of the anime. Fans have typically read an ‘anti-war’ message in the contents that was not the stated intention of the novelist/director, thereby exposing a gap between creators’ intentions and audiences’/tourists’ interpretation."

Dudok de Wit, Alex (2021). BFI Film Classics: Grave of the Fireflies. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Bhattacharjee, Ritwick (2020). Returning horror, re-visioning real: Children and trauma in Grave of the Fireflies.
In Kamayani Kumar & Angelie Multani (eds.). Childhood Traumas: Narratives and Representations (pp. 148-159). Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

"Trauma can never be treated as something that happens to a person; especially if that person is a child. Traumatic events become initiators of change(s) that alter the fundamental Being of the affected and bring them face to face with unadulterated horror: horror that is not just fear but fear added with despair. This horror is reminiscent of a much more essential horror that governs the human and its subsequent growth as a ‘human’. A traumatic event then doesn’t just induce horror but makes manifest a primal terror that every human shies away from. Grave of the Fireflies becomes important because it, in tune with this line of argument, shows that the aforementioned fundamental alteration is in fact a re-visioning of the Real-itself: a construction that is tasked with keeping the primal horror at an arm’s length. The current paper then, through an analysis of the film, intends to show how and why the Real becomes the way it is, how horror features into the real, how a traumatic event ends up re-visioning the real, how and why this change affects children more than adults, and how it becomes necessary, especially for children, for the real to change and not just shatter. "

Akimoto, Daisuke (2014). Peace education through the animated film ‘Grave of the Fireflies’: Physical, psychological, and structural violence of war. Ritsumeikan Journal of Asia Pacific Studies, 33: 33-43.

Cavallaro, Dani (2010). The nightmare of history: Belladonna of Sadness, Grave of the Fireflies and Like the Clouds, Like the Wind.
In Anime and the Art of Adaptation: Eight Famous Works From Page to Screen (pp. 19-37). Jefferson, NC: McFarland.

Shipman, Hal (2010). Grave of the child hero.
In Joseph Steiff & Tristan Tamplin (eds.). Anime and Philosophy: Wide Eyed Wonder (pp. 193-202). Chicago: Open Court.

Stahl, David (2010). Victimization and "response-ability": Remembering, representing, and working through trauma in Grave of the Fireflies.
In David Stahl & Mark Williams (eds.). Imag(in)ing the War in Japan: Representing and Responding to Trauma in Postwar Literature and Film (pp. 161-202). Leiden: Brill.

Goldberg, Wendy (2009). Transcending the victim’s history: Takahata Isao’s Grave of the Fireflies. Mechademia: An Annual Forum for Anime, Manga and the Fan Arts, 4, 39-52.

Shapiro, Jerome (2006). Ninety minutes over Tokyo: Aesthetics, narrative, and ideology in three Japanese films about the air war.
In Wilfried Wilms & William Rasch (eds.). Bombs Away! Representing the Air War Over Europe and Japan (pp. 375-394). Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Freiberg, Freda (2001). Tombstone for Fireflies. Senses of Cinema, 14.

Mousoulis, Bill (2000). Physicality in Tombstone for Fireflies. Senses of Cinema, 5.