“Túmulo dos Vagalumes” (Hotaru no Haka, 1988), de Isao Takahata: objetos de memória que se atualizam – esquecimentos que lampejam

Abstract

“Grave of the Fireflies” (Hotaru no Haka, 1988) is an animated film based on Akiyuki Nosaka's (1967) homonym work directed by Isao Takahata and released by Studio Ghibli. The present work aims to analyze, from the cultural product (film), the paths that the memory of World War II travels, updating itself as new cultural productions are conceived, each in its decades, with historical and political times that are its own. It goes through the question of how the war remained in the imagination and cultural policies of memory and forgetting, feeding taboos, myths, historical revisionisms and how these subjects are pertinent to the conception of the film at that time (or not). It proposes an analysis of a possible postwar construction of Japanese psyche and how we perceive it in the film. It aims to understand how the film is configured and will behave as a memory object, endowed with subjectivities and sensitivities that will be able to erupt involuntary memories in each different viewer.