Howl’s Moving Castle and the message the author gives us about how war destroys relationships, and the soul of the people that take part of it.

I was on TikTok the other day when I saw a video on my For You page about how war destroys relationships (from creator @trashling ). Example of the very famous Japanese movie Howl’s Moving Castle. Miyazaki never participated in World War II, but he was 4 years old when the war ended, and his childhood was deeply shaped by the events he witnessed. His family moved to Utsunomiya in 1945, just for the city to be bombed by US army pilots. He has spoken in interviews about how his father rescued him after he was in a ditch trying to escape the bombings. And even his family participated in the manufacturing of weapons, so he felt guilty about it. The self-awareness he had, and his understanding of the events that happened to him as a kid, made him create the movie the way he did.

I think about how this reflects on my personal life, with all the wars going on around the world. I personally have a loved one in the military. I care about this person deeply, and it worries me that something awful may happen to him if he gets drafted. So I sympathize with this, and I know others do too. Howl’s character shows us how a great wizard, wanted by both sides, had his humanity destroyed because of the war — yet he still wanted to be with Sophie Hatter, his one true love. Something that people don’t talk about as much is that while all of this was happening around him, his mother was sick — bedridden for most of his childhood. So war for him wasn’t just something outside, it was everywhere, even at home. And instead of letting that break him, he put it into his work. That’s what makes him so different from other directors — he didn’t just make an anti-war film, he made something personal. Something that came from a real place of pain that he actually lived through. I think a lot about how artists use their personal trauma and create art from it. The alchemy that happens when you take something awful and transform it into something beautiful. I think about my loved ones in the military, and how all these wars have taken their humanity away from them, just like what happened to Howl. I think about my loved ones a lot lately.