#your memory is a row of sinking pines
“To children who are unable to start living: When I was a young child, I thought it might have been a mistake that I was born.
As a child, I nearly died of illness. When my parents would say, “We went though a hard time with you,” I thought, “I’ve caused so much hardship for them,” and felt I couldn’t endure my uneasiness. So I didn’t have a happy childhood that I look back on with nostalgia. I passed as a “good kid,” the one among my siblings who was most obedient and gentle. When, at some point, I realized that I had just been matching myself to my parents’ expectations, I became so distressed that I wanted to scream in humiliation. This is why I do remember seeing for the first time beauty in the simple eyes of the cicada or feeling amazed that the tips of the legs of crayfish were scissors, but I erased from my memory how I related to other people.
I put on a cheerful front when I was among my friends. But inside was a timid self full of anxiety and fear.”
- Hayao Miyazaki, “Recalling the Days of My Youth”, The Akahata Sunday Edition, April 1998.
