Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
A small island off the south coast of Japan, Yakushima is a UNESCO World Heritage site known for its lush forests, grand mountains and ancient cedar trees, some of which are thousands of years old. For the UK filmmaker Steve Atkins, Yakushima had long been a distant dream – a mythical forest painted in his imagination by the celebrated Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki’s animated classic Princess Mononoke (1997), which had enchanted him since his youth. When he later learned that Yakushima had inspired the mystical forests of Miyazaki’s film, he resolved to travel to the island in a quest driven by passion, spiritual curiosity and artistic instinct.
In The Spirits of Yakushima, Atkins documents his time there, composing breathtaking shots of the island’s beauty – tranquil, yet pulsing with life. His images are accompanied by a cinematic score of strings, percussion and woodwinds as well as a meditative soundscape of heavy rain, running water and branches rustling in the wind. At any moment, it feels as if a kodama, or spirit of the forest, might be seen greeting the viewer from a tree branch. The resulting work is a worthy love letter both to Miyazaki’s masterpiece and its source of inspiration, forming a gentle argument for the transportive, perhaps even spiritual power of film to pull viewers into new worlds.
In his own words, Atkins describes the experience of making the film:
The journey took me up a steep trail through shifting weather into the nest of an ancient Japanese Cedar tree, the Jōmon Sugi, which is estimated to be between 2,170 and 7,200 years old. The discovery of the tree in 1968 sparked action to protect Yakushima’s ancient forests and rare ecosystem from logging. It was a long and profound hike, constantly surprising me with sudden elemental weather changes (Yakushima has the most rain in Japan) and the sweet wonder of encountering the many faces of the forest.
Even as a teenager, each viewing of Princess Mononoke had touched me with its reverence for the forest – a sense of respect for the whole as much, much more than the sum of its parts. To me, the film’s many characters seemed to be deeply interconnected; the archetypal animals, the majestic landscape and its wild flora, alongside the curious and playful kodama (‘tree spirit’ in Japanese) witnessing everything from the branches.
I have always been interested in how the etymological root of the word ‘spirit’ means ‘breathing’ or ‘to breathe’. As I walked the mystical trails of Yakushima, I felt each character catch my attention, no matter how grand or minute, active or static – each one a breathing part of a vibrant tapestry weaving a living story of an ancient place.
Director: Steve Atkins
Music: Rob Martland
video
Family life
The precious family keepsakes that hold meaning for generations
10 minutes
video
Neuroscience
This intricate map of a fruit fly brain could signal a revolution in neuroscience
2 minutes
video
Information and communication
Coverage of the ‘balloon boy’ hoax forms a withering indictment of for-profit news
17 minutes
video
Childhood and adolescence
Marmar is living through a devastating war – but she’d rather tell you about her new dress
8 minutes
video
Meaning and the good life
Wander through the English countryside with two teens trying to make sense of the world
10 minutes
video
Computing and artificial intelligence
The ‘cloud’ requires heaps of energy to stay aloft. Could synthetic DNA be the answer?
12 minutes
video
Art
A puppeteer makes sense of an overwhelming world by shrinking it down to size
5 minutes
video
Biology
Brilliant dots of colour form exquisite patterns in this close-up of butterfly wings
3 minutes
video
Anthropology
Does Mogi’s future lie with her horses on the Mongolian steppe, or in the city?
16 minutes