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
Computing and artificial intelligence
A scientist’s poor eyesight helped fuel a revolution in computer ‘vision’
9 minutes
video
Ageing and death
Demystifying death – a palliative care specialist’s practical guide to life’s end
4 minutes
video
Future of technology
Is this the future of space travel? Take a luxury ‘cruise’ across the solar system
6 minutes
video
Metaphysics
Why mathematical truths exist with or without minds to consider them
8 minutes
video
Stories and literature
A French Creole folktale nearly lost to time is given new, gorgeously animated life
6 minutes
video
Food and drink
Is a ‘gastronomic society’ dinner the height of decadence, or an act of artistry?
11 minutes
video
Computing and artificial intelligence
Struggling to learn how to do a backflip, Nikita takes on an unusual training regimen
12 minutes
video
Deep time
When algae met fungi – the hidden story of life’s most successful partnership
4 minutes
video
Personality
Why cleaning up crime scenes requires a rare mix of grit and empathy
9 minutes