Small is Beautiful: Japanese Aesthetic Consciousness in the Animated Adaptation of The Borrowers

ABSTRACT

British writer Mary Norton’s well-known novel The Borrowers was successfully adapted into the Japanese animated film Arrietty the Borrower (Karigurashi no Arrietty), rewritten by Hayao Miyazaki and directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi. This paper aims to explore the phenomenon of cross-cultural adaptation in which a British novel is made to represent Japanese aesthetic values. The article argues that the animated film is deeply influenced by the concept and practice of miniaturisation, as well as the aesthetic characteristics of “small is beautiful,” which is part of Japanese national identity. The author of the paper tries to describe how this aesthetic consciousness is reflected in the animated film in the following three aspects: the miniaturised ecological environment, the miniaturised life scenes, and the miniaturised narrative space.

KEYWORDS:

• Animation adaptation
• small is beautiful
• aesthetic consciousness
• cross-cultural adaptations
• The Borrowers
• Japanese aesthetics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Mary Norton’s The Complete Borrowers includes The Borrowers (1952), The Borrowers Afield (1955), The Borrowers Afloat (1959), The Borrowers Aloft (1961), and The Borrowers Avenged (1982).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The National Social Science Fund of China: [grant no 20FYSB017].