From fireflies to lit windows and from lit windows to fireflies: Alex Dudok de Wit on Isao Takahata’s Grave of the Fireflies

Isao Takahata’s Grave of the Fireflies (1988) is the subject of Alex Dudok de Wit’s new book, his first, for the British Film Institute’s (BFI) Film Classics series. Dudok de Wit’s writing has appeared in Sight & Sound, Vulture, Little White Lies, The Telegraph, The i, The Independent and Time Out, and in specialist animation publications such as Skwigly and Cartoon Brew, where he was formerly the deputy editor. He has written and narrated a short documentary for the BBC about British puppet animation. His English translation of director Hayao Miyazaki’s graphic novel Shuna’s Journey appeared from First Second Books in 2022. In what follows, Dudok de Wit and I explore Fireflies’ incredibly sad tone; the potentialities and the limitations of animated films, both Studio Ghibli’s and beyond; Takahata’s and Miyazaki’s depictions of war, respectively, in Fireflies and in the Academy Award-nominated film The Wind Rises (2013); Dudok de Wit’s considerable research for this monograph; and finally, how he reads Fireflies’ complex ending.