The Music of “Millennium Actress:” An Auditory Illusion

I highly recommend that one listens to the “Millennium Actress Original Soundtrack” whilst reading this piece of analytical content about it. It is one thing to merely read about music, but it is something entirely different to hear it for oneself. LINK. Enjoy!

            After my initial viewing of “Millennium Actress,” I was both fully in love and firmly committed to the idea that the music itself holds tantalizingly animated and evocative clues to the story, themes, and overall experience of the film as a result of the impact the final song, titled “Rotation (LOTUS-2),” had on me. Despite the linguistic disparity in it being sung in Japanese, I believe that the feeling that the song gave me was highly indicative and reflective of that film that I had just experienced. In short, the music made perfect sense to me as a wonderful theme at the end of the film, wherein it takes all the ideas present in the film and furthers them to a thematic conclusion all within a decisive, albeit short, musical piece.

Upon listening to the full soundtrack in far more careful bouts of enjoyment and analysis, it seems as though the entirety of the film’s music is carefully crafted to reflect and, more importantly, further what is committed to the screen in animated form. In essence, the music of “Millennium Actress” is in and of itself an illusion specifically because it reflects many of the same obvious and not so obvious symbols, ideas, and themes that the film exhibits in its runtime, with it being filled with elements of dreams, fantasies, and the every-present state of reality in an objective and subjective sense.

Indeed, it seems as though the film’s director, the late Satoshi Kon, really was right when he called working with the soundtrack’s creator, Susumu Hirasawa, a “dream come true” because it really does seem like it helped make “Millennium Actress” the stellar and intricate film that it is, wherein the two connected works of art are both describable and indescribable at the same time. In much the same manner as Chiyoko’s willful and endless chase of the painter and the girl she once was, Hirasawa’s music, along with a central piece of supplemental material, is one of the key things that seems to help bind the millennium and lifetime-spanning illusion of “Millennium Actress” into a single continuity that can and will endure until the end of time.

            The story of how “Millennium Actress’” music came about is somewhat similar to the story of how Genya came to give Chiyoko her long-lost key and tape an interview with her for a documentary after being a devoted fan of her work for a good portion of his own life. However, the real-world counterpart is not so fantastical and coincidental so much as it seems like it was simply two artists finally connecting with one another in order to produce a jointly-made work that highlighted their strengths and style. In essence, Satoshi Kon and Susumu Hirasawa were cut from the “same cloth” as far as style, themes, and influences while making their artistic careers out of entirely different mediums, with one being music and the other being, at least stylistically, animation.  

            Kon had been a fan of Hirasawa’s work for many years prior to the former making his directorial debut with “Perfect Blue” in 1997. At that point, Hirasawa had been making Japanese electro and techopop for roughly two decades, wherein his work with the band P-Model was successful before he launched a solo career in 1989. It was not until Kon had started work on “Millennium Actress” at the turn of the millennium that he got his chance to work with the musician. To quote Kon himself: “When I started developing the story, I wanted to use his music so badly…This film could not be ‘Millennium Actress’ without Hirasawa’s music.” In that sense, it seems as though Kon actually created the film with a specific soundtrack in mind from the very beginning, with the music being an integral part of the film and not the afterthought that some films, both live-action and animated, seem to believe it to be. The music of the film was very much crafted with the same influences, themes, and style that the animation and story were crafted from, with illusions, dreams, and reality all melding together into one seamless continuity thanks to that music coming from a similar mind as the person that created the overarching work in the first place. In short, the story of making of the film’s soundtrack may be seen to have set that music up to make the reflective and transformative properties of itself a key part of the film in said music being crafted by similar minds, in similar styles, and for the one singular purpose that is the film’s illusion itself. 

            With the story of how the music of “Millennium Actress” came about now out of the way, one can now delve into the vast soundscape of the music itself, with its many bombastic, contradictory, and anachronistic pieces interspersed with delightfully poignant pieces that wholly reflect and transform the scenes to which they are set.

            There are a total of twelve pieces in the official “Millennium Actress Original Soundtrack.” The first eleven tracks include:

1) Lotus Gate (Landscape-1)

2) Chiyoko’s Theme Mode-1

3) The Gate of Desire

4) Circle in Circle (Kun Mae #3)

5) Chiyoko’s Theme Mode-2

6) Vertical Storm

7) Prince of Key

8) Log Out (Kun Mae #1)

9) Chiyoko’s Theme Mode-3

10) Run

11) Actress in Time Layers

            Parts of these loan themselves from other pieces in Hirasawa’s oeuvre, with the three “Chiyoko’s Theme Mode”(s) being crafted in part from his song “Propeller of the Wise Man.” The tracks “Lotus Gate” and “Circle in Circle” are also derived from “Landscape-1” and “Kun Mae #3).

            However, there are three pieces out of these eleven tracks that are of particular note: “Prince of Key,” “Run,” and “Actress in Time Layers.”  These three tracks beautifully reflect and transform the scenes that they are set to in their own particular ways to great emotional and thematic effect. For example, the title and general feeling of “Run” is an accurate representation of the theme of the scene it is set to, wherein Chiyoko, on her endless chase of her painter, whisks herself through the years from the era of the late Tokugawa Shogunate, all the way through the Meiji Restoration, to the high-life, prosperous days of the 1920s all in a few simple transitions. This particular piece is a very uplifting and somewhat loud or bombastic piece that really gives one the feeling of Chiyoko’s continued chase. It is no so much loud for the sake of being loud as it is loud for the sake of highlighting the consistency with which she pursues the painter, almost in a cyclical fashion due to the background melody that repeats a number of times through it the track.

In another example, “Actress in Time Layers” is almost pivotally important due to its place as the music backdrop to Chiyoko’s frantic, albeit committed, dash to Hokkaido after finding her lost key and receiving the decades-old letter from her painter. The background sound of what seems to be a simple snare drum or even a triangle (I’m no musical expert…) does an extremely effective job at reaching up the stakes of Chiyoko’s dash, wherein it seems to be always building and ever-present with no end in sight. Reflecting an idea of “Run,” the background seems to have an almost haunting continuity throughout its runtime, with it never ceasing or even slowing down, almost reflecting Chiyoko’s slow and methodical, but still abundantly committed, chase of her “prince charming.” The vocals in their piece are haunting in and of themselves, especially due to the inclusion of the visuals of the wraith taunting Chiyoko. The track also seems to itself climax a few times throughout its runtime, thereby reflecting the “mini-climaxes” and problems that Chiyoko has to deal with on her northward dash. In effect, “Actress in Time Layers” reflects the pivotal and climatic scene it is set to in a very effective and transformative way, with the tension of the scene being tuned up and the feeling of Chiyoko’s frantic dash being firmly imparted in the ears of the audience.

In the final instance, the track “Prince of Key” seems to be very important due to the fact that one can retroactively hear all of the various other pieces of the film’s music within said particular piece, wherein there are elements of “Rotation (LOTUS-2),” “Chiyoko’s Theme Modes,” and “The Gate of Desire.” These pieces all seem to meld together into a very fluid and serene piece that reflects the visual of Chiyoko wandering a destroyed Tokyo after the end of World War II, during which she finds the memento that the painter left for her during their shared winter night all those years ago. In the scene itself, it may be said that Chiyoko, despite being surrounded by the ruins of her country and home, resolves to follow the painter and the girl that fell in love with him and the dream he shared with him upon discovering the memento that he left for her on the storeroom wall, which happens to be a picture of that young girl and the phrase “Until we meet again.” The music seems to reflect this sentiment in its serene and peaceful quality, along with its rotation-like background sound and melody. Overall, this piece reflects the memento that Chiyoko finds in it being partially a visage of a bygone age that one can never grasp again. In fact, elements of this piece is also played during the scene where Chiyoko and the painter share their fateful conversation in the storeroom. In effect, this piece seems to reflect the very essence that Chiyoko is chasing: the portrait of a young girl caught up in the dream of one day meeting her destined “prince charming.” Furthermore, the title of the piece itself is reflective of the status of both her key and her “prince” wherein the painter is embodied in the key itself, which is the most important thing there is to Chiyoko as it allows her to forever hold onto and chase the young girl that imbued the key with that meaning. The painter is the “Prince of Key” because he has seemingly been fatefully tied to the state of the key in Chiyoko’s eyes, with the loss or gaining of the key hailing drastic and long-lasting changes in her life, for better or worse. Despite the fact that her painter died during the greatest conflict in human history, her prince, key, and chase still remain in the form of this track and the memento that Chiyoko finds in the ruins of her home. This reminds her, Genya, and Kyoji, and by extension the audience, of her chase and, more importantly, what it meant to her, thereby cementing her path in life despite a wholly transformed world and society.  All in all, these pieces almost perfectly reflect and transform the scenes that they accompany due to their own unique qualities and how they were created in the first place.

            In contrast to the eleven other tracks, the final piece of the soundtrack may be said to represent and reflect the whole of “Millennium Actress” in just under four minutes of music due to it evocative and poignant lyrics and its all-important place as both the end credits song and the piece that seems to send Chiyoko off into eternity. With that, the track’s lyrics are:

“The golden moon causes millions of dewdrops to ascend
Your battered dreams, which come to this prison of night, bloom
Flickering, in this time; come, tens of thousands of dawns
The fleets of ships, which travel in parallel, launch on all your days

Like the clouds which move, and are born at random
Your voice, which knows a thousand years, echoes in the moon

The blooming samsara oh
The blooming lotus oh
Echo, for a thousand years oh
Echo, in every second oh

The distant past, and the distant today will still be here even tomorrow
Golden days will exist all at once, if the forgotten you awakens
The stars which travel in parallel are now reflected like metaphors
The flowers in the field, which bloom at random, are all remembering you

The blooming samsara oh
The blooming lotus oh
Echo, for a thousand years oh
Echo, in every second oh

The blooming samsara oh

The blooming lotus oh
Echo, for a thousand years oh
Echo, in every second oh.”

            In reading these lyrics for the first time, especially for a non-Japanese speaker, they seem to be both confusing and disorientating in the many different things that it references. Many of the references and comparisons present in this song are allusions and metaphors for what the title of the piece denotes, rotation, along with the essence of Chiyoko’s life. In describing the lyrics, one must piece together understanding by systematically uncovering and chaining together the meaning of the allusions and metaphors, thereby yielding a huge part of the track’s significance as to why it may be considered the theme song of “Millennium Actress.”

            In the case of the opening line, the “golden moon” may be seen to represent eternal chases and pursuits that can take one to the heavens and back in Japanese mythology and storytelling, and the “millions of dewdrops” may be a metaphor for the ordinary life in their formation due to the condensation and collection of water upon all that reaches toward the sky. The second line keys into the idea that one’s dreams become “battered,” disillusioned, and warped throughout the course of their life due to the weight and the “prison of night” that is the above dewdrops. In their ascension, the lifting dewdrops of ordinary life are said to allow for those “battered dreams” to take a new shape and fully “bloom.” The third line’s “tens of thousands of dawns” seem to be an indication that such a lifting of the dewdrops of ordinary life will occur throughout one’s life if one does a specific action to allow for said process to happen. The fourth line’s statement that “the fleets of ships…launch on all your days” may mean that these thousands of dawns may also be represented the launch of either aquatic ships or even the spaceships that are seen in the film, with the latter seeming to reflect the image of a rising sun or coming dawn in its ignition sequence and liftoff. The “parallel” description in the fourth line is intriguing in its specificity, meaning that it has a greater significance in its placement; however, it seems to be a reference to the fact that many things are born from a single source and that two entirely different things may be bound together by a small, but not insignificant, thread of fate. While the ships are on different journeys, it seems that the fact that they have a shared connection, in them travelling in parallel, is the thing that holds them together, with this idea being represented by the connection between the painter’s chase of his painting in Hokkaido and Chiyoko’s own pursuit of him wherein they have different paths born of the same place and idea.  

            The second stanza of the song is a little more confusing, but one could view the randomly born clouds as the turns of fate or random bits of chance that seem to govern Chiyoko’s life, as typified in her life seemingly being tied to earthquakes, and many of the lives of ordinary people. The voice echoed in the song is said to echo in the moon, meaning that said voice echoes on an eternal chase to heaven and beyond if the first stanza is any indication of what the moon representing. In ringing true with the film’s title, said voice is said to “know a thousand years,” or a millennium, in its echoing in the moon, meaning that such an eternal chase really is eternal so far as human are concerned. With that, these first two stanza’s seem to echo a sentiment and idea that one’s tired old dreams, which have lasted and been pursued for what seems like eternity, are tied to everyone else’s in them being weighed down by ordinary life and all the troubles that it holds, but one can overcome that state and let the turns of fate that have guided said dreams to seize the reigns and make those dreams bloom anew with the coming dawn.

            The next stanza, or what may be considered the chorus, holds the pair of symbols that denote the central connections between the song, its title, and a few scenes in the film itself. The Sanskrit word “Saṃsāra” present in this stanza has the very important connotation of a rotation-like or cyclic change, or the theory of rebirth, that is present in the Indian religions. In essence, “Saṃsāra” may be seen as the rotation in “Rotation (LOTUS-2),” wherein the song’s instrument seem to repeat themselves endlessly throughout the track. In the “Saṃsāra” blooming, the lyrics may be forming a connection between the blooming and decay of annual flowers and other plants and the overall cyclical nature of the film itself, with Chiyoko seemingly repeating the same few scenes for a majority of her life to no avail in actually succeeding in catching up with the painter and herself. Chiyoko is in a time-loop throughout the film, but that loop of time is transported and changed to meet the present time of her life, with each “failure” leading to a renewed chase so long as she has her key. With that, the next line’s inclusion of the “blooming lotus” as a symbol is directly tied to the film itself due to the facts that Chiyoko both loves and has lotuses in her garden, Genya’s studio is named “lotus,” and their shared line of dialogue concerning the flower’s significance. In the above scene near the beginning of the film, Chiyoko and Genya reveal that the lotus’ meaning in poetry is “simple purity,” with the camera being fixed on a view of Chiyoko’s blooming lotuses. This image is repeated throughout the film at other key points, with fog appearing over the lotuses in a one-off shot near the one-hour point in the film after the middle-aged and older Chiyoko(s) realize that they cannot remember a single thing about the painter’s face despite the fact that she resolved to follow him anywhere and everywhere. In a sense, this is one of Chiyoko’s lowest points, and one can obviously see the connection between a lotus attempting to bloom and the wet, thick, moisture-laden, and dewy fog and the very same ideas and symbols in the song itself, wherein Chiyoko’s dreams are being weighed and watered down by ordinary life or even reality itself. The lotus, note the singular use, is next seen at the very end of the film as Genya and Kyoji learn that Chiyoko is dying. Indeed, the image of the lotus, wherein it is open and in full bloom while being covered by raindrops and surrounded by fog, is directly contrasted with the image of Chiyoko on her deathbed in a single cut, thereby deliberately creating a connection between the dying Chiyoko and the blooming lotus itself. In this scene, it seems as though the lotus is going to power through the fog and dewdrops that are weighing it down and shrouding its beauty by fully blooming and realizing its state without paying any mind to its surroundings, thereby mimicking Chiyoko’s chase and the life she was able to lead throughout the most chaotic and turbulent times in human history. In circling back to the lyrics themselves, the two central symbols may be seen to directly represent Chiyoko’s chase in the form of ever-rotating Saṃsāra as well as what she was chasing and her attitude towards life in the form of the simple purity of the lotus. After these two central symbols, they are said to “echo” every second for a millennium, perhaps meaning that the blooming cyclical process of Saṃsāra and the blooming innocence of the lotus will echo and very much repeat itself for a thousand years, much the in the same way as Chiyoko’s life story and her chase. This chorus goes on to repeat itself two more times after the fourth stanza as if to reiterate and rotate back to those symbols and their significance regarding the film and the song themselves.

            In the fourth stanza, the lyrics point to the fact that the past, present, and future will still exist so long as the two central symbols of the song stay in bloom and echoing for what seems like eternity. Those “golden days will exist all at once,” meaning one’s rosy or youthful past and the promised days of the future will exist, so long as and “if the forgotten you awakens,” which may be interpreted as the person that experienced such days as seen in Chiyoko’s case as the young girl she once was. In effect, these first two lines seen to reflect Chiyoko’s overarching conclusion that the chase and her key allowed her to hold onto and reconnect with the girl she was when she met the painter, a young woman that was captivated by a dream that was shared by her “prince charming” who was to spirit her away down the path in life that she wished to pursue. Chiyoko’s memories were unlocked with the key Genya returned to her, thereby breathing life into the golden days and dreams that she had long forgotten and allowed to falter. The next line reflects what Chiyoko seemed to have witnessed during her flight from our world and unto the next, wherein she seems to have seen stars travelling in parallel. However, it is odd that it is stated that said stars are “reflected like metaphors,” meaning that said stars may be the very same ships that the song references earlier, with what seemed to be ships turning into similar voyages to eternity that are bound together and connected by that same eternal chase for something. While the stars are literally light years apart, Chiyoko views them all as travelling in parallel, thereby creating a metaphor and using it to reflect her feelings at the time, wherein she may be seen as either powering past such stars, read people chasing something, or perhaps that she herself is joining their ranks as another eternal and ever-lasting testament to their endless and continuing pursuits. The latter seems to mesh well with the next line, “the flowers in the field which bloom at random are all remembering you,” due to its connotation that those other stars and chases are all similar to one another and Chiyoko’s as a result of them being tied to turns of fate and the cosmic randomness of life and reality itself. The “flowers” that are in existence, perhaps Genya, Eiko, the old policeman, and Kyoji, will always remember Chiyoko as one of those distant, parallel travelling stars when, or if, they’ve embarked on that final journey into eternity because they have been brought together by nothing other than fate itself, which in this universe, and song, means the universal randomness of reality. After this realization and final conclusion, the song goes on to repeat the chorus two more times as if to indicate that this song and, more importantly, what it describes are eternally repeating and rotating in a cycle, thereby seemingly repeating, reflecting, and wholly transforming the film and song into a story about life and eternity.

            With that, this song’s place as the music that sends Chiyoko off into eternity is fitting as the theme song for “Millennium Actress” specifically because it, “Rotation (LOTUS-2),” perfectly summarizes the key themes of the film all in one bombastic and bombing end credits track that effectively and unbeatably tells the audience that Chiyoko really is continuing her pursuit of the painter in the next life, with her key in hand and the memories of the girl she once was firmly at the front of her mind.  All in all, “Rotation (LOTUS-2)” tells the story of how one may come to be Chiyoko Fujiwara, an aged actress that can bend time, space, dreams, and reality all with the help of the most important thing there is in the form of her youthful and undying will, as that is the one thing that has allowed her to weather the storm of the 20^th century and beyond while living the life she wanted to live. That will, and its timeless echoes, allows the cycle to continue rotating and for the lotus to fully bloom, leading to the golden days coming back into existence and the person that one has forgotten to receive a new lease on life. In the end, the “Rotation (LOTUS-2)” really is the theme song of “Millennium Actress” because it is as important as the film that came before it.

            With the soundscape of Chiyoko’s chase and the film’s theme song out of the way, it is prudent that one takes a look at the image was, consciously or unconsciously, created to represent the music and the entire film in a single image. The image graces the cover of the CD case for the “Millennium Actress Original Soundtrack,” and it was lovingly crafted by Kon in 2002 while he was on his way to meet with Hirasawa and his record label to discuss the music of the film. To quote Kon directly on the process of creating said image:

“Sometimes I have to work things out, and sometimes images just come to me fully formed. That’s how it was with this one. I think its true power comes from Hirasawa’s music that this was a wrapping for. They work together… [Describing the image itself] It’s the same kimono that she [Chiyoko] wears in the main visual. She has elements of dreams, like the moon, a crane, a key, and wood grain. It looks like a happy sleep, curled up like a baby. I think this really captures Chiyoko and ‘Millennium Actress,’ all in one picture.”

          To elaborate upon Kon’s reasoning for crafting the image, one could not understand the film, its music, or even this cover outside of the realm delineated by the illusion that is the piece of art itself. Simply put, none of these things exist outside of the illusion in the same sense that they do inside, thereby channeling the trompe l'oeil motif that pervades the film in its entirety, with people registering the fact that something is one thing and another. All of these elements are made to work together as a seamless whole, thereby leading to the music to be just as an essential part of the film as the story and its themes, along with the image that Kon described. Outside of the legendary illusion that is the film, these symbols and works are nothing more than eye and ear candy that do not serve the greater narrative or the central trompe l'oeil illusion that Kon so painstakingly crafted. With that, this image can be dissected and analyzed just as acutely and effectively as the music or film itself. 

            In the case of the many symbols that Kon refers to, it is essential that one understands them all in order for one to comprehend why Kon included them in his film and the image that graced the cover of the film’s soundtrack. The kimono is an important part of the image because it denotes and references Chiyoko’s dual upbringing as both a “modern girl” of the prosperous and forward-looking 1920s and early ‘30s that reads girl’s magazines and is swept up in stories of imaginary “prince charming” as well as the “traditional girl” that is the one that would wear a kimono, settle down in family life, and live the life that her country needs her to live. These two ideas of how to live one’s life constantly clash throughout her life, but they are in a harmonious duality in this image because of what is on the kimono itself. The crane that is seen on her kimono is a symbol of something that has both lived for a thousand years, or the millennium in the film’s title, and is a representation of good fortune and longevity, or the eternal youthful girl that Chiyoko is pursuing; therefore, the kimono represents both the “modern” and “traditional” ideals in the crane’s symbolism of eternal youth and the kimono’s symbol of traditionalism and one’s culture. She is also holding her key, the most important thing there is to her, in one of her hands with it on display but not outside of her gaze and grip. The moon, as stated before, refers to endless and cosmic chases in Japanese culture and storytelling, and it is fitting that Chiyoko’s story both starts and stops, while most assuredly being shadowed and lit by, on or near the moon, with it literally forming the part of the background in this image while also metaphorically forming the backdrop to the film itself. The wood grain that occupies the rest of the image is reflective, according to Andrew Osmond in “Satoshi Kon: The Illusionist,” of the natural mark of aging and growth, with Chiyoko growing older throughout the film while still actively being on the chase she started in her youth. In the case of her position of her body, Kon seems to reflect the fact that the young Chiyoko herself reflects the crane on her kimono, and it actually seems as though this may have been the idea of herself that Chiyoko was chasing after for a good portion of her life. However, this line of reasoning can be taken one step farther in linking the music to said image directly due to said image’s resemblance of a lotus flower amongst some lily pads, with Chiyoko being the blooming, bright-orange, young lotus, the moon being the lily pad, and the expanse of the wood grain serving as a gentle, but aged, pond amongst the forest. This seems to directly connect the image to ‘Rotation (LOTUS-2)” in symbolism and theme, with this all being created possibly before Hirasawa began his work on the music. What a turn of fate it was for this image to appear in Kon’s mind already fully formed and realized! All in all, this image almost perfectly reflects the music and the film it accompanies due its similar symbolism and the fact that such an image’s significance cannot exist outside the confines of the illusion created by the film; otherwise, it is simply a collection of weird symbols set as the cover to a weird techno pop album from an independent musician that has been around since the end of the 1970s.

            With all that being said, I think Kon was right when he said that the image that he created for the cover of the film’s soundtrack captured the central character and themes of the film all in one image because it really does reflect the very same symbols and ideas that are present in both the music and “Millennium Actress” itself. All three of these pieces are inseparable from one another, with all three working diligently and effectively to create the overall illusion that is the experience of the film. As acknowledged by Kon himself, the illusion of “Millennium Actress” simply would not work without the soundtrack that reflected and positively transformed the film as it one of the key pieces that allows one to unlock the puzzle that is the film and reveal the single, uninterrupted, and enduring continuity that is the fantastical, time and space bending legend of the eternally running woman: Chiyoko Fujiwara.

~ Sources for Further Reading (& Listening!) ~

Millennium Actress, 2001 Film by Madhouse Inc., directed by Satoshi Kon.

“Satoshi Kon: the Illusionist,” by Andrew Osmond.

“The Art of Satoshi Kon,” by Dark Horse Comics & Darren Aronofsky.

“Meaning of the Origami Crane,” JCCC ORIGAMI CRANE PROJECT.

“Millennium Actress,” Wikipedia Article.

 “Trompe l'oeil.” Wikipedia Article.

“Susumu Hirasawa.” Wikipedia Article.

“Saṃsāra.” Wikipedia Article.

“Millennium Actress Original Soundtrack,” by Susumu Hirasawa, ChaosUnion.com.

“Millennium Actress Original Soundtrack,” by Susumu Hirasawa, YouTube.com.

“’Rotation (LOTUS-2)’ Lyrics,” by roxfan & Rei, AnimeLyrics.com.

Understanding the Illusion of “Millennium Actress"

I highly recommend watching “Millennium Actress” a number of times before reading this piece about it. It’s a very densely-packed film that can scramble one’s brain if one’s not careful and diligent in the watching and analyzing of it. In a very real sense, blink and you’ll miss it!

            It may be said that there has been no other film that has captured my attention for as long, and as strongly, as “Millennium Actress” has over the past year. It was the first film I watched of the late Satoshi Kon’s incredible, albeit short, anime filmography, and I was struck by how he was able to seamlessly blend dreams, reality, and fantasy all into one unbroken and complete continuity. While his other films are great in their own respects and regards, there is something about “Millennium Actress” that has set it, at least in my view, far above his other films, and I’ve spent a good portion of the past year attempting, and repeatedly failing, to uncover why I am drawn to this film and how I might be able to either understand it or incorporate its teachings into my life. This is due to it being an extremely dense and demanding film that requires one to always be on their “toes” while watching it for fear of missing a key detail that may change the story and message in its entirety. I have watched this film countless times in pursuit of understanding it and myself, but to seemingly no avail.

In a true testament of his filmmaking prowess, Kon seems to have made a film that is wonderfully simple and delightfully understandable on the first viewing, only to have repeat viewers struck with an inescapable feeling that they simply do not comprehend how all the deliberately placed pieces fit together in the larger whole. He made the film accessible and inaccessible at the same time, wherein people’s minds are “blown” and captured for what seems like eternity itself with the story and its themes. So far, only a single analytical book has helped me to understand the “point” of Kon’s “Millennium Actress,” even though I perfectly understood it in my first viewing, wherein I remember remarking that Kon was a genius for creating the film that I had just diligently and excitedly watched late on a winter night. After all, Kon is often described as the “Illusionist of Anime,” so it only seems proper, for better or worse, that which I was caught up in the impressively crafted illusion that is “Millennium Actress.”

            With that being said, I would like to take one on a journey through the film and what I have come to understand of it in its story, characters, themes, and possible applications to life at large. In this masterfully crafted piece of cinematic wizardry, Kon tells the story of Chiyoko Fujiwara: an aging and reclusive film actress that is seemingly able to bend time and space to her will in the recounting of her life story to the interviewers Genya and Kyoji near the end of her life. What ensues is a time and space-bending illusion masked as a story of a young love, an endless chase across a millennium of Japanese history, and a moon that comes to never wane. Through this complex and mystery-laden illusion of anime, Kon is able to communicate volumes about why people live the lives they live and, perhaps more importantly, how people strive to live said lives whether it be a thousand years ago, in the distant future, or through the most turbulent times of human history.

            Like many parts of “Millennium Actress,” Kon created the film in reverse, starting with, and more importantly inspired by, the final line of the film: “After all, it’s the chasing after him that I really love.” For Kon:

“It was because of “Millennium Actress’s” last line, in order to say it, that I made the film. That is how important the line was for me. I anticipated that some people [in the audience] might be shocked, and might consider it to be very egotistic of Chiyoko, due to the nature of the film as a love story. However, this wasn’t my intention. I didn’t consider the phrase to egotistic; this was her attitude toward something she’s going after. Even if she might not be able to catch it, still her attitude is to chase after it. It isn’t Chiyoko’s ego that’s on display, it’s her attitude, her style of life, that’s shown here.” 

In essence, Kon started to create the film only after knowing exactly how Chiyoko lived her life, with little idea as to what specifically happened in said life or where it might lead him or the production team. In effect, Kon knew how Chiyoko’s story would be told with absolute certainty before embarking on his quest to make and complete his second film. This line of logic is very important because it offers insight as to just why the line exists in the film in the first place, in it being a natural, but simultaneously unnatural, thing to say at the end of such a film permeated with love and an endless chase, wherein both the film itself and the life of Chiyoko within it were specifically created to say the final line. They were both created with the same idea and end in mind, with one being “inside” the film and the other one being the film itself. With this parallel between the piece of art and the story within it, Kon further remarked that he saw himself in parallel with the character he created in the form of Chiyoko, with them both seeming to be going after and actively chasing things, one being a romantic love interest and the other being the idealized film in the director’s mind. Kon created characters that have a “part” of him and his personality from the time if creating them, and the titular character of “Millennium Actress” is no different. With that, there is a clear connection between artist and the work that he is creating, with Kon being influenced by the idea of chasing after something along with instilling that idea and feeling into the character that he created.

In circling back to the final line of the film, it may be said that the film, and more importantly Chiyoko’s life story, was deliberately created in order have that final realization, wherein everything builds to the conclusion and finality of that final line, not the other way around. The final line is what truly binds the millennium-spanning story of “Millennium Actress” together into the single continuity that is Chiyoko’s life due to the fact that Kon created the entire film with that short, but unfathomably important, piece of dialogue in the forefront of his mind. In all reality and due to Kon’s machinations, it seems that Chiyoko herself decided how she would live her life with absolute certainty in a small storehouse under the bright moon of a fourteenth night. Furthermore, it seems that Chiyoko’s life existed entirely for the benefit of herself, for better or worse, with the final line, and there is some truth to that assessment due to her life being intricately crafted in service of that revelation by the masterful director himself. In essence, the entirety of “Millennium Actress” was made both for Chiyoko and her final revelation at the edge of eternity.

            In order to understand how the final line permeates and impacts the entirety of the film, one must be guided through the life story of Chiyoko Fujiwara in much the same manner as the interviewers Genya and Kyoji were during their visit to the reclusive Chiyoko.

Chiyoko’s story starts when she was born during the 1923 Great Kantō Quake into the rapidly changing and evolving world of the inter-war period. A well-to-do youth of the prosperous Japan of the 1920s, she witnessed the political and social shift of 1930s Japanese society to a more militant and imperialistic one bent on the domination of Pacific and East Asia. However, Chiyoko is seen to not pay the turning social tides of the day any attention or alarm, with her gaze set upon girl’s magazines and the dream of one day meeting her “prince charming.” One day, the managing director of Ginei Studios discovers Chiyoko and is adamant on turning her into a star film actress for his studio, but Chiyoko’s traditional mother will have none of it with her stating that her daughter is too timid and that she would be better served at home, rearing and raising children of her own as opposed to serving her country on the “cultural arts” front during wartime. Chiyoko is distraught at both of these revelations, and actively takes out her anger on the street. She seems to want to be a film actress, but not for the high, nationalistic ideals that the director espouses, and she definitely does not want simply be a traditional Japanese housewife, working only to serve her family and children in life for better or worse, that her mother peddles.

            However, fate seems to intervene and she has an encounter with a wounded painter on the run from the state police. After seeing him leave and hide in a nearby shrine, the state police catch up and stop her to ask for any information on the fleeing painter. After a pause and the deliberate destruction of a trace of the painter’s blood amidst the white snow, she misleads the men and sends them the wrong direction. After rushing to the painters side and tending to his wounds, she takes him back to her house and puts him in her family business’ storeroom.

During the night, Chiyoko and the painter converse over the painting that the man wishes to finish in the future, in his home of Hokkaido, after helping his friends stop the war in far-off Manchuria. He doesn’t let Chiyoko see the painting, instead stating that it’s just a sketch, but he does describe the wonderful scene of that he imagines himself painting. Indeed, his dream seems to be both the feeling of painting as well as the painting itself, wherein he is surrounded and effected by the cold hills, forests, and mountains of a snow-covered Hokkaido.

In return for her help, he offers to bring her there when the peace comes. Chiyoko is enthralled by the man’s dream, and blushes when she returns to a reality bathed in bright light of the moon. Chiyoko calls it the full moon, but the painter corrects her and tells her that the full moon is not until tomorrow. However, he declares that “…I like this moon the best. After the full moon, it starts to wane, but with the fourteenth night, there’s still tomorrow…and hope.” With that, he says that he has to leave to help his friends in Manchuria, but Chiyoko protests and notices the small key that is hanging around his neck. The painter explains that “it’s the key to the most important thing there is” and he asks her to guess what such a “thing” is, much to Chiyoko’s confusion. She sees a tiny padlock on his painting case, and resolves to try and figure it out on her own, but she asks to give her till tomorrow to figure it out, making him promise.

            While walking back from her school, Chiyoko’s friends poke fun at the fact that she seems like she’s in love, after which Chiyoko turns red in the face and runs away. After calming down on a snow-crusted stairwell, she starts back home only to see a familiar key amongst the snow, along with a blood-soaked bandage. Realizing that her darling painter has gone to the train station without her key, she chases him throughout the snowy streets of Tokyo, with Genya and Kyoji in tow, only to have the train depart before she can reach him. At the end of the station platform with her painter fading away into a snowstorm, Chiyoko resolves to go to him stating that “I’ll come to you.”

            With her painter gone and her only clue being the fact that he was headed for Manchuria, Chiyoko defies her mother and joins Ginei Studios as a young female film actress, with her first feature being set in Manchuria. Chiyoko remarks that she was just following that man in resolving to enter the film industry as an actress: “I didn’t care about movies!” Before casting off, she meets Shimao Eiko, the current star of Ginei’s films, and the managing director’s young son Otaki. They both see Chiyoko’s key and are confused when Chiyoko states that she hopes to find the painter in Manchuria, with Eiko stunned at the fact that Chiyoko cannot describe what he looks like, or what he paints, or anything else about him beside the fact that he is in Manchuria and is a painter.

            After arriving in Manchuria, Chiyoko struggles with her lines until she thinks of the painter, in a film where the character she is playing is similarly looking for someone she once knew. Her emotional delivery of the lines stuns the crew and Eiko, and the older woman is obviously jealous and somewhat embarrassed by the young girl’s remarkable talent, seemingly brought on at the mere thought of the painter. In response to this, Eiko bribes a fortune-teller to send Chiyoko on an aimless and false trail for the painter, during which her train is attacked by bandits. Amidst the burning train, she is only saved after realizing that she can use the key to unlock the train car door, but when she opens it, it is revealed to the interviewers that they are really in a time long past.

It is here that Chiyoko meets the old witch, or wraith as she refers to her, after learning that her “lord” is dead. About to take her own life, Chiyoko’s hand is stayed by the ghostly apparition’s promise of their reunion in the afterlife after drinking from a cup. Chiyoko downs the mysterious liquid only for the wraith to begin cackling that it’s “thousand-year tea” and that by drinking it she’ll “burn forever in the flames of eternal love.” Mocking her, the witch states that she both loves and hates Chiyoko more than she can bear and that one day she will understand that fact. With the palace collapsing around her, Genya intervenes to save and prompt Chiyoko down her next chase after the “prince.” The two charge another palace in pursuit of the “prince/painter,” but Genya is hit by a bullet from what seems to be one of the state police from Chiyoko’s fateful encounter. Genya saves her yet again in another life, only for her to be foiled and transported to Kyoto in another time and place by Eiko. She goes after the painter yet again, thanks to Genya and while being taunted by the wraith, through the streets of Kyoto only to find him and the scarred state policeman at a gate. She escapes and traverses the next hundred years of Japanese history in mere moments, all in pursuit of the painter. But reality catches up with her, as she is jailed by the state policeman due to her connection with the rebel painter. She resolves to not tell them anything, but the state police find him anyway after Genya secures Chiyoko’s release.

            Chiyoko pleas for the painter’s release, only for her frantic banging on the prison doors to open upon the living hell of a war-ton, bombed-out Tokyo in 1945 at the end of World War II. She is surprised and awestruck by the carnage, but her eyes are set upon the fiery inferno that is the storehouse where she shared a moonlit night with the painter all those years ago. The bombs begin dropping while Eiko, the studio folks, and her family beg her to reenter the bomb shelter that they are taking refuge inside of. Eiko knocks some sense, literally, into Chiyoko and asks her “What makes you think you can just die too?” She’s survived the war so far, and so she’ll survive till its end as Eiko hauls her into the shelter as the bombs get ever so closer. After the raid and the war’s end, Chiyoko is wandering the destroyed hulk of Tokyo when she comes upon the wreckage of the storehouse, where she finally finds the memento that her “prince/painter” left for her: a simple painting of the girl she once war along with the phrase “Until we meet again.”

            In a post-war Japan, Chiyoko and the studio team resolve to continue making good films in order to survive the chaotic and turbulent transformation of the nation and world. It is revealed that Chiyoko kept acting in the hopes that one day the painter might see her in one of her films and come back to her. In the midst of the transformed world, Otaki attempts to seduce Chiyoko but the presence of her key reminds her of her commitment to the painter and she rebukes his attempts. Later, she argues with both her mother and Eiko, both in reality and in one of her fictional films, about what she should do with her life now. Should she keep pursuing “little girl dreams” even in her older age, or should she settle down into family life. In contemplating this, Chiyoko glimpses the wraith again, thereby disrupting the scene she was “acting” out at Ginei. Upon searching for her key, Chiyoko realizes that it is not on her person and that she does no know where she last put the key. The audience, along with Genya and Kyoji, see that it was none other than Eiko that had stolen the key. As the search gets more and more frantic, the studio workers begin to quiz Chiyoko as to just what the key was for but, before an answer is given, she is thrust into yet another role with a similar set of quizzing persons in the form of a class of young girls in middle school. They ask Chiyoko what the painter, her love, looked like, but the middle and old-aged Chiyoko(s) begin to cry after realizing that they no longer know what the man even looked like. After all, why would you be obsessed with something that you can’t even remember the most basic features of?

            Having lost the key and seemingly part of her heart with it, Chiyoko ends up marrying Otaki. In the shadow of the 1969 Moon Landing, Chiyoko, now a housewife, discovers the long-lost key amongst the many sets of Ginei while cleaning them. Armed with the key, she confronts Otaki but Eiko interjects with the real story of the key’s disappearance, going all the way back to when Eiko set up the trick of the Manchurian fortune-teller. Otaki realized that Eiko had set up the trick and enlisted, read blackmailed, Eiko to help her secure Chiyoko’s heart in exchange for his silence on the dirty war-time trick so long ago. Eiko states that she always felt guilty about Chiyoko because, to Eiko, it seemed like Chiyoko’s endless chase of the one man, the painter, kept her young, thereby leading to her surpassing the jealous Eiko as the studio’s lead actress.

            As if by fate, the aged, battered, and penitent scarred state policeman of her youth enters back into Chiyoko’s life as she is having her discussion with Eiko and Otaki. The repentant old and disabled man begs Chiyoko for forgiveness of his wartime sins and atrocities after giving her a decades-old letter from her painter. Letter and key in hand, she embarks on a frantic, climatic chase to Hokkaido, through yet more films and decades with all her past chases also catching up with her. A young Genya, having been a sideline worker at Ginei in Chiyoko’s unit, stays with the old policeman to hear what few works he has yet to say regarding the painter while Chiyoko chases her painter across Japan, the world, and time itself.

            Chiyoko makes it to a snowy Hokkaido, and at the end of her journey she sees her painter within the painting he wished to create waving back at her before disappearing into the work itself. While on the moon in another film, she resolves to find him wherever she needs to go. In the blink of an eye, Chiyoko is back to where the film started, in a spaceship preparing to launch on a final voyage. Only, once again, fate seems to intervene, with the prop spaceship and the entirety of Ginei Studios being shaken by an earthquake. Chiyoko escapes the mock craft only for a studio wall to start to fall on her. Genya once again intervenes and saves her. After removing her spacesuit’s helmet, she glimpses the wraith yet again in its glass visor, and with a mortified look on her face, Chiyoko throws the helmet away and runs from the scene. The stunned Genya, obviously questioning whether or not he did something wrong, sees her key amongst the rubble. It is revealed that Chiyoko left the film business that day and became a recluse, and, now thirty years later, she finally realized what happened to the key and who saved her life. Chiyoko says that she put the key out of her mind for all those years and became a recluse because she realized that:

“I’d never thought I’d see him again, even though I’d resolved to follow him anywhere… After the accident, I realized… I wasn’t the girl he’d remember anymore.” 

It turns out she saved the painting that her “prince” had left her in the old storeroom, a portrait of the girl she once was as a reminder of that very essence and the fact she resolved to meet the painter again one day. Upon looking at it again so many years later, Chiyoko’s reflection transforms into the wraith, seemingly indicating that she now understands the witch’s cryptic taunts.

            The twists of “wheel of fate” turn again and Chiyoko falls ill during a sudden and powerful earthquake. Genya stops a large wood beam from crushing Chiyoko and she finally realizes that “You’re always there to help me.”

            On the ride to the hospital where Chiyoko is being treated, Genya reveals what the old policeman told him all those years ago, that the painter never broke down and that he was killed for his silence by the old policeman. Genya and Kyoji both realize that Chiyoko was chasing a shadow for a good portion of her life, with her charming painter being one of the millions that died during the greatest conflict in human history. At the hospital, the doctors tell the two interviewers that Chiyoko is dying, much to Genya’s sadness and dismay. At her bedside, Chiyoko comforts the sobbing Genya and the mournful Kyoji that thanks to them and the key, she was able to unlock the long-dormant and forgotten memories of her lifelong chase, thereby bringing her younger self that engaged and created such a fantasy back to life. With her key in hand, she says that she’s going after that man again, with Genya replying that she’ll find him for sure. A wise, dying Chiyoko seems to contradict him before fading off into the finale of her last film. With Chiyoko taking off for her final journey, while Genya and Kyoji watch, she realizes that it’s the chasing after him that she really loved. With the stars swirling around her, Chiyoko blasts off into eternity itself.

            With Chiyoko’s life story now finished, the natural reaction that one may have is to ask what exactly Chiyoko was chasing after her whole life. While on his way to the hospital, Genya states that Chiyoko was just chasing a shadow for a portion of her life after he found out that the old policeman had killed the real painter some years ago during the war. In the early parts of her chase, it seems like Chiyoko herself doesn’t actually know what she is chasing, whether it be the painter or just a painter. In fact, Eiko and Otaki are seen to be interested and somewhat confused by such an endeavor specifically because Chiyoko knows so little about the man she’s resolved to pursue, no matter where or how far. However, Genya seems to be on the right trail in his statement that Chiyoko was just chasing a shadow due to the fact that it may be seen that she realizes that she truly did chase a shadow for much of her life. For example, her scene as a teacher in the classroom, wherein she is quizzed by her students and perhaps Genya or herself, leads to her having an emotional breakdown both at the time of the filming and during the present-day interview. This breakdown of her acting façade is prompted by her realization that she cannot remember what the man she “loves” looks like. In effect, she cannot remember the face of her “prince charming,” a man that she resolved to meet again one day. This is crushing for Chiyoko because she similarly realizes that perhaps she never really knew the painter in the first-place; after all, she knew the man for only a brief winter night in a time long past when both her and her nation were entirely different individuals. The audience doesn’t even know the painter all that well, with no name being exchanged and his face being coincidentally cast in perpetual shadow in all the scenes he’s the focus of.  However, her realization could be merely an outgrowth the process of aging and the weight of what she and the world had experienced in recent decades, not probably not due a sudden onset of existential uncertainty.

On that moonlit night in winter, the young Chiyoko was caught in an illusion, not her own illusion per say, but an illusion nonetheless. The mysterious painter guided Chiyoko on a journey through his dream, or even his fantasy, of finishing his painting in Hokkaido after the war’s end. In his sharing of his dream, Chiyoko is captured and transported into it, with her seemingly living in the dream for a few seconds wherein her reality and the dream’s reality effortlessly and fluidly mix and intermingle. She is taken into and by the painter’s dream in being the young girl that she currently is, one that is easily caught-up in the fateful idea that the man she, quite literally, bumped into is her destined “prince charming” that will lead her out of the boring, traditional life that she currently has as a well-to-do youth of the golden and innocent age of the 1920s era of Shōwa Japan.

            In that moment of her dreaming a shared dream, Chiyoko may be seen to begin her chase of the painter in an unconscious, subliminal manner, wherein she does not fully realize the full impact the painter and his dream has just had on the life she wants to live and the one that she is currently living. In essence, it seems like she takes her experience of his dream, as well as the fact that she states that she would like to one day love to go there to see the landscape, painting, and the painter in said dream, and incorporates the fulfillment of that dream into her own fantasy of the life that she would like to live. At this point, Chiyoko does not know what life she wants to lead, seemingly and passively betting her life on the promises of meeting her “prince charming” that her girl’s magazines espouse. The young girl is currently directionless and dreamless while also being caught between the cultural norms of serving her country either in the household or near the frontlines as a film actress. In subconsciously deciding to follow the painter and live the dream he shared with her, Chiyoko makes a promise with the painter to wait for her before he begins his quest to right the wrongs of Japan in Manchuria and ultimately fulfill the dream he has of painting in his home of Hokkaido.

            In that moment, Chiyoko makes a commitment to both the painter and, perhaps more importantly, herself to see the snowy dream through, but it is not the snowy dream that she really wants. Chiyoko really wants to chase the girl that was so easily captured and swept-up in the dream of the painter, who is her fated or destined “prince charming.” The young girl obsessed with the promises of girl’s magazines clearly loves the feeling that the painter and her situation gave her, so she resolves to really follow that girl and her quest to return to the painter and his dream. That seems to be the fantasy that drives her for a majority of her life: the simple pursuit of a man that gave her a view of the life she could live, and by extension that very life that she could lead. In fact, the commitment and pursuit of the painter may be seen to reflect the very essence of Chiyoko’s will, wherein her chase represents her will to pursue and actively run after a man that she knows deep-down she’ll never be able to see again. Her chase is her will to pursue the life that she wants, even though it may be impossible for her to ever actually succeed or catch-up with her dreams in full. Even if the odds are stacked against her, Chiyoko runs forward nonetheless in pursuit of the girl she one was and the life she dreams about having.

            It should be seen as no mere coincidence that the next day Chiyoko finds the painter’s mysterious key amongst the snow, as it comes to represent the very essence of Chiyoko’s chase for the painter and the girl she once was on said clear winter night. During the night before, the painter states, that the small key around his neck is “the key to the most important thing there is” much to Chiyoko’s confusion. He doesn’t tell her what that actually means and she makes him promise to tell her the next day, but over the course of the film the painter is revealed to never give Chiyoko an answer to said question, at least in a direct manner. The fact that he loses his key in his escape to the train station may very well be an ominous omen that Chiyoko was meant to find it as, while she never got an answer explicitly from the painter as to what the key was for, it seems as though Chiyoko realizes that her entire lifetime chase of that man was the answer she was looking for.

            After initially chasing the painter through Tokyo to the train station and failing to catch up with him, Chiyoko realizes to take up the director’s offer of being a film actress in Manchuria in order to follow the painter and hopefully catch up and return the key to him. With the key in hand, Chiyoko becomes a film actress in order to sidestep both her mother’s traditional ideas of life and the nationalistic ideas of the time. To quote the fine lady herself: “I didn’t care about movies,” thereby directly alluding to the fact that she embarks on her career as a film actress only as a result of her desire to chase the painter and live her life as she wishes, not out of some other motive like the ones advocated by the director and her mother.

            In fact, it seems as though the key, and more importantly the chase and commitment that it seems to represent, allows Chiyoko to maneuver down the path of life in her own personal and unique manner without the influence for others and the social norms of the time. After the key and what it represents allows her follow the painter to Manchuria as a film actress, it also allows her to start and fully eclipse Eiko as the lead actress at Ginei Studios, with her pursuit of one man being seen to fuel her performances, empower her to new filmmaking heights, and keep her young all at the same time throughout the many ups and downs of the wartime and post-war world. The key gets her out of the fiery inferno of the bandit-attacked train in Manchuria, as well as allowing her to continue her journey through the industry and life as she takes on more and more roles with the key still slung around her neck. It also interrupts Otaki’s attempt at seducing Chiyoko by literally ringing true against a glass of wine, thereby reminding Chiyoko of the commitment she made to the painter, the chase, and herself. In all of these cases, the key either allows or leads Chiyoko out of the many situations that would lead to the abandonment of her chase and the settling down of her life into a traditional, boring, and uneventful one at the behest of a man that want to marry her or a mother that would like to her to lead a simple life in a family.

            In contrast, it is only when she loses the key, the physical embodiment of her commitment and chase, that she abandons her “little girl dreams” and settles down into lives that she does not want to live. With the loss of the key due to Eiko’s involvement, Chiyoko settles down into the life with Otaki that the key had enabled her to avoid years before, and it is only when she stumbles upon the key again many years later that she restarts her chase for the painter.

After her frantic dash to find the painter in Hokkaido ultimately fails to yield the reunion she’s always wanted, Chiyoko loses the key, in what seems like a deliberate and very willful fashion, during an earthquake that strikes Ginei Studios as she is filming the ending scene of what ends up being her final film. In this case, it seems as though she runs away from the key and what it represents after her monumental effort to see her chase through in Hokkaido. In effect, she is so broken by the event that she seems to outright abandon the physical representation of her chase. In the case of Eiko stealing the key, Chiyoko’s physical connection to the painter, her chase, and a key part of herself was separated by an outside force while the case of her just leaving the key after being saved by Genya seems to be purely of her own will. Essentially, her key was stolen by others in one case in order to make her settle down and be an ordinary woman, and in the other case she willfully abandoned her key and her chase as a result of her realization that she was simply not the same person she once was. The older Chiyoko lost the will to continue her chase, even though she resolved to follow the painter anywhere. She lost sight of the young girl she once was and the dream propelled her for so long. As a result of her leaving the key, Chiyoko spends the next three decades as a reclusive, retired film actress that has all but given up on her dreams and the will to see them sought after in life.

            In a more abstract sense, the key, or specifically her chase and commitment, may be seen to allow her to weather the turbulent and chaotic times that she lived through. To explain, the chase allows her to live through the destructive years of World War II and the chaotic aftermath of a Japan re-born in the post-war world in relative comfort and prosperity, wherein she and the other members of Ginei Studios save each other from the allied bombing campaigns that razed the cities of Japan, as well as the uncertainty of the Allied occupation by simply resolving to keep making good films. The chase seems to have allowed her to endure the greatest conflict in human history and the violent world upheaval that characterized its aftermath. Despite the fact that her country was all but destroyed during the war, Chiyoko’s chase and its physical representation in her key allowed her to still continue to lead that life that she would like.

            With that, it seems as though that the painter never actually needed to give her an answer as to what the key meant to him because she figured out that it depends upon who was carrying it. The key meant something that was entirely personal and indescribable to the painter, and it means something similar for Chiyoko as seen when she is unable, or perhaps unwilling, to describe what her lost key means to the Ginei employees helping her to search for the key. Her key is the key to the most important thing there is, and that depends entirely on the person that holds it and realizes that fact, either consciously or unconsciously. Chiyoko found an answer as to what the key means or represents but it is an entirely personal explanation that Kon expertly guides the audience through. For Chiyoko, the key represents her chase, the commitment that spawned it, and the youthful will that permeated the entirety of her life. The most important thing there is to Chiyoko is her will to chase the girl she once was and the dream that she was so easily wrapped up in so long ago, and her key is the physical embodiment of that chase and her will to run that path through life.

            In the instances where she loses her key, and or when she is deliberating or hauntingly close to intentionally, or unintentionally, committing to a path in life that is not her case, Chiyoko is visited by the wraith that she seemed to have “encountered” during her “time” as a young princess of ancient Japan. During that encounter, the wraith seems to “curse” Chiyoko for her wanting to follow her fallen lord, who seems to be actually the painter, into the next life after finding out that he has been slain. Chiyoko, having resolved to follow the man to the end of the world, deliberately, but unknowingly, drinks what the wraith calls “thousand-year tea,” leading to her being cursed with “burning flames of eternal love” after being tricked into thinking that the drink would allow her to be with her lord in the next life. Again, the wraith taunts her and says that she both loves and hates the younger girl, but she does not allude as to why that is her state of mind towards her. After taunting Chiyoko, the wraith disappears and seemingly take’s the lord’s body with her, with Chiyoko figuring out that her lord was not dead in the first place and that she was doubly tricked into thinking that her lord was in the next world without her at his side. In exchange for a chance to complete her chase and reunite with the painter, Chiyoko seems to, quite literally, drink her chance at a mortal, or perhaps normal, life away at the wraith’s behest, instead opting to unwittingly give up her chance on ever actually catching the painter and living her sought-after dreams. It is fitting that the “dead lord” turned out to be an illusion that seems to be created by the wraith because it unknowingly supports Genya’s conclusion that Chiyoko was chasing after a shadow for most of her life, whether she acknowledged it or not, all due to the fact that Chiyoko seems to unconsciously “curse” herself by wanting to follow what turns out to be a falsehood into the “next life.” In a stark contrast to the youthful and vibrant princess before her, it almost seems as if the wraith’s voice sounds like the old reclusive Chiyoko that is giving the interview to Genya and Kyoji, thereby hinting to the fact that it seems like it is Chiyoko doing the cursing in this instance with herself being cursed by an older, future version of herself.

            At this point, it seems as though the wraith is Chiyoko herself, or at least a version of herself wherein she has abandoned the chase and dream that she has so completely devoted herself to pursuing in her life. Moreover, it is revealed in one of the final scenes that the Chiyoko that left Ginei and became a recluse is actually the very wraith that has taunted her throughout the entire film in an almost haunting fashion. In a sense, the wraith and the “curse” she laid upon Chiyoko finally caught up with her after her failed climatic trip to see the painter in Hokkaido. After such a long, exhaustive, and frantic chase, it is only fair and almost an eventuality that Chiyoko succumbed to the ever-present thoughts that she would never fulfill her dream of completing her chase of the painter, thereby succumbing to the personified form of those thoughts in the form of the wraith herself and, by extension, the old retired and reclusive actress that she has become: a person with a life that has come to a complete standstill. It is also fitting that the wraith taunts her with the words of the curse throughout the film during times of Chiyoko’s unease with regards to her chase because the wraith’s words seem to be a time-travelling message of Chiyoko from her distant future that are warning her of the life that she might lead if she were to give up her chase and abandon her will to pursue the youthful girl she once was, wherein she will be transformed into the epitome of an old witch that has forsaken her friends, career, herself, and her path in life.

The wraith’s attitude seems appear during the razing of Tokyo by Allied bombers, with the young Chiyoko outside the bomb shelter and concerned with the state of her childhood home and the storehouse that she shared with the painter, in the form of Eiko quite literally slapping Chiyoko with the wraith’s denial of her ability to meet the painter in the next life. Eiko specifically yells that Chiyoko’s insistence on giving her life away to save the physical location of her meeting with the painter is both foolish and in contrast to what herself and others have done to help Chiyoko in her life, as well as what Chiyoko has done for herself. Essentially, Eiko’s statement of “What makes you think you can just die too?!” is a reflection of the notion that Chiyoko gave up any and all “easy-way-outs” in her cursing of herself in wraith-from, wherein it may be seen that she burdened herself with her eternal chase by tricking herself into thinking that her chase was actually complete-able. In that moment, Chiyoko resolved to live with the curse of burning and eternal love with the wraith, or what Chiyoko could become in the absence of that chase and love, forever remaining as an omnipresent force in Chiyoko’s life. She cannot just die because she specifically resolved to pursue an unwinnable and very much unattainable chase and dream, with the wraith being the constant reminder that she must always remain on that path in life and sternly committed to that chase.

            Upon walking through the ruins of the storehouse, Chiyoko finds the lovingly-crafted memento that the painter left on the wall and it seems to remind her of the commitment she made to herself and the “curse” that she has to live with in life. This discovery helps to point to the fact that Chiyoko seems to be reminding herself of her chase and what is symbolizes across both time and space, especially in times of personal doubt due to events going on around her with another instance being during the fall of her popularity alongside her meeting with her older mother and an ageing Eiko. The wraith even taunts Chiyoko midway through her frantic dash for Hokkaido and her hopes of meeting the painter again and resolving her chase. When her semi-final chase comes out a failure and Chiyoko diligently retires and unconsciously abandons her chase, she becomes the old wraith that she had been warning herself about throughout her life, with her remarking that she both loves and hates herself to her old wraith-like reflection in the glass encasing the storeroom painting that her “prince-charming” had left her almost half a century prior.

            It is fitting that “Millennium Actress” is titled that way specifically, and quite brilliantly, because Chiyoko seems to be communicating with herself across a millennium of Japanese history as told through her many films as a lead actress. In essence, Chiyoko lives through a millennium in a literal and metaphorical sense, with her films ranging in times from warring samurai to a time where there are space stations on the moon itself as well as the fact that she herself lived through the millennium-like 20^th century where airplanes, cars, and the landing in the moon all took place in such a short period of time along with the two most destructive conflicts in Japanese and world history. The wraith remains a constant force throughout these times, almost as a counter-weight or point to the key, in order to remind Chiyoko of the cost of abandoning the life that she had decided to live for herself: one where she is cursed with the eternal love for a man she would never again be able to meet or see along with the will to carry out that chase until what seems like the end of time itself. Whenever Chiyoko loses the key, the wraith inside her seems to materialize and taunt her with the fact that the key and her chase will burn within her forever, whether she likes it or not and even if she actively stops dreaming her dreams. In effect, it seems as though Chiyoko either wants to or actively stops “living,” in a very real sense, whenever she lets her chase and dreams die, either through their possible fulfillment or total abandonment. In the end, it seems as if Chiyoko is fully taken by the wraith for three decades until the day that Genya returns the key to her and, in doing so, he helps to unlock the memories she had of the girl she once was along with restarting the burning fires of eternal love that had propelled her on the willful chase of the painter that spanned what seems like a millennium of history.

            With all that being said, one might very well ask as to whether or not Chiyoko lived a good life in retrospect, with her final utterances, a seemingly failed chase, a bunch of knickknacks and wall decorations, and a life as a retired, reclusive, and “cursed” film actress perhaps leading one to conclude that Chiyoko Fujiwara in fact wasted much of her life chasing a psychotic fantasy that led her to forsake her friends, family, and herself all in the pursuit of a literal shadow. However, the entirety of “Millennium Actress” should really be seen as a rebuttal of sorts towards this conclusion and the attitude it creates in the minds and lives of ordinary and extraordinary people throughout history due to the fact that Chiyoko is specifically seen to live the life she would like to live throughout the film during which she is able to avoid the things she wants to avoid while at the same time enjoying and actively doing the things that she finds meaning in. In that way, the claims that Chiyoko is ultimately a selfish person seem to ring true due to the fact that the final line seems to support and all but completely validate that very claim wherein she “selfishly” desires and loves the chase over the man she loved for most of her life. In contrast, it appears as if what Chiyoko does in her life to secure the life she would like to live, namely “cursing” herself with her chase of her willful self as a young girl and the tremendous commitment that follows, is entirely selfless because she gives up most, if not all, of the alternative paths that await her in life in pursuit of the singular version that she would love to see to fruition. In a sense, it seems like Chiyoko is neither selfish or selfish because it seems as though her chase embodies both of those things at once due to the fact that choosing and following a singular path in life, whilst simultaneously and actively removing all the other version and obstacles in one’s path, is exactly what everyone else does in life, albeit in vastly different and contrasting manners. Essentially, Chiyoko is neither selfish nor selfless in her lifelong chase and path in life specifically because all other people may be seen to do the same exact things in different manners, in different times, and for totally distinct and unique reasons.

            That idea seems to be at the heart of the illusion that surrounds both Chiyoko’s life and the whole of “Millennium Actress,” wherein someone, either ordinary or extraordinary, takes steps to secure and live the life that they would like to live for themselves so that even in the worst of times they can resolves to go on living and chasing that life that they wish to live. In essence, one could very well argue that Chiyoko created an illusion around herself to allow her to live her life the way she wanted to: a life where she allows the young girl she once was, the very and only person capable of creating such an illusion, to take the “reigns” and guide her through an adventure-filled life that seems to span a thousand years that ranges in places from Kyoto to the surface of the moon and beyond.

In his book “The Illusionist,” Andrew Osmond alludes to the fact that one of, if not the most, the central images of “Millennium Actress” comprises a type of painted visual illusion called a trompe l'oeil, wherein an observer’s eye is tricked into thinking that what is painted is actually real, in the painting Chiyoko “finds” on the moon, but the ultimate significance of this type of illusion is best expressed in its definition as a device in works of fantasy. In this latter case, the illusion of trompe l'oeil is seemingly able to render and register the fact that something is one thing and is another simultaneously, wherein ordinary objects, in fantasy stories, are one thing and yet another thing at the same time. In applying this definition to “Millennium Actress,” Kon seems to have invited the audience to have a glimpse at the fantastical, millennium-spanning wonder that is Chiyoko’s trompe l'oeil illusion, or more specifically her life itself due to the fact that her life and the illusion are one and the same. In the case of her coveted key, many people would regard such a trinket as a trivial piece of metal that is not worth the metal it was crafted out of but it might also, and it actively is, the door that can lock and unlock the doors to Chiyoko’s childhood self and the eternal chase that she has and will continue to follow into infinitum. In fact, the people of Ginei Studios are seen to view the key in this ordinary light, with them asking Chiyoko as to why she is so attached to the key. Only she, Genya, and perhaps Kyoji truly know that it is the key to the most important thing there is to Chiyoko in true trompe l'oeil fashion, wherein the key is one thing and is another: a worthless trinket and the key to the doors of eternity.

With that, it may be said that Chiyoko created her life as an illusion for herself through a mix of fateful encounters, a few mementos, and a career that spanned a thousand-year period as a film actress that can bend time and space to her will. With her final line, it seems as though Chiyoko realizes that she really loved the illusion she created for herself in life and not the painter that comprised the unattainable finality of said illusion. In essence, she realizes that her life was the illusion and that the illusion was her life in a true marvel of trompe l'oeil style. Moreover, it almost seems as if Chiyoko knows deep-down that she is herself part of an illusion called an anime film, with this little bit of trickery seeming to be one of Kon’s most brilliant ideas. The illusion of “Millennium Actress” is the film itself, which is the story of Chiyoko Fujiwara or more someone that created a life that is an illusion through and due to that very same illusion.

In the end, it seems as though Chiyoko did indeed live a good life specifically because she lived the fantastical, and even magical, life that her distant, long-removed youthful version of herself dreamt up so many years ago: one where she uses her undying will to chase the unattainable despite realizing that ominous existential conclusion. Chiyoko’s illusion and what created it in the form of her undying will and the girl that embodied it, allowed her to take the “next step” at the end of the film, for better or worse, and open the doors to eternity with her key in hand and her eyes firmly set upon the path that she would like to willfully and happily follow in chasing her long lost painter in what seems like or may be the next life. Even if all seems lost, Chiyoko still had the key to the most important thing there is and, more importantly, the illusion and will that birthed such a connection in the first place. Those things saw to it that she lived the life that she wished to live, and those very same things will allow her to traverse any and all lives thereafter as a committed, confident, ever-running woman in pursuit of something unattainable.

With the final scenes of the film, the trompe l'oeil illusion of Chiyoko’s life takes the shape of a grander idea of how and why people live the lives they lead, with ordinary people engaging in fantasies and illusions of their both to create and in the service of the lives and dreams that they would like to lead. If Chiyoko’s life is any indication, then such illusions are as mysterious and fantastical as the people that create them, indeed if others can actually understand such illusions. It seems that why and how Chiyoko lived her life are one and the same, with both of them being due to dreaming in one form or another, whether it be as a film actress or a woman on an eternal chase. With this realization and central idea of “Millennium Actress,” Kon seems to communicating a message about the place of dreams, fantasy, and the ever present illusion of life in reality itself, wherein those things are both one and the same in trompe l'oeil fashion. They are all inseparable from one another because they are all are themselves and the others. They all are one thing and they are all the others. Just like in the film itself, there is no separating reality from fiction because they are one and the same; they both have and occupy a space in each other’s “realms.” That is the message that pervades the whole of Kon’s filmography and “Millennium Actress” in particular because the “Illusionist of Anime” blurs the lines between the distinctions many people makes between dreams, fantasy, fiction, and reality. In the end, Kon seems to resolutely allude to the fact that illusions have and occupy a place in reality with Chiyoko’s all-important and eloquent line about how it was the chase, read illusion, that which she really loved in life. It was her style of and attitude in life to be caught-up in the illusion that she created for herself, wherein she will still chase after something even though she might not be able to actually catch it, and that fact is reflected in her final realization and it is indicative why Kon ultimately created the film as a means to lead others to that same realization. In taking this message to heart, it is vitally important to remember that many truths come from dreams, fantasy, and the ever present reality of illusions, and that what seems to be the one thing may very well be what unlocks one’s own door to eternity and perhaps what lives above and beyond.

~ Sources for Further Reading ~

Millennium Actress, 2001 Film by Madhouse Inc., directed by Satoshi Kon.

“Satoshi Kon: the Illusionist,” by Andrew Osmond.

“The Art of Satoshi Kon,” by Dark Horse Comics & Darren Aronofsky.

“Millennium Actress,” Wikipedia Article.

 “Trompe l'oeil.” Wikipedia Article.

“Further Reflections on ‘Millennium Actress’,” By Theown, Omohide.com.