Pick Up This Book and Be Spirited Away

THE VILLAGE BEYOND THE MIST, by Sachiko Kashiwaba; illustrated by Miho Satake; translated by Avery Fischer Udagawa

In one of those unsigned cartoons that seed themselves across internet platforms, a house cleaner wearing a duster, as we used to call it, stands outside the open door of an armoire. The question she poses via speech balloon: “What are you doing in that wardrobe?” The balloon reply from deep inside the piece of furniture: “Narnia business!”

There’s been a lot of Narnia business since the first novel by C.S. Lewis landed in children’s lives 75 years ago. A good thing, too. Kids walking by an uncovered well or a beguiling garden gate need to be ready in case they’re whisked into a world built on principles other than our own. Travel is so broadening. And any good book for children proves a reliable portal.

“The Village Beyond the Mist,” published in Japan in 1975, arrives in a crisp English translation by Avery Fischer Udagawa. Its eight brisk chapters tell the story of a Brigadoon-type settlement whose location is unverifiable because it is cloaked by vapors. Promotional copy advertises this novel as the story that inspired Hayao Miyazaki’s masterpiece film “Spirited Away.” We’ll return to this. First things first: Sachiko Kashiwaba’s novel is indeed transporting.

Traveling alone, a girl from Shizuoka named Lina has been dispatched to spend the summer in Misty Valley, a place her father once visited as a child. She alights at a rural train station, where kindly adults point out the route to follow. Partway there, the umbrella that blows from her grasp leads her through thick fog to a peculiar settlement. Its only street is called Absurd Avenue.

One of Misty Valley’s few buildings is Picotto Hall, where Lina will lodge. The quirky boardinghouse is governed by an irascible doyenne, Ms. Pippity Picotto. “What is this hairstyle?” she snaps at the girl. “You have a plain face, so if you don’t take care with your hair, where will people look?”

Nothing is quite as it seems in Misty Valley. Ms. Picotto requires Lina to work for her room and board. She sends her out to lend a hand at a used-book store, a ceramics shop and a toy store. The proprietors are grateful if sometimes ornery. Lina, though naïve, has a mind of her own, and thinks the bookstore smells like a library: “She had always had the impression that bookstores smelled only of paper and ink, while libraries also smelled of old books and real life.”

Nata, the bookstore owner, clears up some mysteries, noting that as her books age their “charm” gets stronger: “You know how books have the power to attract people and even influence them? That’s the charm I mean.”

When Lina spots titles like “Chemical Analysis of Flying Brooms” and “The Complete Collection of Spells,” Nata explains that the residents of the tiny village are all descendants of sorcerers.

An overworked student wanders into the shop and finds something to satisfy him that is unrelated to his studies: a poetry collection. Lina observes that the boy doesn’t seem to be a village resident. “People who really need to can come here,” Nata replies. “The village is choosy that way.”

Several other episodes link together loosely, the common thread being the boardinghouse and the gnomic Ms. Picotto.

The summer comes to an end and Lina is dismissed to return home. She is changed, but we don’t know quite how. Summer changes all children, doesn’t it?

A word on the droll and affectionate line illustrations. Miho Satake’s introductory sketch of Ms. Picotto seems straight out of Studio Ghibli: “Beside the window sat a sofa with a large floral pattern. Interrupting it like a stain was a small, elderly woman dressed all in black.” The depiction of her giant pompadour evokes Yubaba, the proprietress of the bathhouse in “Spirited Away.” And Lina has the wide-eyed yet feisty look of Lin, the young protagonist of Miyazaki’s movie. The drawings bewitch with a character of their own, however.

If the story itself, by the author’s admission in an afterword, was inspired by Mary Poppins and Narnia, where’s the harm in that?

But was the Studio Ghibli magnum opus “Spirited Away” inspired by this charming Kashiwaba novel? Online commentary suggests that Miyazaki read the novel and considered animating it but put it aside to construct “Spirited Away” out of other sources. I can’t say. There are few plot correspondences but for the fact of a child marooned in a magical place where she must work for a living. If we’re talking truth in advertising, “influenced” might be a choicer word than “inspired.”

Still, if we had the chance to ask Miyazaki himself, he might just wave his hands in the air and remark softly, “It’s Narnia business.” And he’d be right. Pick up this book and be spirited away.

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