Gifts from Totoro

I first saw soot sprites in the Studio Ghibli movie My Neighbour Totoro and then in Spirited Away. Hayao Miyazaki created them for his movies. Soot sprites have a variety of names. They’re known as susuwatari in Japanese, which means ‘wandering soot,’ or makkurosuke, which means ‘pitch-black’ combined with the word suke a suffix often found in Japanese boys’ name. Other English translations used in the movies are ‘black soots,’ ‘soot gremlins,’ and ‘dust bunnies.’

In My Neighbour Totoro, thousands of susuwatari inhabit an empty house. When the Kusakabe family moves in, the susuwatari decide to leave because the Kusakabes are good people. The susuwatari are friendly and shy and it almost seems a shame to see them go.

In Spirited Away the susuwatari are hard workers, using coal to stoke the boiler of a bathhouse catering to a customer-base of mysterious spirit creatures. These susuwatari are hard workers and carry pieces of coal several times their own weight.

In spite of all my cleaning efforts, my apartment is a comfortable home for dust bunnies. They’re not at all shy and they don’t leave unless I drive them out. Maybe this means I should be a better person. In any case, the susuwatari free-loading at my place are a lazy bunch, not doing any work or paying any rent.

In my on-going quest to try and make cleaning more interesting and entertaining, and to try and generate more positive feelings towards my dust bunnies, I entered an internet rabbit hole. Once there, I discovered a whole world of inspiring youtubers who make craft susuwatari.

I pictured myself making a susuwatari too, using black fake fur or crocheting one from black eyelash yarn. My picturing stopped when I realised there was nowhere near by for me to source the fake fur, the black eyelash yarn and the googly eyes. Not to mention that my craft dust sprite would just end up lying around my apartment to become another dust gatherer.

In the end I decided to draw my dust sprite because I had all the necessary utensils at hand.

On my internet rabbit-hole journey, I also came across Hayao Miyazaki’s creation, Totoro. Totoro is a spirit of the forest, protecting and nurturing it. He’s a Japanese tanuki, a type of racoon, combined with cats and owls. He’s large, plush and comforting even though he can roar loudly. Like the Berlin angels in Wings of Desire, he’s only visible to children.

Youtubers had also created their own inspiring versions of Totoro using felt and wool. For a moment I pictured myself making one too, but once again I was faced with the dilemma of where to source the necessary materials.

In any case, it was feed-time for my vacuum cleaner, Orca. As I guided him around his feeding grounds, I began wondering if I should draw my dust sprite with black pen or black texta. But then I realised I didn’t need to make up my mind. I could make a real dust sprite from real dust, repurposing Orca’s regurgitated stomach contents. The dust and detritus he’d sucked up from my floor whirling around the compartments of his belly were forming felted dust on his filters right before my eyes. For once I didn’t mind giving him his comfort clean as I peeled off a plump, perfectly round dust cushion from his filters and put it aside for my dust sprite project.

For the project I also needed googly eyes, but instead of buying them, I decided to draw some. The only problem was the konpeito, the Japanese sweets that susuwatari eat.

There’s no Japanese supermarket near me, so I decided to check out a Korean supermarket in my area to find a konpeito substitute. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any lollies resembling konpeito, so I bought some round ones and cut up the packaging to create my own konpeito.

Here is my dust sprite photoshoot.

The dust sprite with its food.

The dust sprite with ears, transforming it into a dust bunny. The ears were also made from Orca's stomach contents.

As the photoshoot progressed, the dust sprite began disintegrating at a faster rate than it gathered dust. I’ve now thrown it away and only photos of it remain that won’t be gathering any dust whatsoever.

On my walk to the Korean supermarket, I came across this beautiful nest. The way it had been woven reminded me of the way Orca had woven his dust cushions on his filters. It had been windy for several days in a row and the nest had been blown down from its tree. I moved the nest around for its own photoshoot and placed it back where I'd found it. I hope its owners manage to carry it back to its place in the tree.

I couldn’t help thinking the nest was a gift from Totoro.