Character · My Neighbor Totoro
Satsuki Kusakabe
Eleven years old, running a household, and pretending harder than anyone else that everything is fine.
In Otakana the clue reads: Older sister who moves to a country house
- Type
- Character
- Series
- My Neighbor Totoro
- Letters
- 7 · Normal
Satsuki Kusakabe moves with her father and her four-year-old sister into an old house in the countryside, so the family can be near the hospital where their mother is being treated. She makes the lunches, sorts out the school run, and handles the moments when Mei falls apart. My Neighbor Totoro gives her the responsibilities of an adult and then remembers, at exactly the right moment, that she is a child.
She meets Totoro second. Mei finds him first, and Satsuki behaves reasonably about it, which means not believing her sister and apologising later. The bus stop in the rain is her scene: she is holding an umbrella and a sleeping four-year-old when something enormous walks up and stands beside her, and her reaction is mostly good manners.
The names are a small joke shared between the two sisters. Satsuki is an old word for the fifth month, and Mei is May said in Japanese, so Miyazaki named both girls after the same month in two languages. The film opened in 1988 on a double bill with Grave of the Fireflies, which remains one of the least merciful evenings in cinema programming.
Spelling SATSUKI
SATSUKI is seven letters, and the TSU in the middle is a single Japanese kana, つ, written with three English letters. The U inside it is nearly silent, so the name sounds like Sats-ki and players lose a tile. Spell all three letters of TSU and the row fills. SATSUKI carries two S's and both of them earn their place.