NTU Studies in Language and Literature 75 Number 38 (December 2017), 75-100 DOI: 10.6153/NTUSLL.2017.38.04 Ecological Time in Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind  Ju-yu Catherine Cheng Assistant Professor, Department of Foreign Languages and Cultures Fo Guang University Abstract Hayao Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind depicts two ways for humans to relate to nature and time. Nausicaä, princess of the Valley of the Wind and the film’s protagonist, is initiated into ecological time and becomes the saviour of the world because of her sympathy, empathy, and love for others, including the Ohms— giant insects. On the other hand, Kushana, the princess of Tolmekia, after losing one arm to the giant insects, is determined to use weapons and the remaining Giant War- rior to save/control the world. She treats both the Ohms and their realm, the Sea of Decay, as enemies; she tries to destroy them for the sake of human beings. Locked into the temporality of her technological world, Kushana sees only practical connec- tions; for example, she is influenced by the practical uses of technology and so she uses the Giant Warrior to conquer nature, rather than following the rhythm of nature. These differences point to two kinds of worldviews embodied by Nausicaä and Kushana, respectively. My paper attempts to explore how Nausicaä’s active waiting es- tablishes a new symbiotic relationship with the Ohms and their lands, the Sea of Decay, and also allows her to embody the ancient prophecy by incorporating it into the present fate of the world to trigger a new future. I turn to Deleuze’s philosophy of time to help explain how Nausicaä’s mode of repetition and waiting initiates her into ecological time, how the film provides lessons on preventing the tyranny of doomed repetition and not falling into the trap of the foreseeable future. The paper also uses Deleuze’s theory to explain how Miyazaki creates a new human-nonhuman relationship. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind reflects our bleak situations, continuously damaged by military and ecological cataclysms, and shows us how to remedy the destroyed human-nonhuman relationship. Nausicaä’s jump into ecological time and symbiotic relationship with other  I highly appreciate the valuable comments and suggestions provided by the reviewers. I have benefited from them tremendously in revising this work.