Spirited Away brought Miyazaki's talent into mainstream western media when it won an Oscar for best animation in 2002. Watching it for the first time made me envious of the kids growing up in Japan and of a fairytale tradition that just seemed so much cooler and more imaginative than ours (no I'm not talking about Pokemon).
It tells the story of a young girl, Chihiro, who is travelling to her new house when she and her parents take a detour through the woods (passing shrines to the spirits that live in the forest) and stumble onto an abandoned amusement park.
There is loads of awesome looking food at one of the stalls but no one is around. Although Chihiro has a bad feeling and urges her parents to leave, in natural stupid-adult-in-kids-film style they tuck in and turn into pigs. The sun is setting and when Chihiro tries to return to the car she finds that there is now a river where there were just dry rocks.
She is now in the spirit world. These spirits come in an amazing array of forms, some look like people, some look like giant vegetables (naturally), some look like dragons, some like animals etc. They arrive to visit a bath house in order to replenish themselves and Chihiro ends up working here with the help of the mysterious Haku.
This array of forms reflects the spirit's place in the human world. There is a general belief embedded in the Shintoist tradition (the dominant Japanese religion) that spirits inhabit everything. In Spirited Away these are made incarnate in this dreamlike spirit world. The bath house is necessary because humanity takes an increasing toll on the spirits around them in the physical world.
This damage is most apparent when a stink spirit arrives at the bath house.
River pollution
Skulking through the rain, this giant seething slug of blackish ooze, is unwelcome in the bath house. As the human and therefore the lowest of the low, Chihiro gets the job of giving this spirit a bath.
As she pours the medicated hot-water onto it, she finds a 'thorn' in its side. The witch owning the bath house commands Chihiro to tie a rope to it and dozens of staff are needed to pull the object out. When it is dislodged a torrent of rubbish from the human world comes out of the stink spirit.
The stink spirit turns out to be a powerful river spirit. It gives Chihiro a gift and leaves in its true form as an enormous dragon (with a weird face) laughing with relief.
That's a pretty clear cut environmental message. The spirit was suffering and corrupted by the human waste in the physical world. That a human found the cause of its pain and removes it is symbolic of our power and responsibility over the situation.
*Spoiler alert*
Haku who helps Chihiro to escape looks like a human boy but he can also take the form of a dragon, who can fly (lucky!). When Chihiro is riding on his back she remembers why it feels like they've met before. He was the spirit of a river that Chihiro fell into as a child and he saved her life, when she gives him the name of this river he remembers his past (the witch took his name away along with his memories). The relevant point is that he can't find his way home because the river has been filled in. Human's made him homeless.
The personification of nature makes it much harder to trash it. Reading World War Z gave me greater insight into the origin of this idea in Japan.
That's a pretty clear cut environmental message. The spirit was suffering and corrupted by the human waste in the physical world. That a human found the cause of its pain and removes it is symbolic of our power and responsibility over the situation.
*Spoiler alert*
Haku who helps Chihiro to escape looks like a human boy but he can also take the form of a dragon, who can fly (lucky!). When Chihiro is riding on his back she remembers why it feels like they've met before. He was the spirit of a river that Chihiro fell into as a child and he saved her life, when she gives him the name of this river he remembers his past (the witch took his name away along with his memories). The relevant point is that he can't find his way home because the river has been filled in. Human's made him homeless.The personification of nature makes it much harder to trash it. Reading World War Z gave me greater insight into the origin of this idea in Japan.
A blind zombie killing ninja
One of the characters in Max Brooks' World War Z is a blind Japanese veteran, Tomonaga Ijiro. For those who haven't read it, it tells the story of the zombie apocalypse though a series of interviews with people all around the world. Incidentally I can guarantee it is way better than the movie that's about to come out.
Feeling like a waste of space after being blinded by the atom bomb at Hiroshima (he is hibakusha) he heads for the woods in order to not be a burden to anyone when the zombie apocalypse comes. He knows the woodland well and his finely tuned hearing means that he's not any more vulnerable to zombie attacks at night, in fact he sleeps in the day and only moves at night so the zombies can't use their vision.
His walking stick is similar to a shaolin spade. When fighting the the zombies he draws on his faith in the Kami. He views the encroaching walking dead to be unclean in this place full of natural spirits and dispatches and buries them religiously.
There is no western equivalent to Kami. It refers to the the spirits of every tree, rock and extends to something like gods. Protection of these Kami in nature is an ancient, sacred duty in Shintoism.
So all this sounds pretty cool. Lots of religions encourage appreciation and care in how we treat nature, great.
Unfortunately while Japan takes great care of its own natural spaces they are complicit in the deforestation of swaths of Indonesian rainforest. So I would argue that as well as a spiritual, intimate appreciation of nature that we can see and touch there needs to be an intellectual understanding of nature as a valuable resource. One person's impacts might start on the other side of the world these days so its no good recycling your banana skins then buying furniture made out of dead panda tits. Fact.
His walking stick is similar to a shaolin spade. When fighting the the zombies he draws on his faith in the Kami. He views the encroaching walking dead to be unclean in this place full of natural spirits and dispatches and buries them religiously.There is no western equivalent to Kami. It refers to the the spirits of every tree, rock and extends to something like gods. Protection of these Kami in nature is an ancient, sacred duty in Shintoism.
So all this sounds pretty cool. Lots of religions encourage appreciation and care in how we treat nature, great.
Unfortunately while Japan takes great care of its own natural spaces they are complicit in the deforestation of swaths of Indonesian rainforest. So I would argue that as well as a spiritual, intimate appreciation of nature that we can see and touch there needs to be an intellectual understanding of nature as a valuable resource. One person's impacts might start on the other side of the world these days so its no good recycling your banana skins then buying furniture made out of dead panda tits. Fact.
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