BY ESA CHEN ‘25
Spirited Away is a 2001 Japanese animated film directed by Hayao Miyazaki and animated by Studio Ghibli. Chihiro Ogino is a ten-year-old girl. She is traveling with her parents to move to a new house. However, her father gets lost while driving and goes in the wrong direction. She and her parents mistakenly enter an abandoned amusement park. A witch, called Yubaba, runs an enormous local bathhouse which is the place where the eight million spirits of Japan such as the “stink spirit” are served to take the baths. There is a rule in this theme park: anyone who does not work in the town will be turned into a pig and be eaten. Chijii’s parents are punished for eating the food on the table without the consent of the shopkeeper and become pigs. In order to save her parents, Chihiro, with the help of the Spirit of the Kohaku River, Haku, the assistant of Yubaba, is hired and gets a job in the bathhouse. However, the price of the contract of a job is: the name will be taken away by Yubaba. As a result, Chihiro is given a new name “Sen.” In the process of working in the bathhouse, Sen grows from a spoiled little girl who can’t do any work to a resilient and capable girl with inner strength. At the same time, Sen with her kindness begins to gain the respect of the other people in the bathhouse. A pure relationship between her and Haku also starts to emerge. To save her parents and the people who are important to her, facing various difficulties and dangers, Sen makes her decisions independently and tries her best to learn and do work. The movie unfolds with her psychological changes.
The abandoned theme park that Chihiro and his parents stumble into mirrors Japan’s economic changes, which is Japanese asset price bubble from 1986 to 1991. During the period of the Japanese asset price bubble, many amusement parks with restaurants, playgrounds, hotels, hot springs, and other facilities were built. After the Japanese economic bubble burst, these theme parks closed down without people visiting. Before Chihiro and his parents enter the forest to the abandoned theme park, there is a place where the asphalt road is connected to the dirt road with a thick tree on the side. There are abandoned Torii, a gate at the entrance of the Shinto shrine, and many little rock houses by the roots of the trees. Chihiro’s mother said that the little house is called Hokora, a miniature Shinto shrine, the home of the Kami, which are the spirits or deities. On the way to the domain of spirits, there will be Hokora by the roadside. In the movie, there are many stone shrines under the tree roots, which means that the nearby stone shrines were forced to be abandoned beside the tree roots due to construction. The appearance of these stone shrines is precise because of the construction of theme parks. Since building a theme park requires a very large amount of land, many shrines and temples were demolished. After the amusement park closed down, the gods returned to live in the theme park where Chihiro and her parents enter. In addition, The houses of spirits are torn down, which means that spirits have no house. Chihiro’s family is on their way to moving to a new place, and the family had no home at the time. Therefore, this means that only wandering people without homes will come to that abandoned amusement park.
In the bathhouse where Chihiro works, there are many staff members. The staff is divided into two kinds of animals, the male workers are the spirits of frogs, and the female workers are the spirits of slugs. This setting implies director Hayao Miyazaki’s satire of Studio Ghibli. Since the owner of the Ghibli company is a businessman, his requirements for the artworks are for profit. However, Miyazaki is an artist, so he often disagrees with his boss. According to an interview with director Hayao Miyazaki, frogs represent important people from all walks of life, who rely on Studio Ghibli to gain benefits and make money. Slugs are staff in Studio Ghibli, and in 2000, most of the Ghibli staff were women, working as painters. Often these women are new to society and therefore receive lower wages. In Miyazaki’s eyes, these painters are doing hard work, but they have not received corresponding rewards and payments. Therefore, in the movie, women are represented by slugs or bugs, as food for frogs, symbolizing the use of money-making objects, and they are lured by people who are greedy for profit. Frogs managed the company and forced the little slugs to work hard. Why are the representatives all animals? The reason is that Hayao Miyazaki believes that these capital-controlled people have lost their humanity, so they are represented by animals. However, through the setting of Chihiro working hard in the strange world, proving herself, and finally getting back to the real world, Hayao Miyazaki encouraged those painters of Studio Ghibli to believe that they can also prove their value through their own strength, just like the protagonist Chihiro. The film also reflects social realities, alluding to Japan’s entertainment industry. In order to earn a small amount of money, countless boys and girls are forced to serve Japanese dignitaries in some places to help them make profits. This is as narrated in the film, countless staff in the bathhouse serve the customers, Japanese spirits, to take a bath.
In Spirited Away, Hayao Miyazaki wants to express that after people are in society for a long time, they will gradually be attracted by the interests and rights, and forget their real identity and name. This is corresponding to the movie setting of working in the bathhouse and gradually forgetting one’s name. At the end of the film, Chihiro remembers her name and returns to the real world with her parents. The name symbolizes self. Therefore, one must not forget one’s own name and not lose self. When the names Chihiro and Haku were erased, their original identities and lives were also erased. If you lose your name, you will not be able to find your way home. If you lose yourself in life, if you cannot do what you want to do, but do what others want you to do, then your life is not your own life, not a life of your dreams and beliefs
