Purity As Seen In Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away

Spirited Away is an animated film directed by Hayao Miyazaki, one of the most well-known Japanese film producers to date. Hayao Miyazaki hand draws all of his story boards and then when he satisfied with his work it is digitized, earning him the nickname of “Japanese Walt Disney”. The works of Miyazaki tell obscure tales deeply rooted in the Japanese belief system. Miyazaki stays in touch with his beliefs and own style of artistic expression while producing some of the most well-known animated films including My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke, Howl’s Moving Castle, and of course, Spirited Away. His film Spirited Away will be the topic of discussion for this essay.Spirited Away is a film that follows the format of a hero’s journey, which sets the scene Japanese countryside. The opening scene shows Chihiro in the car, and her call to adventure, talking about how scared she was to be leaving everything behind. Obscuring from the path her family encounters a dead end where there is her refusal of the call where her family stumbles upon what appears to be an abandoned amusement park. They ignore her pleads not to enter and not to touch anything. While Chihiro enters this situation very carefully, her parents appear to have no self-restraint when they find an abandoned restaurant. What none of them knew was that it was all a trap set up by the gods of the abandoned theme park, to expose humans for who they really are. As her parents indulge and claim that they will pay after eating, Chihiro leaves them behind to explore the unknown and when she comes back her parents have become literal pigs. This is ironic because of them being figurative pigs and feasting without the host’s permission.

Following the introduction, Chihiro is introduced to her supernatural mentor, Haku. Haku is a spirit who resides in the abandoned theme park, more specifically in the spirit bath house. Haku helps Chihiro escape an unknown fate of being left to the mercy of the spirits, and helps her cross the threshold, and enter the bath house safely. Initially, she rejects the facts Haku presents to her, but later commits to following him to try to save her parents. It is here when she enters the bath house that she meets an aiding guide, Kamaji the boiler man. Kamaji is the person Haku told her to look for in search of a job, and told her to never accept being rejected. She aids the soot Balls in bringing the coal, and he sees how dedicated she is. An employee of the bath house and another guide enters to serve the employees lunch. It is when Lin enters the scene to feed Kamaji and the soot balls, that Chihiro is discovered. Lin agrees to take Chihiro to the higher authority of the bath house to legitimately secure Chihiro a job, and to take her to the top of the bath house. Relentlessly Chihiro begs for a job from owner of the bathhouse, the witch Yubaba. Yubaba introduces the idea of cultural curation, touching on multiple cultural beliefs on traditional Japan, modern Japan, Europe, and the western, as well Chinese elements. Collectively each of these cultural influences forms a more abstract world, where the spirits, demons and gods, don’t have to make sense. Miyazaki uses these fragments of cultures to create his own folklore relating everything back to purity. An innocent Chihiro is forced to sign a contract giving her name and free will away, beginning her road of trials being reborn as Sen.

Following the contract signing Haku enters, but this time he has an entirely different personality. Haku is revealed to be the henchman of Yubaba, inevitably leading to Lin telling Sen that she can’t trust Haku. Haku and Yubaba are presented as more movement and unforgiving figures than Sen sees them as. Sen is tested time after time by Yubana, who wants to see her fail to abide by the rules of their contract. This states that should Sen ever complain about her tasks, she will join her parents as a pig in the pen. Sen faces a task in washing what initially appears to be a stink spirit, filled with human garbage. Despite any urge to deny the task, she completes it, with the aid of “Kaonashi” (No face), who gifts her soap. This resulted in the bath house revealing it is a “Kawa no Kami” (Unnamed God) who is a river spirit. He is grateful to Sen he gifts her with a magical food that will help her along the journey. Aside from Sen Kawa no Kami, she also makes several acquaintances who aid in her completion of tasks. There was a radish spirit who helped to hide her before she was even granted a job. This included the Ootro-sami (duck-figures), and the Soot Balls that consume star-like confetti for their meals. Most notably along her guides is No Face who takes a special interest in Sen. He is seen several times outside of the bath house until Sen lets him in one night, unknowing he is a monster. No face is drawn to Sen because of how innocent she is, and how she continually rejects unecessary matieralistic gifts that were attempts to bribe her and break her purity.

Sen becomes more concious of what she must do to survive the bath house and to get her family back from Yubaba’s curse. Sen is unlike all the spirits and people around her, she is able to purify others while remaining pure herself. This depicts her in a savior sort of fashion, causing a steady increase in people who can invest faith in her. Following the invasion of No Face the employees are all leured to his money and wealth, while she attempts to save Haku. Haku is seen being hunted by hundreds of tiny paper origami models. Sen is able to get Haku to see her in the house alone, and gets him to come and dodge the attack. However, he leaves her behind to go and die in Yubaba’s office. Sen refuses to watch him isolate himself and follows him up to the room where an origami follows her secretly. This is when Sen meets the final allies, Yubaba’s excessively large baby and Yubaba’s twin sister, Zeniba. Haku stole a precious seal from Zeniba, sentencing him to death. Zeniba causes Sen to see the negative side of her dear friend Haku. She has a change of heart and realizes she has to do whatever she can to save Haku. She feeds him a bit of the magic food given by the river spirit, and sets out to see Zeniba. Along the way she also feeds No Face a portion of the magic food, which causes him to release all that he had eaten. On the journey to Zeniba’s home Sen is transformed into a brave and willing version of her past self. The apotheosis of Sen’s journey comes when she returns from Zeniba’s and meets Yubaba’s last challenge. This is set up by Haku after he remembers who he is. He is the spirit of the Kohaku River, who once saved Chihiro from drowning. He saves her life twice, showing innate bond between the godly and human realm. Haku made a deal that Sen would be freed if she could correctly identify her parents. She has to fight everything that Yubaba had tried to taken away from her, and remember who she is. Her return to threshold is when her family is returned to the human realm, which allowed Sen to go back to her family. Lastly with her return she becomes a master of both worlds. She is freed from all of her fears of the unknown, and is more confident in her beliefs.This contextualizes the original Japanese title “Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi”, which can be roughly translating to a missing person. Typically this had meant a god or spirit had kidnapped a human, but within the context of the movie, it means that Chihiro is hidden away. Chirhito is seperated from the human world and taken to the spirit world, where her purity is ultimately tested. Purity can be found within the youth, represented by Chihiro at age ten. Here she is young and naive, and the young heroine in Miyazaki’s films tend to be, but she is also compassionate. Her personality traits define her ability to for success within the bathhouse, and eventually enables her to free her parents. Throughout her journey she has to go through many challenges, some of which are intentionally designed for her, while others are fated. In Japanese fashion, her elders have much more respect and faith invested in them. Those who have worked and more time in the bath house are given the less difficult jobs, and watch Chihiro struggle. The spirits criminalize the human condition while ignoring their own faults as well.

Within the movie there’s a sense of hypocrisy between the human and godly realm, making the line between good and bad unclear. While one would believe the spirits of the bath house are pure, they show greed and sloth. The gods are sinners themselves, especially Yubaba. Yubaba represents a large corporation in which she will only do things for profit. She doesn’t care for the well-being of her employees, including her apprentice Haku. While Haku begins to bleed out because he stole Yubaba’s sisters seal for Yubaba, she shows no mercy. He is controlled by Yubaba because she takes away his name, his sense of self. He doesn’t become innocent until he purges himself of the seal, and love saves him from death.

The main setting of the bathhouse is a representation of a more modernized hierarchy. The lowest level being the boiler room with soot spirits, who do the most labor and get the least rewards. The highest level is Yubaba, where it is cleanly, and in charge of accounting money. In between the top and the bottom is the employees and the baths,those that have no true identity. The whole world of both the real and that of Spirited Away is centralized around the theme of identity. With the loss of home, name, and without memory of who we are, we become what we are made to be. Yubaba traps people in a purgatory esque world, and the only way to escape is back through the tunnel which they came from. The fake tunnel is used as a transition to represent fake beginnings and truthful endings.

Symbolism plays a vital role in the storyline and finding the deeper meaning of the film. One of the mnost vital and driving symbols is gold. Gold represents form of greed much like hunger, which Sen continually denies unless she needs it. No Face presents everyone in the bathhouse with the promise of gold as a reward for their actions, but Sen doesn’t crave material things. While Sen resists, No Face consumes, stealing the victims voice. This represents greed will always haver its consequences. However, Sen is able to bring No Face back down to himself, and escape the toxicity of the bath house hierachy. In the film No Face represents innocence overcome by desire. Likewise, Haku represents the ordinary person who can get lost in the crowd. This is seen through Haku’s lack of self-awareness, as well as no sense belonging by many other characters. Their job is exclusively work, not their home. Very few people seem to have time for establishing meaningful relationships. This is mostly due to their lack of identity which is taken away by Yubaba herself. Without identity the characters are unable to personalize. This relates back to the idea of mass production and mass corruption.

Chihiro undergoes a cleansing spiritually through experiencing uncleanly spirits which represent gluttony. She learns how to remove the weight of worry and clutter through baths. These baths are esentially a baptism and rebirth of those overcome by sin, which is associtaed with the trash of humanity. While some ask to be cleansed as a new chance, No face has to be filled. He has nothing, he is a mirror of what he gains, only being able to enter invited. This shows that monsters and the impure have no power if we hold them away, but feeding into them only lets them grow. This represents humanity, as humans can not just simply be bathed to be purified. They must walk away from what upsets him to regain himself, even helping other who need him. Sen lets him into the bath house showing her innocence, where he tries to corrupt her. She only accepts what she needs but desire does not overcome, escaping temptation. The child of Yubaba follows Chirhiro on the journey of redemption, as he is literally and physically a big baby. He will only be able to grow up and become independent when set free from his mothers overbearing love. Chirhiro ultimately returns to the known when she regains everything that was once lost. As a part of her ablity to leave, she is told she is not allowed to look back. Everything focuses on moving forward as a part of rebirth, and she is able to continue on living her life.

Spirited Away focuses on how temporary our youth and the barrier between them and the outside world is. A large part of the charm of Spirited Away and other Miyazaki films is the lack of a general audience rating. The film explores a fantasy world which maintains its childlike charm despite the harshness of the world going on around them. Most of the creatures have a soft face and a kind spirit. The realm of the spirits is an escape for Chihiro, whether she knows it or not. Chihiro doesn’t fear any characters that disregard her or want to hurt her. However, even these characters are not strictly good or evil. The characters maintain neutrality that allows for mystery to develop with Chihiro’s adventure in the bath house. Spirited Away shows learning how to diverge from the naive childlike mind, and into the real world.

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