The Society for Japanese Studies

Matter out of Place: Carnival, Containment, and Cultural Recovery in Miyazaki's "Spirited
Away"
Author(s): Susan J. Napier
Source: Journal of Japanese Studies, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Summer, 2006), pp. 287-310
Published by: The Society for Japanese Studies
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 SUSAN J.NAPIER

Matter Out of Place: Carnival, Containment, and

Cultural Recovery inMiyazaki's SpiritedAway

Abstract: This essay deals with the recent animated film Spirited Away by the
foremost Japanese animator, Miyazaki Hayao. It examines Spirited Away as a

representation of "cultural boundedness," a reaction to globalization in which

cultural products are used to reinforce notions of local culture as a form of re

sistance to perceived outside threats. It goes on to query the success of this at

tempt, arguing that Spirited Away undermines its overt agenda, ultimately ex

pressing a culture beset by polluting and transgressing forces.

The films ofMiyazaki Hayao, Japan's greatest animation director, inmany

ways exemplify contemporary Japan's complex cultural identity. Their
mise-en-sc?nes span a of European-style worlds, from the
variety fantasy
Mediterranean/Scandinavian setting of Kiki's Delivery Service {Majo no
takky?bin, 1989) to theFrench- and English-inspired Howl's Moving Castle
(Hauru no ugoku shiro, 2004), but also include thenostalgia-drenched vision
of a 1950s Japanese farming community ofMy Neighbor Totoro (Tonari no
Totoro, 1988) and the radical reworking of fourteenth-century Japan pre
sented inPrincess Mononoke (Mononoke-hime, 1997). In this regard, they
engage deeply with two interlinked trends thathave dominated Japanese so
ciety over the last two decades and are summed up by the catchwords koku
saika (internationalization) andfurusato (native place or old hometown). As
JenniferRobertson points out, these trends,while "appear[ing] to represent
opposite trajectories" actually "exist coterminously as refractive processes
and products, and... together they index the ambiguity of Japanese national
*
identityand its tense relationship with cultural identity (or identities)."

The author would like to thank JohnTraphagan andWilliam Tullis for their comments on
earlier stages of this article.
1. JenniferRobertson, "It Takes a Village: Internationalization and Nostalgia in Postwar
Japan," in Stephen Vlastos, ed., Mirror ofModernity: Invented Traditions ofModern Japan
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), pp. 110, 112.

287
Journalof Japanese Studies, 32:2
? 2006 Society forJapanese Studies

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 288 Journal of Japanese Studies 32:2 (2006)

Miyazaki's work ranges across both thekokusaika (albeit as part of a dis

tinctively
Miyazaki-esque treatmentof the "international") and thefurusato
categories (although again embodying Miyazaki's specific vision of thefu
rusato). His 2001 fantasy Spirited Away (Sen toChihiro no kamikakushi),
however, occupies amore ambiguous position. Although at firstglance seem
ing to celebrate various aspects of "Japanesness," embodied in thefilm's pri
mary mise-en-sc?ne, a bathhouse of the gods, narra
magical Spirited Away's
tive trajectoryrevolves around the tension between Japanese cultural identity
and otherness and at least implicitly calls intoquestion theviability of "Japa
neseness" in a changing world.

Whether the director is fully conscious of the extent towhich the film
shows thevulnerability of Japanese identity is open toquestion. As Miyazaki
makes clear in a number of interviews and writings on thefilm, his primary
agenda inSpirited Away was to show thematuration of a contemporary young
girl in the face of an array of frighteningand fantastic encounters. In this re
gard he is certainly successful. The storyof a tenyear old venturing intoa fan
tasyworld when her parents are transformed intopigs, thefilmmixes humor,
sentiment, and horrorwith dazzling imagery toprovide an effective coming
of-age storywith an arguably upbeat ending. This combination of elements
clearly strucka chordwith theJapanese audience and, as of thiswriting, Spir
itedAway remains thehighest grossing film in Japanese history.To thefilm's
many admirers, Chihiro, the young protagonist, serves as a potential role
model for today's generation of apathetic Japanese youth.
Other, less conscious notions and themes may also have come to the sur

face in thecreation of Spirited Away.When asked by an interviewerwhether

thefilm includes unclean things along with fantasy,Miyazaki explained that
"in the act of creating a fantasy,you open up the lid to parts of your brain
thatdon't usually open."2 These more subversive elements found when the
director "lifted the lid" of his unconscious make the film one ofMiyazaki's
most powerful and protean works. Spirited Away offersdisturbing visions of
excess, liberatingmoments of carnival, and a sharp critique of thematerial
ism and toxicity of contemporary Japanese society through its complex vi
sion of a quasi-nostalgic fantastic realm threatenedby pollution fromwithin
and without. Although it should be acknowledged that the film contains
many celebratory moments, its powerful depictions of cultural pollution,
alienation, and fragmented or lost subjectivities imply a more pessimistic
subtext.

This essay suggests that,despite itsdazzling imagery and appealing fan

tasymise-en-sc?ne, Spirited Away is less an upbeat fantasy than a complex

2. This interchange is from the program guide accompanying the film entitled simply Sen
to Chihiro no kamikakushi. Although it is in interview format, the interviewer is anonymous.
There are no page numbers but the quotation is from the fourteenth page of the guide.

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 Napier: Spirited Away 289

exploration of a contemporary Japan that is searching forwhat might be

termed cultural recovery, or perhaps cultural rehabilitation, in a corrupt
postindustrial society. This search involves a quest to rediscover and rein
corporate elements of purity, self-sacrifice, endurance, and team spirit, all of
which have been historically regarded as quintessential^ Japanese, and
reintegrate them into a form thathas resonance for the contemporary world.
The firstpart of this essay investigates some of the larger issues raised by
thefilm's subtextwhile the latterhalf consists of close readings of several of
themost significant episodes in thefilm in relation to these issues.
Embodying in certain ways the tension between kokusaika and the
furusato, Spirited Away may also be seen as participating in a significantcur
rent debate concerning globalization. This is the issue of the rise of local
culture or boundedness in relation towhat many theoristsuntil recently have
seen as an all-encompassing tidal wave of hegemonic and homogenizing
uberculture (usually identifiedwith American popular culture). This tidal
wave was viewed as creating what Paul David Grange in a commentary on
Arjun Appadurai calls a "deterritorialized community," resulting from the
"substantial weakening of national communities and the creation of a de
centered transnational global system."3 One of the casualties of globaliza
tion, in this view, is the nature of "authenticity," producing what Appadurai
calls the possibility of "nostalgia without memory" inwhich "the past be
comes a warehouse of cultural scenarios."4
synchronie
More recently,however, an alternative view of globalization has begun
to take form inwhich local culture is seen as reconstructing and reaffirming
itself in the face of globalization. In his article "Cultural Boundaries,"
Simon Harrison notes that"the increasing transnationalflows of culture seem
to be producing not global but assertions of het
homogenization growing
erogeneity and local distinctiveness." In fact, as he points out, the very per
meability of boundaries in the contemporary world may be an inducement
to thecreation ofwhat he calls "representations of boundedness" (his italics),
i.e., "bodies of symbolic which ... collectivities attribute to them
practices
selves, in seeking to differentiate themselves from each other."5
Inmany ways, Spirited Away can be seen to take part in this latter trend
as itpresents through the culture of the bathhouse a memorable vision of a
distinctively "Japanese" collectivity. But the film is farmore than a facile
homage to local culture, since somuch of its action stems from the fragility
and permeability of the cultural identity it privileges. The film contains

3. Paul David Grange, "Advertising theArchive: Nostalgia and the (Post)national Imagi

nary," American Studies, Vol. 41, No. 2/3 (2000), p. 137.

4. Arjun Appadurai (quoting Fredric Jameson), "Disjuncture and Difference in theGlobal
Cultural Economy," Public Culture, Vol. 2, No. 2 (1990), p. 4.
5. Simon Harrison, "Cultural Boundaries," Anthropology Today, Vol. 15, No. 5 (1999),
p. 10.

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 290 Journal of Japanese Studies 32:2 (2006)

motifs of chaos and carnival (highly unusual in aMiyazaki work) thatare at

once evocative of the Japanese festival (matsuri) while at the same time they
comment on thenegative aspects of consumption in industrialized societies.
Furthermore, itemploys postmodern approaches such as bricolage and pas
tiche to create settings thatcontainWestern and Chinese elements as well as
Japanese ones. Much of the extraordinary visual pleasure of thefilm comes
from this amalgam of diverse motifs and images. But these elements them
selves can be seen as characteristic of contemporary a cul
Japanese society,
ture remarkable for its incorporation of disparate elements.
At the same time,however, Spirited Away's diegesis suggests amore un
easy cultural trajectory inwhich disparate or alien elements are no longer
included but instead problematized or even expelled from the film's major
visual trope, the gigantic, richly detailed bathhouse of the gods where most
of the action takes place. These elements?including odor, vomitus, blood,
and (arguably) excrement?all come from outside the bathhouse and are
clearlymarked as polluting. They are "matterout of place," asMary Douglas
describes dirt, obviously positioned to contrast with theworld of the bath
house which, in its very function, serves to emblemize cleansing and purity
of a quintessential^ Japanese kind.6 The basic action of the film revolves
around a series of polluting invasions of the bathhouse, which are repulsed
by its denizens with the significant help of Chihiro, thehuman protagonist.
Chihiro herself is initially signified as a polluting alien marked by her hu
man stench, but gradually she becomes incorporated into the bathhouse
collectivity where she grows in agency and maturity. Ultimately, the var
ious rites of passage she undergoes lead to her accession of powers of per
ception thatallow her to freeher parents from themagic spell thathas trans
formed them.
While Spirited Away draws from an immense array of sources, includ
ingGreek myth andWestern fantasy such as Alice inWonderland and The
Wizard ofOz, the content and themes of thefilm suggest thatMiyazaki may
be performing a distinctive version of "Nihon e no kaiki," a shift from the
West and a turn toward Japanese culture thatmany Japanese writers and
artists took throughout the twentieth century.7 InMiyazaki's case, this "re
turn to Japan" was presaged inPrincess Mononoke's vision of fourteenth
century Japan, one thatdrew on major issues in Japanese history but treated
them in an original and often critical manner.

6. For a description of the iconic role of the bathhouse in Japanese culture, see Scott
Clark, Japan: A View from the Bath (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1994), inwhich
he describes bathing in Japan as a "metaphor for life renewal" and also states that "in its vari
ous contexts, the bathing act renews purity, cleanliness, vigor, energy, health, warmth, tradi
tion, status, relationships, and even self."
7. For examples ofNihon e no kaiki among literary figures, see Kinya Tsuruta, ed., Japa
nese Authors and theReturn to Japan (Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 2001).

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 Napier: Spirited Away 291

In neither Princess Mononoke nor Spirited Away does the "return to

mean an acceptance of all aspects of Japanese culture.
Japan" unproblematic
Not only does Spirited Away, like Princess Mononoke, bring up issues of
cultural identityand, incipiently,cultural collapse, itdoes so on a farmore
idiosyncratic and, in some ways, both more imaginative and more disturb
ing level than theprevious work, highlighting certain problematic issues, in
cluding toxicity between the generations, environmental pollution, and the
waning of traditionalmores and customs, that are central tomodern Japa
nese
society.
The film deals with these issues through itsengagement with threemajor
tropes?liminality, specifically theuse of liminal figures in liminal settings;
excess consumption and its negative effects; and the figure of the sh?jo
(young girl)?to create an unsettling portrait of Japan at the turnof themil
lennium. The liminalworld(s) of thefilmmay be seen as metaphoric ofmod
ern Japan, a society that,with its fading grip on historic tradition and an am
bivalent attitude toward the future, seems to emblemize Victor Turner's
definition of the liminal as being "betwixt and between."8 Also identified
with modern Japan is thepowerful/vulnerable figure of the sh?jo which has
taken on an iconic significance in Japanese culture over the last two decades.
The trope of excess however, transcends
consumption, Japanese society,

functioning as an importantsignifierthroughoutcontemporary industrialized

societies inwhich capitalism "prioritizes consumptive practice" and excess
consumption becomes one of theemblems of the "dominant hegemonic sub
jectivity," as David Larsen puts it in his discussion of the animated series
South Park.9
Despite such universal and international elements,Miyazaki 's agenda is
focused on Japan. In this regard, the film may be viewed as an am
obviously
bitious attempt at the rehabilitation of certain aspects of an idealized tradi
tional Japan, somewhat along the lines of the various projects aimed at
maintaining or revitalizing Japanese traditions such as the Tono Folklore
Museum or theDiscover Japan advertising campaigns, detailed byMarilyn
Ivy in her book Discourses of the Vanishing.10 As with those campaigns,
may be seen as an endeavor to recover or retain a vanishing
Spirited Away
and/ormarginalized culturally specific scenario. That this is a conscious
attempt is clear fromMiyazaki 's comments on the film which include the
explicit warning that "in thisborderless age ... a man without history or a

8. Victor Turner, The Anthropology of Performance (New York: PAJ Publications, 1992),
p. 101.
9. David Larsen, "South Park's Solar Anus, or, Rabelais Returns: Cultures of Consump
tion and theContemporary Aesthetic of Obscenity," Theory, Culture and Society, Vol. 18. No.
4 (2001), p. 67.
10. Marilyn Ivy, Discourses of the Vanishing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1995).

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 292 Journal of Japanese Studies 32:2 (2006)

people that forgot its past [sic] will have no choice but to disappear like a
shimmer of light."11
But what is the "past" or the "history" towhich Miyazaki is attempting
to draw attention and how successful is he in doing so? On the one hand,
"history" is clearly themarginalized, wondrous, or mysterious (fushigi)
past evoked by Ivy and also by Gerald Figal in his book Civilization and
Monsters inwhich he explores the relationship between the repressed ele
ments of traditional Japanese culture and themodernization process at the
turnof the century.12In fact,Miyazaki even describes the strange fantasy
land of Spirited Away as a "fushigi na machi" (wonderful or mysterious
town). InMiyazaki's vision, these repressed elements still exist on the psy
chic borders of modern Japan, approachable as long as one has the neces
sary awareness, knowledge, and desire. This view was firstmanifested in
Miyazaki's 1988 hit filmMy Neighbor Totoro, inwhich two young girls find
a liminalworld of fantasy creatures in the Japanese countryside. It is also ev
ident as the animating force behind Princess Mononoke's fresh vision of a
Japanese past inwhich the abjected others of Japanese history such as na
ture spirits, women, and racial outsiders become embodiments of resistance
a master narrative.13
against homogenizing
In themore carnivalesque world o? Spirited Away, the repressed past re
turns in the formof a fantastic array of spiritswho occupy thebathhouse, an
institution thathas largely disappeared, except for the occasional hot spring
visit, from the lives of most contemporary Japanese. These creatures are
clearly uncanny in Sigmund Freud's sense of the term as describing some
thing that is familiar yet at the same time out of place. The bathhouse spir
its and their environs are no longer part of the "real world" in which the
young protagonist Chihiro initially appears but, to the Japanese viewer, their
visual manifestations and functions evoke images from Japanese folklore
and, to the critic Shimizu Masahi, a sense of "having seen them
according

11. Hayao Miyazaki, "Chihiro in a Strange World: The Aim of This Film," in The Art of

Spirited Away (Tokyo: Studio Ghibli, 2001), p. 14. It should be noted that throughout this book
and its companion volume, Roman arubamu: Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (Tokyo: Tokuma
Shoten, 2001), Miyazaki's conscious agenda is very clear. In fact, theRoman arubamu contains
a section entitled "Chihiro o sagashite: iky? e tomukau tabi" (Looking for "Chihiro," a jour

ney toward theOther World) which includes photographs and descriptions of places in Japan
that supposedly inspired the film, including bathhouses, Shinto shrines, and festival sites, ac

companied by themessage that if "we only concentrated our eyes for just a littlewhile, we too
[like Chihiro] would find nearby the trap that opens in our accustomed landscape. Searching
for Chihiro, let us travel too toward the entrance of themysterious town [fushigi na machi]"

(p. 128).
12. Gerald Figal, Civilization and Monsters: Spirits of Modernity in Meiji Japan
(Durham: Duke University Press, 1999).
13. See Susan J.Napier, "Confronting Master Narratives: History as Vision inMiyazaki

Hayao's Cinema of De-Assurance," positions: east asia cultures critique, Vol. 9, No. 2 (2001).

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 Napier: Spirited Away 293

somewhere before."14 Overall, to its enormous Japanese audience, the

movie's special allure may be found in its ability to satisfywhat Ivy calls the
two "horizons of desire" on thepart of contemporary Japanese: thedesire to
"encounter the unexpected, the peripheral unknown, even the frightening ...

a desire thatreveals itselfunder the controlled and predictable conditions of

everyday life under consumer capitalism," and "an opposite longing to re
turn to a stable point of origin, to discover an authentically Japanese Japan
that is disappearing yet still present."15
Spirited Away plays on this sense of nostalgia for theunexpected and the
peripheral in a way that is embodied by what Figal describes as a "critical
nostalgia in relation to the contemporary world." This form of nostalgia
privileges the (literally) ghostly past as an alternative to themundane pres
ent and, as Figal demonstrates, can be expressed by a tendency to "fetishize
the fantastic, reifying fragments of fushigi intowhole cultural manifesta
tions that could then be identified as authentically Japanese."16 Another
form of nostalgia the film expresses might be called "activist nostalgia," in
that the film's agenda actively calls for the revitalization of modern Japan
througha renewed awareness of culturally specific virtues and values and a
concomitant realization of theirvulnerability.
Miyazaki's vision of Japanese traditional culture is clearly related to the
notion of thefurusato, a term that, as Robertson explains, is linked to the
word ??furu[i] (old) signifying] pastness, historicity, age, quaintness, and
thepatina of familiarity and naturalness thatcultural artifacts and human re
lationships acquire with age, use, and interaction."17 This is seen most ob

viously in the idyllic farming community of Totoro with its charmingly

"haunted house" thatbecomes theprotagonists' home. It also appears pass
ingly in the visualization of the village of outsider "Emishi" that the young
hero Ashitaka is forced to leave at the beginning of Princess Mononoke. In
Totoro and Mononoke, however, the furusato may be seen as compensatory,

in that it is presented as unambiguously welcoming (albeit imbued with just

the rightdegree of subtle hints ofmystery and strangeness) and comfortably
separated from the "real" world of modern Japan. In contrast, the other
world of Spirited Away initially seems both threateningand threatened, fear
some in its aggressively fantastical nature, but at the same time dangerously
vulnerable to cultural pollution from various forms of otherness.
This brings us to the second part of thequestion regarding the "success"
ofMiyazaki's recreation of thepast or, at least, a stable point of origin. It is
certainly true that the bathhouse, which is themost obvious marker of the

14. Shimizu Masahi, Miyazaki Hayao o yomu (Tokyo: Torieisha, 2001).

15. Ivy,Discourses of the Vanishing, p. 105.
16. Figal, Civilization and Monsters, pp. 220, 221.
17. Robertson, "It Takes a Village," p. 117.

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 294 Journal of Japanese Studies 32:2 (2006)

Japanese past, is an extraordinary creation whose bright colors, detail, and

sheer imposing physical presence attest to its representational power. Two

aspects of the bathhouse, however, undermine its apparent promise of easy
cultural recovery or even stability.The firstis its liminality and marginality.
The fact that the entire action of Spirited Away takes place within three lim
inal contexts?a journey (specifically, a move from an old home to a new
one), an abandoned theme and, the fantasy other world?sug
park, finally,
gests that in this film thefurusato has become both alienated and phantas
matic, in the sense that Ivy defines "phantasm" as "an epistemological ob
ject whose presence or absence cannot be definitely located."18
In this sense, thebathhouse is representative less of thefurusato than of
the complex modernity that has taken over thefurusato and estranged it
from the "authentic Japanese identity"with which it is supposedly linked.
As is the case with both Figal's and Ivy's examples, the bathhouse is not a
simple escape from or rejection of modernity but, as Figal says of the fan
tastic inMeiji Japan, "part and parcel of modernity"19 itself.To the con
temporaryheroine Chihiro, the bathhouse is not only liminal, butmarginal
as well, a defamiliarized realm thatrequires fantastic intervention to intrude
itselfonto her consciousness. The problematic nature of thebathhouse is un
derscored byMiyazaki 's insertion of characters into thefilmwho do not be
long in traditional folklore, most importantly the phantom known as No
Face. This disturbing figure,who becomes a signifierof excess and carnival
gone out of control, suggests a disequilibrium at theheart of the contempo
rary Japanese psyche thatmay not easily be overcome.
Spirited Away uses a variety of narrative strategies to suggest ways to
challenge the disequilibrium it illustrates so vividly. These include what
might be called archetypal approaches to cultural recovery such as recogni
tion, proper identification, spiritual cleansing, and sacrifice in order to re
new the collectivity. In terms of the film's basically upbeat structure, these
come across as successful. But the bathhouse's simultaneous in
approaches
corporation of the carnivalesque and the chaotic suggests that the threats to
the collectivity are not simply outside ones. While Spirited Away's narrative
structure seems to privilege a fairly basic vision of cultural rehabilitation,
inviting its audience to join in a celebration of unique and endearing forms
of Japanese tradition, the film's content, imagery, and ending problematize
and sometimes even undermine such an essentialist vision.

On the one hand, the film is a work of "cultural boundedness" in terms

of Simon Harrison's description of a collectivity thatdefines itself through
its symbolic practices that specifically differentiate the community from
others (in thiscase, theprivileging of thebathhouse and itsassociations with

18. Ivy,Discourses of the Vanishing, p. 22.

19. Figal, Civilization and Monsters, p. 13.

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 Napier: Spirited Away 295

purity).20On the other hand, through the use of the alienating and impure
presence of Chihiro and others, Spirited Away suggests the fundamental
permeability of boundaries, evoking a liminal world of uncertainty, loss,
constantly changing identities, and abandoned simulacra, where old truths
and patterns no longer seem to hold and where the deep-seated desire to re
turnhome may never be fulfilled.
Miyazaki's brilliant use of themedium of animation serves Spirited
Away's complex diegesis particularly effectively.While the story line is
fairly conventional, the film's dreamlike colors and imagery and themes of
metamorphosis, doubling, and theuncanny would be difficult, ifnot impos
sible, to realize in a live-action work. Furthermore, the liminal elements in
the film resonate with the animated medium. "Liminality," Turner's "be
twixtand between condition," is a threshold state (the literalmeaning of the
word is "threshold") associated with aspects of ritual, initiation, and even,
in itspublic setting, carnival, in theBahktinian sense of "a place that is not
a place and a time that is not a time" inwhich one can "don the liberating
masks of liminalmasquerade."21 The liminalworld is disordered and amor
phous and those who enter it,however briefly, are invariably changed by
their sojourn within.
While many ifnotmost of the great texts of all cultures deal with ritual
and initiation, theworld of animation, a medium thatprivileges metamor
phosis and fluidity and explicitly deals with the nonreferential (as opposed
to live-action film or photography), is itself suggestive of a "betwixt and be
tween state" clearly demarcated frommost notions of the "real." At itsmost
creative, as Miyazaki's comment on opening up the brain to create fantasy
suggests, animation can tap effortlessly into the dreamworld of subcon
scious archetypes, allowing its characters free rein to construct new forms
of subjectivity and identity.Unlike the urge towardmimesis in live-action
film, animation can allow a form of reality to appear.
deeper

Traditionally, liminalityhas been associated with both sexes, fromyoung

male heroes such as those described in Joseph Campbell's Hero of a Thou
sand Faces22 who undergo various forms of initiation rites, to theBacchae of
ancient Greece or the shamannesses of premodern Japan who exist for spo

radic periods outside ofmainstream culture.Recently, however, thenotion of

thefemale rather than themale as theconduit into liminalityhas become more
ubiquitous, especially in Japanese culture,with the ascendance of thefigure
of the sh?jo. The sh?jo, as JohnTreat describes her, is a "barely and thus am
biguously pubescent woman" (pubescence itself is of course a clearly liminal

20. Harrison, "Cultural Boundaries," p. 10.

21. Victor Turner, Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors: Symbolic Action inHuman Society
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974), pp. 239, 143.
22. Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (London: Methuen, 1956).

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 296 Journal of Japanese Studies 32:2 (2006)

state),who is attached towhat could well be called a "betwixt and between

culture"?what Treat describes as the so-called "kawaii" or "cute" world
made up of "cousins, boyfriends, and favorite as well as stuffed ani
pets,"23
mals and related paraphernalia such as "Hello Kitty," whose cuteness has
taken on almost iconic significance in the leisure world of young Japanese.
Treat's work profiles theyoung female characters in thewritings of thepop
ular writer Yoshimoto Banana, whom he sees as linked to a dream world of
free-floating nostalgia. Similar descriptions might also be applied to the
writerMurakami Haruki's young female characters who, inworks such as
Dance Dance Dance and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, act as intermediaries
toworlds of transitoryotherness thatcan be both appealing and terrifying.24
While the sh?jo has become a ubiquitous cultural staple in Japanese so
ciety and literatureover the last two decades, she is a particularly crucial
figure in the relatedmedia of anime and manga, both of which contain gen
res specifically devoted to the sh?jo. Treat's article,written in the late 1980s,
discusses treatmentsof the sh?jo figure that seem essentially positive since
they situate the sh?jo as a liberating site of play and joyous consumerism,
offered as an alternative to the pressure-cooker existence of the ordinary
Japanese male's existence. More recently, however, anime and manga have
treated the sh?jo in infinitelydarker and more complex terms, from the bat
tling sh?jo (sent?bi sh?jo) Utena who wants to change theworld inRevolu
tionaryGirl Utena (Sh?jo kakumei Utena, 1977; dir. Ikuhara Kunihiko), to
the haunted, death-ridden figures of Asuka Langley and Ayanami Rei in
Neon Genesis Evangelion (Shinseiki ebuangerion, 1996; dir.Anno Hideaki).25
Perhaps most distinctive of all is Lain, the young heroine of Serial Experi
ments Lain (1998; dir. ABe Yoshitoshi), whose English-language theme
song containing thewords "I am falling/I am fading" hints at a subjectivity
thatmay simply disappear?a condition echoed by Chihiro in an early

23. John Treat, "Yoshimoto Banana Writes Home: The Sh?jo in Japanese Popular Cul
ture," in John Treat, ed., Contemporary Japan and Popular Culture (Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 1996), p. 295.
24. Not only is thefigure of the sh?jo distinctively involved with high and pop culture, young

Japanese women are seen as going through a socially liminal stage which is largely inaccessible
to young men. Researchers such as Satsuki Kawano and Winston Davis have pointed out that
young Japanese women "experience a period of liminality between high school and marriage,
when they participate in 'rituals of refinement' [such as learning the tea ceremony, taking En

glish lessons, and traveling] to prepare formarriage." Satsuki Kawano, "Gender, Liminality and
Ritual in Japan: Divination Among Single Tokyo Women," Journal ofRitual Studies, Vol. 9, No.
2 (1995), p. 68. Although these women are beyond the age usually associated with the sh?jo, the
fact that this initiation period is connected with activities that are essentially pleasurable and not

directly linked to productive economic activity connects them towhat Treat calls the "uniquely
unproductive culture" of the sh?jo. See also Winston Davis, Dojo: Magic and Exorcism in
Modern Japan (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1980).
25. For a recent discussion of the sh?jo in Japanese popular culture, see Pop Culture Cri

tique, Sh?jotachi no senreki, No. 2 (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1998).

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 Napier: Spirited Away 297

episode inSpirited Away inwhich her body literallybegins tovanish in front

of her.
Why thisproblematization of the sh?jo character has occurred is open to
interpretation,but Iwould suggest that ithas to do with an increasing sense
of vulnerability and fragilityon thepart of the Japanese toward theirown cul
ture in the 1990s as theeconomic juggernaut thathad powered Japan through
most of itspostwar years began to sputterand collapse. In this climate of so
cial, economic, and political instability, the iconic figure of a vulnerable
young girl, either fightingback or internalizing various dark psychological
may have had cultural resonance. Furthermore, the lim
problems, particular
inal condition of theyoung girlmay be seen as ametaphor for Japanese soci
etywhich, over the lastdecade, seems tobe increasingly in limbo, driftingun
easily away from the values and ideological framework of the immediate
postwar era. Itmight also be noted thatthe image of theyoung girl evokes cer
tain crucial aspects of Japanese cultural tradition.The tenth-centuryGenji
monogatari, themost important text in premodern Japanese literature, is
dominated by images of young girls on thecusp of adolescence and ends with
a vision of a troubled young girl casting herself into thewaters of theUji
River, another liminal image. In the indigenous Shinto religion, especially be
fore the introduction of Buddhism, shrinemaidens (mik?) had an important
shamanic function as mediators to thegods.
In Spirited Away, Chihiro may be seen as having shamanness-like as
pects as she deals with the gods inside the fantasy bathhouse, mediating be
tween a variety of liminal worlds. Much in the same way Mary Schmidt de
scribes the shaman's initiatory process, Chihiro must confront a world in
which "all is chaos and dismaying juxtaposition. Everything that the child
holds to be true and natural is transformed."26

Chihiro's own liminality is echoed and amplified in the strangeworld of

the bathhouse. The bathhouse itself is a liminal entity, its condition exem
plifiedmost obviously by the fact that itsbusiness revolves around transients,
its fantastic clientele who are always coming and going. Connected also
to theworld of themizu shobai (literally "water business" but in thiscase re
ferring to entertainers and prostitutes associated with themore unsavory
kinds of bathhouses found in red-lightdistricts throughout Japan), the bath
house is socially liminal as well, evocative of the underground aspects of
Japanese society.On a symbolic level, thebathhouse is also associated with
a significant liminal substance, water. Not only is it surrounded by water
(Chihiro has to cross a bridge to get to itand latermust leave thebathhouse
by boat) but, as a bathhouse, its function is of course totally dependent on
water. Not surprisingly,water in its cleansing and purifying function plays a
major role in thefilm.

26. Mary Schmidt, Crazy Wisdom: The Shaman as Mediator of Realities (Wheaton, 111.:
Theosophical Publishing House, 1987), p. 165.

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 298 Journal of Japanese Studies 32:2 (2006)

Other signs of liminality include the architecture of the bathhouse and

thatof its environs, a dazzling bricolage which includes elements ofMeiji
and Tokugawa temple architecturemixed with Chinese restaurant styles and
even, as Shimizu points out, touches of the grotesque visions of Peter
Breughel and Hieronymous Bosch,27 capturing the mix-and-match in
betweenness ofmodern Japan. Furthermore, thebathhouse and itsdenizens
appear at twilight (a liminal period), and some of its inhabitants shift iden
tities (Turner's "liminal masquerade"), suggesting the flux of identity that
characterizes contemporary industrial societies. Finally, as is typical of lim
inal sites, it is a place of ritual and initiationwhere Chihiro loses her origi
nal identityand is forced to undergo a variety of trialsbefore constructing a
new, more powerful form of subjectivity,which enables her to achieve the
purging of the bathhouse in several significant episodes.
Before turning to these episodes, it is worth examining the opening
scenes in detail, as theyestablish some of themost important themes of the
film. Spirited Away begins as Chihiro and her family are on themove from
theirold home to a new one. Lolling dispiritedly in theback of the family's
shiny new Audi, the ten-year-oldChihiro shows no interest in themove, in
marked contrast to the robust and enthusiastic young heroines ofMiyazaki's
earlier Totoro. Furthermore, Chihiro's initial encounters with themagical
otherworld aremarked both by the threateningquality of thatworld and by
her own terrifiedresponse to it,again in notable contrast toTotoro where the
young girls' encounter with a mysterious but essentially benign otherworld
shows them reacting with enthusiasm and confidence. If Spirited Away can
be seen as in some ways a darker updating of Totoro, Chihiro's problematic
character is particularly disturbing, suggesting a presence that is discon
nected not only fromher environment and her parents, but also fromherself.
Insisting on taking a "short cut," Chihiro's father soon gets lost and is
forced to stop the car in frontof a tunnel that leads towhat is apparently an
abandoned theme park.28While Chihiro hangs back reluctantly,clinging to
her impatientmother, the father rushes ahead on foot to explore, ultimately

27. Shimizu, Miyazaki Hayao o yomu, p. 18.

28. The basic narrative pattern of Spirited Away is intriguingly reminiscent of a turn-of

the-twentieth-century novella Koya hijiri (The saint ofMount Koya) by one of Japan's greatest
fantasists, Izumi Kyoka. InKoya hijiri, a young monk on a journey through themountains takes
an "old road" that leads him to a magical valley dominated by an enchantress who turnsmen
into animals. As in Spirited Away, themagical valley may be viewed as a place of resistance to
modernization, a place where the suppressed ghosts of the past present an uncanny alternative
to an increasingly alienating present. (See Susan Napier, The Fantastic inModern Japanese
Literature: The Subversion of Modernity [London: Routledge, 1996].) Spirited Away also
evokes aspects of Greek myths and tales such as The Odyssey (like Odysseus, Chihiro is on a

journey home when her companions are turned into pigs) and the story of Persephone (whose
eating of themagic pomegranate seeds dooms her to stay in Hades six months out of every
year), but the notion of a collective Japanese unconcious emblemized by the fantastic and the
hidden links the film particularly to theKyoka story.

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 Napier: Spirited Away 299

discovering a mysteriously empty but fully operational restaurant from

which emanate tantalizingly delicious aromas. Cutting offChihiro's remon
strations "It's I've got a credit card," the father convinces
by saying, okay.
themother to partake as well, while Chihiro wanders off in frustration.As
twilight falls, she comes upon a massive body of water and suddenly sees
the bathhouse looming in frontof her, at which point she also encounters a
mysterious young boy (whom the audience later finds is named Haku and
who works forYubaba, the old witch who runs the bathhouse), who warns
her to leave immediately.
Upon returning to the restaurant,however, Chihiro finds thather parents
have turned intoenormous pigs who grunt and fall insensibly on thefloor be
side her.Running away inhorror, she discovers thather own body is starting
to vanish in frontof her eyes, a literal embodiment of disconnection. Justat
thepoint when her body has almost completely faded away, she is saved by
Haku who gives her amagical food thatreturnsher to corporeality.Haku also
tellsher thattheonly way of rescuing her parents is to ask forwork at thebath
house and accept whatever task is given to her. Although terrified,Chihiro
does as she is told,finally convincing Yubaba to take her on, even though the
bathhouse is technically off limits tohumans, who are looked down upon be
cause of their stench.Her employment comes at a price, however: shemust
relinquish her real name, Chihiro, and henceforth only be known as "Sen," the
firstcharacter inher name. Furthermore, as shewill discover later,her jobs?
cleaning out thefilthiestof the tubs and bathing thefilthiestof the clients?
are themost arduous tasks in thebathhouse, a formof ritualhazing of thenew
comer. Ultimately, however, Chihiro accomplishes these tasks with flying
colors and goes on tomore personal successes as well.
From theopening shots of Chihiro's sullen family in theAudi, Miyazaki
is clearly settingup a contrast between a materialistic and deterritorialized
modern Japan and a more authentic indigenous Japan and doing so in a far
more critical style than anything in his previous works. Not only are thepar
ents shown as dependent on credit cards and imported cars, they are also
completely insensitive to theirdaughter?the mother's only reaction toChi
hiro's fears as theyventure through the tunnel is to tell her not to "cling so
much." They are also obsessed with consumption, either ofmaterial goods or
themagical food. It is appropriate that theirorgy of consumption should turn
them intopigs, who have lost allmemory of theirhuman existence.29

29. Miyazaki insists that the choice of pigs for the parents' metamorphosis was completely

haphazard, insisting that "they could have turned into camels or anything" (program guide,
twelfth page), but this insistence seems somewhat disingenuous given thatMiyazaki had al

ready used a partial pig transformation in his earlier film Porco Rosso (Kurenai no buta, 1992).
Because of the film's emphasis on pollution and consumption, itwould seem that the pig is a

particularly appropriate object of transformation. Since Miyazaki explicitly acknowledges the

influence of Lewis Carroll's Alice inWonderland, itmight further be noted thatCarroll's fan
tasy also contains a scene of a human (in this case a baby) transforming into a pig.

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 300 Journal of Japanese Studies 32:2 (2006)

The parents' fate is especially interestingwhen one considers thatpar

ents andmost other authorityfigures inMiyazaki 'souevre are invariably de
picted with respect, suggesting an unprecedented toxicity between the gen
erations in Spirited Away. The whiny and sullen Chihiro also stands in
strong contrast to virtually every otherMiyazaki child protagonist. Her vir
tual "vanishing," followed by the loss of her name, seems appropriate, given
her rather feeble and negatively defined subjectivity at the beginning of the
film. These early identity threats presage a major theme of the film, the
threat to and the need to recover one's authentic identity.But Chihiro's re
fusal to join her parents in theireating orgywhich allows her to escape their
porcine fate already suggests an innermoral or at least ascetic strength
which will prove useful in her coming trials in the bathhouse.30
The world of the bathhouse initially appears to stand in contrast to the
deterritorialized modern world of consumption and materialism. Its struc
ture and organization, a vertical hierarchy based on teamwork, suggests
prewar Japanese social structures,such as the ie or extended household (as well
as modern Japanese corporations). But the bathhouse may evoke other as
sociations. The fact that it is ruled by a woman who resides at the top of the
bathhouse hints at links to thematriarchal culture of early Japan, out of
which came the indigenous Shinto myth of the Sun Goddess Amaterasu, the
progenitrix of the imperial family. Indeed, as Shimizu points out,31 the film
is dominated by powerful female presences who, besides Chihiro and
Yubaba, also include Yubaba's kinder twin sister,Zeniba, and Chihiro's
confidante, the bath attendant Lin. Even Haku, who is themost important
male in the story, has a appearance and, as
figure suggestively androgynous
the audience discovers at the end, is actually a rivergod and thus associated
with the feminine principle of water.
The predominance of femininitymay also be linkedwith the notion of
the furusato which, as Robertson out, involves a "tenacious
points equation
of females and native place."32 Furthermore, the bathhouse with its associ

ations with water, and its all-encompassing dreamlike quality, may well be
suggestive of theLacanian imaginary, the preverbal statewhen the infant
still sees itselfas one with themother. In this regard, it is interesting to note
thatChihiro's firstventure into the bathhouse involves going down an im
mense flightof stairs into thewomblike furnace room.

30. In fact, Chihiro's initial encounter with liminality almost brings about the opposite
fate to her parents, her literal "wasting away." Her virtual vanishing may perhaps be seen as re
lated to a lack of spiritual and emotional nourishment from her parents. For example, in the
scene in the car, she complains that all her father has ever given her is a "single rose" for her

birthday (in comparison to the large bouquet her friends give her as a going away present).
31. Shimizu, Miyazaki Hayao o yomu, p. 93.
32. Robertson, "It Takes a Village," p. 125.

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 Napier: Spirited Away 301

The bathhouse organization privileges traditionally sanctioned virtues

such as endurance and hard work, as seen by the fact that the only way
Chihiro can rescue her parents is by takingwhatever job is offered toher, no
matter how burdensome. Chihiro must also relinquish her name and iden
tity,suggesting that shemust subordinate herself to the group, another value
connected with indigenous Japanese social structures such as the prewar
ie, or extended family. Finally, the jobs she is given evoke the teachings of
the native Shinto religion, one of whose central tenets is the cleansing of
pollution.
Miyazaki's vision, however, ismore complex than a simple bifurcation
between an emptymaterialist contemporary Japan and an idealized tradi
tional Japan. This is first demonstrated by the fact that the real world of
Japan and the fantasyworld of Japanese tradition are separated not simply
by a tunnel but by a third liminal version of Japan, the abandoned theme
park. The film contextualizes the role of the theme park by having Chihiro's
father tell the family that itmust have been built during the 1990s economic
"bubble" only to be abandoned when the bubble collapsed. It is surely no
accident that the parents' orgy of credit-card approved consumption takes
place inside the theme park, evoking the orgy ofmaterial consumption that
characterized the 1980s and 1990s. The theme park can thus be seen as a
simulacrum of recent Japanese history, a history that, since it is emblemized
by a theme park, is essentially inauthentic, evocative ofAppadurai's "ware
house of cultural scenarios." The fact thatChihiro must go through the
theme park to reach the fantasticworld of thebathhouse suggests thata form
of voyage through the recent Japanese past and an understanding of its es
sentially illusory or phantasmic quality is necessary before she can ap
proach the genuinely fantasticworld of thebathhouse where, paradoxically,
the "real" values of Japan still exist. The bathhouse's rather re
ambiguous

lationship to the theme park is intriguinghere, suggesting that thebathhouse

is also, to some degree, linkedwith thebubble economy.33
Chihiro's lack of interest in the theme park, compared to the enthusiasm
of her parents,may be interpretedas healthy sign,while her near vanishing
and the forced shedding of her name can be seen as part of her voyage to
ward self-renewal and, potentially, of cultural renewal as well. But Chihiro's
furtheradventures in thebathhouse demonstrate thatcultural renewal is not
easily accomplished. The bathhouse too ismenaced by transgressive and

33. JenniferRobertson discusses the boom inmaking "native place theme parks" in the
1980s and characterizes the boom as "responsible for and symptomatic of the loss of cultural
artifacts and practices identified retrospectively as constituting the essence of furusato"
(Robertson, "It Takes a Village," p. 118). Miyazaki has stated that his inspiration for Spirited

Away's abandoned theme park was theEdo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum in the sub
urbs of Tokyo. He may also have derived inspiration for the interior of the bathhouse from

Gajoen, an enormous wedding hall in downtown Tokyo.

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 302 Journal of Japanese Studies 32:2 (2006)

polluting forces.While Chihiro's iconic sh?jo status suggests that shemay

be equated with the Japanese psyche, the bathhouse and its denizens also
clearly represent aspects of the Japanese soul.
This ismanifest in two importantepisodes thattakeplace within thebath
house revolving around the trope of cultural pollution. The firstbegins with
Chihiro receiving the repellent task of bathing amysterious customer known
as the Stink God. Literally an animated pile of brown filth that looks suspi
ciously like excrement (and clearly smells abominable as well), the Stink
God's filthycondition seems almost intractable. It is only when Chihiro dis
covers something that she describes as a "thorn" (toge) and convinces her fel
low bath attendants tohelp her pull itout thatthe condition begins to amelio
rate. It turnsout that the "thorn" is a rusted bicycle handlebar which is in turn
attached to various other pieces ofmanmade junk. As the group pulls more
forcefully,thepile of pieces ultimately becomes untangled and theStinkGod
is revealed to be a river spirit,finally freed from thepollution and detritus of
modern life.Assuming the visage of a n? mask of an old man (okina), the
spirit intones "That's good!" and disappears in an arc of shimmeringwater,
having thankedChihiro by giving her a magical food.34
This scene is significant in a number of ways. First, ithas obvious ritu
alistic aspects?Chihiro as the "new girl" is forced to deal with an immense
and unpleasant task at which she succeeds brilliantly, earning the approval
of her fellow bath attendants and helping to develop her own confidence,
symbolized by thegiftof the rivergod. At one point in the cleansing process,
she herself is plunged into the filthybath water, hinting thatChihiro needs
to confronther own impurities in order to grow and ultimately transcend the
liminal state.

But the scene is also crucial as a form of cultural commentary. Simon

Harrison has suggested that "discourses of cultural pollution" are one way
of constructing cultural identity by representing the group identity as
"threatened by invasion and replacement by others."35 Initially Chihiro her
self is the invader with her "human stench" but, by acquiescing to the dic
tates of the group, she begins to be accepted and ultimately integrates into
her new collectivity. The Stink God also appears as an invader at thebegin
ning, itsfilth and odor threatening everything the bathhouse represents. Its
successful cleansing becomes not only a rite of purification but an exercise
in recognition and correct identification.

34. Kiridoshi describes this food as a "dumpling" (dango) (Kiridoshi Risaku, Miyazaki

Hayao no sekai [Tokyo: Chikuma Shinsho, 2001], p. 326). Like the rice balls Chihiro eats in a

subsequent scene, dango are a homey food linked to Japanese traditions such as flower view
ing. The foul-tasting dango thus can be seen as a wholesome alternative to the consumption

patterns of Chihiro's parents and No Face.

35. Harrison, "Cultural Boundaries," p. 13.

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 Napier: Spirited Away 303

The fact that the reidentifiedgod then takes on thevisage of a n? mask, a

signifierof Japanese high cultural tradition,makes the equation between the
environment and the Japanese psyche very clear and also suggests a spiritual
element.36The sacralization of the river is part of Shinto doctrine which sees
thepotential for the sacred in all things,but it is interesting thatChihiro refers
to the bicycle handlebar as a "thorn," a word suggestive perhaps of Christ's
crucifixion or at least of martyrdom in general. In fact, in a commentary
on Spirited Away, Miyazaki specifically states that,"I really believe that the
rivergods of Japan are existing in thatmiserable, oppressed state. It isnot only
the humans who are sufferingon these Japanese islands."37 Despoiled by
modern civilization, the riverhas become a sacrifice to consumer capitalism,
another vision of matter out of place embodied in the detritus clogging
the river.

We may read the scene with the river god as a successful attempt at re
covery on a variety of levels. It suggests cultural renewal by the fact that the
threatenedpollution is not only cleansed away but is found to contain within
it a symbol of traditional Japanese culture, the n? mask. On a sociocultural
level, this success is underlined by views of thebath attendants cheering and
waving fans with the Japanese rising sun imprinted on them. Finally, on a
mythic level, the episode's structureofmisidentification followed by reve
lation,while typical ofmany archetypal myths concerning a disguised god,
is also evocative of a specific Japanese miracle story inwhich theEmpress
K?my? bathed a thousand lepers to discover that the final one was the
Buddha in disguise.
While theepisode of the Stink God, although initially carnivalesque and
chaotic, ends on a note of cultural reaffirmation and containment, the sec
ond narrative involving cultural pollution is farmore disturbing. This is the
story of No Face (Kao Nashi), the black-garbed, white-visaged phantom
whom Chihiro finds hovering outside in the rain (another liminal element,
as isNo Face's ghostly quality itself) and invites into the bathhouse. Like
the river god, No Face is also originally misidentified but in this case in a
positive fashion since Chihiro believes it to be one of the bathhouse guests.
While the creature seems initially kindly disposed (at least to Chihiro), it
soon takes on a threatening role within the bathhouse. Voraciously hungry,
the creature tempts thebath attendantswith gold pieces to bring itmore and
more food, growing in size and developing a sharp set of teeth, thusbecom
ing a literalmonster of consumption even to thepoint of swallowing several
of the bath attendants.

36. As theater, n? is also a liminal art formwhose dramas usually take place on the bound
aries between the spirit and the human worlds. These dramas often revolve around problems of
misidentification and a need to work through issues from the past, not unlike some of the
themes in Spirited Away.
37. Miyazaki Hayao, Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (program guide), thirteenth page.

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 304 Journal of Japanese Studies 32:2 (2006)

No Face is perhaps themost intriguing character in the film.Originally

intended tobe in only one scene (when Chihiro passes iton thebridge to the
bathhouse), its role was expanded enormously when the original screenplay
for Spirited Away was deemed too long. The creature is exemplary, there
fore, of an unplanned element from Miyazaki's unconscious.

Characterized by emptiness and absence, No Face reminds us of John

Treat's statement that "the idea of emptiness, both as one associated with
sh?jo culture and Japanese postmodernity in general, is probably, alongside
commodity, the key term in contemporary Japanese cultural criticism to
day."38 Kiridoshi has described it as a figurewith the defeatist characteris
tics of the contemporary world, possessing no real sense of self and unable
to communicate effectively.39Voiceless, itmust swallow others in order
to speak, and it lives only to consume, evoking Gilles Deleuze and F?lix
Guttari's point about the "primitive territoriality"of food.40 On the one
hand, its emptiness and desire seem to signify the contemporary soul, but its
increasingly grotesque body suggests a returnof repressed Japanese tradi
tion in the form of themonstrous.
As with the Stink God, Chihiro is called in to deal with the incipient
chaos, although this time her presence is demanded because of her special
relationship toNo Face and her perceived competence in handling the crea
ture,evidence that she has already progressed considerably in her initiatory
process. In fact, she does live up to expectations, first chiding No Face for
itsboorish behavior, thus offering ita moral framework that the greedy bath
attendants had failed toprovide.When thatfails, she gives ithalf of themag
ical food that the rivergod had given her and which she had hoped to use to
transformher parents back to normal. The subsequent scene inwhich the gi
gantic No Face, having eaten themagic dumpling, races through the bath
house, regurgitatingboth food and bath attendants, is a tourde force that is
both comic and grotesque, a nightmarish vision of excess unprecedented in
any previous Miyazaki film. Chihiro's ability to contain this excess (she not
only calms down No Face butmanages to lurehim away from thebathhouse
to help rescue Haku) attests to her increasing empowerment, both in terms
of confidence and inmoral and spiritual growth, since she is brave enough
to stand up toNo Face and self-sacrificing enough to offer him themagic
talisman.

Both the episode with the Stink God and the one with No Face may
be read as examples of trial and initiation which Chihiro successfully

38. Treat, "Yoshimoto Banana Writes Home," p. 301. Also see Shimizu, Miyazaki Hayao
o yomu, pp. 75-77, for a discussion of No Face as a symbol of modern humanity.
39. Kiridoshi, Miyazaki Hayao no sekai, p. 325. He also quotes Miyazaki's comment, "No
Face is in all of us" (p. 325).
40. Gilles Deleuze and F?lix Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature (Minneapolis:
University ofMinnesota Press, 1986), p. 19.

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 Napier: Spirited Away 305

overcomes by expelling unclean matter from the collectivity.Chihiro herself

clearlymatures in these scenes to thepoint where her next trial, the rescuing
of Haku fromZeniba, is one she takes on independently. From thispoint of
view, the two episodes be viewed as traditional narra
might rite-of-passage
tives inwhich an individual's development is equated with the renewal of cul
ture as a whole.

Other aspects in these scenes, however, hint at a less seamless trajectory

of spiritual and cultural recovery on the part ofMiyazaki's cultural imagi
nary.These aspects includemost importantly thegrotesque and scatological
nature of each episode, specifically the Stink God's link to excrement, No
Face's link to vomitus, and both entities' connection to excess consumption.
The episode with the Stink God deals with this in an essentially reassuring
manner. It is not the riverdeity's fault that ithas become so polluted by the
excess of capitalist consumption as to take excretory form and, when it re
turns to its true nature at the end of the bath, its statement "That's good"
clearly suggests catharsis.41Even so, the bathhouse denizens' helpless hor
rorwhich initially greets thegod's visual and olfactory excess, while played
for comedy, lends the bathhouse an aura of vulnerability and even power
lessness, surprising in a place whose major function is todeal with pollution
of all kinds.
Compared to the successful resolution of theStink God, No Face's story
is a farmore problematic one. A creature whose excessive appetite brings
chaos to the collectivity, itmay be seen as exemplifying what David Larsen
writing on South Park describes as "an excremental ethic of obese con
sumption and non-utilitarian expenditure."42Animated only by desire?for
food and for Chihiro's presence?the creature's monstrous orgy of con
sumption followed by r?gurgitation is trulymenacing. Miyazaki makes No
Face all themore grotesque by capturing these scenes from a low angle,
making the creature appear even more overwhelming as itsdistended black
body fills the screen, shoveling down food fromwhat appear to be mon
strous platters.
Thus, what might have been a carnivalesque banquet scene, on the lines
of the festive denouement of the river god's crisis, becomes a genuinely
transgressive vision of consumption without pleasure or meaning. If the
river god may be seen as representing a soiled but still potentially vibrant
traditional Japan,No Face suggests a Japan that is out of control, lacking in
subjectivity,unable to connect with others and animated only by the empty
urge to consume. Other infantile characters exist as well, most notably
Yubaba's grotesquely gigantic baby who also ismotivated only by themost

41. For more on the subject of the cathartic aspect of this scene, see Kiridoshi, Miyazaki

Hayao no sekai, p. 323.

42. Larsen, "South Park's Solar Anus," p. 65.

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 306 Journal of Japanese Studies 32:2 (2006)

basic of desires, suggesting that transgressive consumption is already part

of the bathhouse culture.
No Face's orgy of excess is ultimately contained,43 allowing the film's
finalmessage to be one of somewhat guarded optimism for the survival and
even perhaps the renewal of traditional culture. The agent of this renewal is,
of course, Chihiro, transformedfromher earlier apathetic and dependent self
(not, perhaps, so differentfromNo Face in certain respects) at thebeginning
of thefilm to a figure ofmoral authority and courage by the end.
Intriguingly,Chihiro's own metamorphosis is also linked to consump
tion, although in a positive manner. We may remember that it is her eating
of themagical food object given her by Haku that rescues her from vanish
ing at the beginning of the film. Unlike the food thatNo Face voraciously
consumes, however, it is clear fromChihiro's pained expression as she eats
it that themedicine is bitter and hard to swallow. The notion of bad-tasting
food as redeeming is echoed in two later scenes. In thefirst,she compels No
Face to eat half of themagical dumpling she had previously tasted and found
bitter in order to stop his eating rampage, and in the second she restores
Haku to life (and to human form) by forcing the other half of the dumpling
down his throatas he lies unconscious. The message is obvious: it is through
swallowing unpleasant medicine rather than indiscriminate gorging that the
characters can and change.
develop
But the "medicine" does not always have to be unpleasant. An even more

of positive occurs in a scene that, while early

significant episode consumption
in the film, plays an important thematic role in the overall narrative. This is
the scene immediately subsequent toChihiro's firstencounter with her par
ents as pigs under Yubaba's care: she and Haku have returned to the bath
house garden where Haku gives her back her clothes and also returnsa going
away card fromher friends thathas her real name on it.Haku tellsChihiro that
shemust never forgether real name (which she had been on theverge of do
ing) or shewill never returnhome. At thispoint Chihiro begins tobreak down,
clearly indespair. Haku alleviates her distress, however, by bringing out some
onigiri (rice balls) and tellingher toeat thembecause "I've put a spell on them
tomake you feel better."As tears roll down her cheeks, Chihiro consumes one
rice ball afteranother.The next scene shows her back at thebathhouse hard at
work so the viewer is clearly expected to believe that the onigiri have suc
cessfully revived her.
While the carnivalesque scenes of No Face's grotesque consumption
bring a postmodern quality to Spirited Away, this quiet scene of Chihiro

43. No Face's fearsomeness and intensity are in some ways reminiscent of a traditional

figure from Japanese horror known as the "avenging spirit." This figure has been recently reap
a current popularity is also sug
propriated in contemporary Japanese horror films, genre whose
gestive of a society whose sense of cultural identity is in crisis. See JayMcRoy, ed., Japanese
Horror Cinema (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2005), pp. 3-4.

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 Napier: Spirited Away 307

eating the rice balls has a tremendous emotional depth, demonstrating the
privileging of "traditional" values thatforms theheart of the film and gives
it its fundamentalmoral and emotional framework.44The fact that the scene
begins with Chihiro's acknowledgment that she has almost forgotten her
name reminds the viewer of her vulnerability to the erasure of identity,a re
minder of themore graphic vision of her near vanishing at the beginning of
the film. Like themagic food thatHaku gives her in that scene, the onigiri
also help her on theway to recovering a fuller subjectivity.
Henrietta Moore says, "forgetting and remembering are forms of aes
theticjudgment since theyconnect towhat the individual feels is good or de
sirable about themselves,"45 and the fact thatChihiro's remembering is con
nected to the onigiri is crucial to thefilm's theme of cultural recovery.At its
most basic, theonigiri is clearly linkedwith home and, specifically,with the
mother: rice is a staple part of the obent? or lunch box every Japanese child
brings to school every day, and onigiri are particularly popular on family pic
nics and school expeditions. As Anne Allison points out, the obent? is not
simply sustenance but an importantcultural construct, evocative of amother's
love for and effortson behalf of her young child.46We remember Chihiro's
lack of nurturance from her real mother, whose only response toChihiro's
reaching forher in the tunnel is to admonish her not to "cling."
It is only in the fantasyworld of thebathhouse thatChihiro begins to re
ceive proper nurturance. Even more important, thisnurturance is intimately
connected to a culturally specific food. The onigiri ismade of rice, the staple
of theJapanese diet,with a few flavored items added to it such as salty salmon
or umeboshi (sour plum) and is oftenwrapped in seaweed. All these items of
course not only evoke specific Japanese tastes but the Japanese topography of

seas, rivers, and rice paddies. Simple and homey, the onigiri connotes the

furusato. As such, it links with both authentic and specific memory (of
Chihiro's mother and home), and amore free-floating sense of nostalgia that
the Japanese audience at leastwill inevitably perceive in culturally specific
terms. The thus becomes a classic of
onigiri-eating episode representation
cultural boundedness, constructed as a vision of the restorative powers of eat

ing pure, homey food to stand as counterpoint to the scenes of excess con
sumption thatfollow.

44. I have been told that this scene is a favorite among Japanese audiences and also that

plastic onigiri were a popular merchandise tie-in with the film.

45. Henrietta L. Moore, "Sex, Symbolism, and Psychoanalysis," differences, Vol. 9, No. 1
(1997), p. 70.
46. Anne Allison, "Producing Mothers," inAnne Imamura, ed., Re-Imagining Japanese
Women (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), pp. 145-46. It should be noted that
Allison is speaking specifically about the obent?, a more elaborate lunch that is eaten daily at
school. Chihiro's more casual onigiri would be more likely to be eaten on a school expedition
but I believe the same association with mother and security would apply.

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 308 Journal of Japanese Studies 32:2 (2006)

It should be emphasized, however, that this scene occurs early in the

movie and that the onigiri in the scene are as much about absence as about
presence. Chihiro is alone, temporarily orphaned, and seemingly powerless.
Like modern Japan itself, she seems constituted by loss and amnesia and
surrounded by others with similar characteristics, most notably Haku who
also cannot remember his real name. It is finally up toChihiro to create pres
ence out of absence, not only to recover her own vanishing self but also to
help others recover theirown genuine subjectivities.
The rest of themovie traces her success in this endeavor, which she ac
complishes in a variety of ways: unearthing the true spirit of the river god,
giving No Face a structureand a role, allowing Yubaba's baby to explore a
kinder and cuter subjectivity (significantly,Yubaba cannot recognize her
transformedchild until thefilm's denouement), restoringHaku to life (and at
thefilm's end remembering Haku's real name and identitywhich is thatof a
river spiritwhom she had encountered when very young47), and recognizing
the truekindness and gentleness inYubaba's alter ego, Zeniba. The film's de
nouement revolves around one final form of recovery through recognition,
the scene where Yubaba gives Chihiro a final trial to see if she can recognize
her parents among amass of pigs. That Chihiro passes the test,correctly rec
ognizing thather parents are no longer among thepigs, attests toher new clar
ityof vision and signals that shemay now begin thevoyage home.
Although the ending of thefilm is definitely upbeat, it is still somewhat
ambiguous. It is clear that Chihiro, in archetypally heroic fashion, has man
to contain and, at least for the moment, to resolve the postmodern ex
aged
cesses of excess consumption and cultural pollution thathave threatened the
cultural boundaries of the bathhouse. But it should be noted thatNo Face,
themost openly transgressive entity in thefilm,while apparently a changed
character, is left separate from theworld of the bathhouse, as if its exces
sive nature might still return as a threat. Intriguingly,Zeniba's house and
surroundings, where No Face is left, have their own theme-park-type
qualities?this time suggestive of a European fairy tale, evoking yet another
form of simulacrum.

Moreover, in contrast to the resolutely upbeat endings inMiyazaki films

such as Kiki's Delivery Service, Nausicaa of theValley of theWind, and the
recent Howl's Moving Castle, Spirited Away ends on an uneasy note of
closure. It is uncertain how much Chihiro will retain fromher adventure in
the liminal world, since Miyazaki leaves it deliberately vague as to how

47. Once again, water plays an important part in the recognition scene with Haku. Not
only is Haku himself a river spirit, but Chihiro now remembers that she encountered "him"
when, as a child she fell in his stream and thewaters carried her to safety. Thus, Chihiro her
self is seen as associated with water and itmay be that her recongition of Haku is also another

step in her recognition of herself since Haku can be read as her male anima, without whom she
is not a complete person.

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 Napier: Spirited Away 309

much she will remember. The filmmakes it obvious thather parents have
learned nothing from their experience. Spirited Away ends with the family
once again in a liminal state, still on themove toward theirnew home.
The Japanese cultural critic,Azuma Hiroki, has criticized Spirited Away
forbeing an example of what he calls (following theEuropean philosopher
Alexandre Kojeve) the "animalizing postmodern." By thishe means that the
characters have no interior life and are motivated only by animalistic crav
ingswith no connection to thehuman community. Certainly No Face, most
of the bathhouse attendants, and Yubaba and her baby can be described in
thatway, at least initially.But by the film's end all these characters can be
seen as acknowledging and even enjoying the need for human connection.
Azuma also insists that the reasons behind Chihiro's psychological trans
formation are not adequately presented, arguing that"the protagonist's inte
rior difficulties are never described"48 and thatcompared to otherMiyazaki
protagonists, Chihiro never comes to grips with her own problems and that
her troubles are resolved simply through fortunatehappenings.
I hope this essay has given sufficientevidence that in factChihiro's trou
bles are memorably presented, although often through visual or nonverbal
signs, such as her virtual fading away at the beginning of the film and her
tearfuleating of the onigiri afterher traumatic encounter with her parents in
thepigsty. Iwould also argue thathermaturation process has been well doc
umented in the episodes described above inwhich she gradually transforms
frompossessing only animalistic cravings to a genuine desire for connection
as amember of the Japanese community and a willingness tohelp revive the
collective health of the community.
The film leaves uncertain whether such cultural recovery outside of the
fantasyworld of thebathhouse is possible. On theone hand, Chihiro, on go
ing through the tunnel once again, is still "clinging" to her mother. On the
other hand, the viewer is distinctly shown that she is stillwearing the talis
manic hair tie thatZeniba and her friendswove for her.We might suspect
thatbothMiyazaki and Chihiro have "opened the lids" of theirbrains to al
low them entrance into the deep structuresof theunconscious or the imagi
nary.What happens in these dark parts of the brain may not always be con
sciously remembered but may serve at some level to promote action in the
real world.
Rosemary Jackson describes Martin Heidegger's vision of the "un
canny" as "empty space produced by a loss of faith in divine images,"49 and
a loss of faith?in itself ifnot in the divine?does indeed seem to charac
terizemodern Japan. But in the uncanny world of Spirited Away, the space

48. Azuma Hiroki, "Sen toChihiro," interview inMainichi shinbun, December 25, 2001,
p. 2.
49. Rosemary Jackson, Fantasy: The Literature of Subversion (London: Methuen, 1981),
p. 63.

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 310 Journal of Japanese Studies 32:2 (2006)

is dizzyingly full.What may have begun as a dip intoMiyazaki's own un

conscious seems to have become, ifwe can judge by thefilm's popularity, a
voyage that has resonated with the collective unconscious of millions of
Japanese. It is also clear that, inChihiro, Miyazaki has created a character
who, when confrontedwith absence and despoilation on both personal and
cultural levels, ultimately rises to the challenge. Henry Jenkins has said of
the temporary state of childhood that it "becomes an emblem for our anxi
eties about the passing of time, the destruction of historical formations, or,
conversely, a vehicle for our hopes for the future."50While Spirited Away
ultimately refuses to provide a totally reassuring vision for the future,
Chihiro's trajectory from near dissolution to arguable empowerment enacts
at least the potential for cultural recovery.

University of Texas at Austin

50. Henry Jenkins, The Children's Culture Reader (New York: New York University
Press, 1998), p. 5.

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