When I watch Hayao Miyazaki “Spirited Away” I not only get tingles of excitement from the amazing illustration and animation but the cultural richness of his storylines. Based on his IMDB profile he has a “trademark style” to take people and experiences from his real life and incorporate them into his animations. Solely focusing on his film “Spirited Away” there are many cultural ties that are evident throughout the film. For example, in the first scene, Chihiro’s dad takes a wrong turn into the woods and the car passes by these little stone shrines. Chihiro spots them and questions to her mother what are they? Her mom kindly responds “those are where the spirits live.” Traditionally Japan is an animist religious society. Animism is defined to be a belief that every piece of nature has a soul. In that belief system is said that everything from the trees that stand around us to the rivers that flow between them have a spirit. The cultural meaning behind the story and the style of drawing in its own right is considered traditional Japanese animation. Looking at Hayao Miyazaki and the traditional cultural aspects of Japan, it is then recognizable the genius behind his animated films.
Hayao Miyazaki is known to be a naturalist. It is evident in the work that he produces and the words that he speaks in “behind the scenes” interviews on varieties of his works he reveals the meaning behind many of his stories. In the “Spirited Away” bonus feature DVD Studio Ghibili opens its doors to the world. The studio, which is based in a small suburban town outside of Tokyo Japan, still practice traditional hand-drawn animation and it has only been recently that the studio allowed CG or computer generated graphics be involved in some of its projects. According to IMDB the project that do indeed have computer generated effects only make up about 10% of the overall project. The animators still practice traditional methods of hand drawing the animations to put the full feature together.
The traditional traits of that “Spirited Away” contains, are prevalent throughout the film. Looking at the storyline and the illustrations you can see that the film is based on traditional Japanese culture. Bathhouses are found in Japan with the same type of ornamental decoration that is found in the movie. The main customers of the bathhouse are those of the spirits. It is obvious that this bathhouse would be crowded because in animism, every element of this earth has a soul or a spirit. The most common and appreciated spirits in the movie were river spirits. In the special features DVD Hayao Miyazaki reveals that the first apparent “stink spirit” that Sen apparently tended to was actually a polluted river spirit. In real life Hayao Miyazaki helped clean up a local polluted river and as they cleaned out the bottom of the water bank things like bicycles and garbage came out like one clear string as he and the team continued to pull and clean the river. This hidden message that this “river spirit” could no longer fly or function because of the polluted elements that weighted it down to fly freely in its dragon form.
The bathhouse served as a spirit world oasis for the spirits who were being “beat up” by humans in the real world. Coming to the bathhouse in their home realm of the spirit world, the spirits relaxed, recharged, and rejoiced when they finished their time at the bathhouse. Even Haku, who was later discovered to be the lost river spirit with no formal home in the “human world” because he was the spirit of the now cemented over Ohaku River. He was so easily brainwashed and over powered by Yubba because he has no more formal purpose as a spirit in the human world. Though the love and the determination that Chihiro had through the whole traumatic experience she had with loosing her parents and being trapped in the spirit world, she herself grew as a person and helped Haku and the spirit people around her realize that not all humans are bad. Like they all assumed in the beginning when trying to trap her and just turn her into a pig and get rid of her and her family forever.
What makes Hayao Miyazaki films so powerful and beautiful at the same time is his attention to detail. From storyboard to character design to musical background Miyazaki builds his imaginary world from the ground up allowing his viewers to have an experience. IMDB collected a lot of great quotes from this animation master and the one that speaks to me the most is:
“When I think about the way the computer has taken over and eliminated a certain experience of life, that makes me sad. When we were animating fire some staff said they had never seen wood burning. I said, "Go watch!" It has disappeared from their daily lives. Japanese baths used to be made by burning firewood. Now you press a button. I don't think you can become an animator if you don't have any experience” - Hayao Miyazaki
This quote directly relates to my peers in my generation and profession because immediately, we are taught the animation medium on the computer and not in a traditional manner. Do we really appreciate what the computer creates for us? For a lot of us I do not believe so because we have not stepped backwards in time to learn the historic craft of hand animation to appreciate the tools that we have in current times, which is the computer.
Works Cited:
"Hayao Miyazaki - Biography." The Internet Movie Database (IMDb). Web. 24 Nov. 2010. <http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0594503/bio>.
Spirited Away. Dir. Hayao Miyazaki. Studio Ghibili-Walt Disney Company, 2001. DVD.
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