Death and life, leaving and staying: puppets on a stage. Once the single string snaps, free and unencumbered.
Preface: Metaphor Lays Down Its Arms
Hayao Miyazaki’s long battle began in 1982, when Nausicaä, unable to wash away her enemies’ blood, took refuge in her teacher’s arms and sobbed.1 Twelve years later, now grown, she ordered the God Warrior to destroy the Crypt of Shuwa and the hope of a new humanity, passing on a revelation lying shattered on the ground2 to Princess Mononoke.3 And so, when the battle finally ended in 1997, when Ashitaka and San returned the Forest Spirit’s head to the sky, there were no tears left in their eyes.
The four films that followed were all conceived in the relief Miyazaki felt after laying down his arms and returning to a quieter life. This is also why Hideaki Anno prefers Spirited Away to Princess Mononoke: he said the latter strained too hard, leaving viewers no escape from its atmosphere of drawn swords and taut bowstrings. Perhaps it was precisely this ease of mind that gave Miyazaki such effortless command of his craft. That rascal Anno’s remark can also be read another way: compared with Princess Mononoke, the metaphors in Spirited Away are freer, more exuberant, less bound by convention.
Near the end of Gödel, Escher, Bach, Douglas Hofstadter writes that the subtlety of metaphor resembles that of a chord: too close or too far apart, and there can be no resonance.4 To reveal truth, one must first conceal it. The beauty of metaphor lies in neither drawing too close nor drifting too far away—yet the solemnity of Princess Mononoke leaves imagination struggling for breath. We see Ashitaka’s journey closely bound to the history of human struggle. The Forest Spirit is less a “symbol” of nature than nature “itself,” gazing innocently at Lady Eboshi, who is likewise humanity itself. Imagination is anchored to a single interpretation, powerless to break free. Individual destinies are reduced to mouthpieces for ideas; metaphors degenerate into signs, flying through a vacuum of abstraction.5
By contrast, Spirited Away is “murkier”: we cannot see to the bottom. It is also more “freewheeling,” as though making fun of itself. Even as each character serves as a metaphor for “society,” each retains an individuality that interpretation cannot assimilate. They are not merely abstract signs: the story gives them life, and life, through its unpredictability, pulls the story back to reality. The moment we see the soot sprites, we know they symbolize wage slaves: identical faces, identical work. They get angry when the newcomer blocks their way; when the newcomer can share their workload, they sit back and let her do it.
If conveying an idea were the only purpose, the job would already be perfectly done. But Miyazaki says no—the man always likes to tell a story without planning it out first. He goes on to portray the soot sprites’ innocence through a host of “extra touches”: they hide Chihiro’s shoes and then return them; they play house with Boh after he has been turned into a mouse. These inconsequential details flesh out the characters while, of their own accord, destroying the dictatorship of signs. At this point the signs grow murky, grow opaque; like Chihiro after swallowing the pill, they begin to return to reality. They become metaphors, and metaphors can never be fully explained or exhausted in words. If this essay has a purpose, it is to “stir up and muddy” those seemingly transparent metaphors, so that reality can settle out.
I. The Tragicomedy of Growing Up
Chihiro’s growth is plain for all to see. When she meets Haku, ominous rain clouds pile up over the bathhouse; by the time they part, a wave of a folding fan has long since dispersed the oppressive air, leaving a cloudless sky. Yet if we stop at the fairy tale’s ending and leave the prince and princess to live happily ever after, every tragedy will sooner or later begin again. Do not forget Haku’s choice to remain at the bathhouse, his Orphean injunction not to look back, or the fallen leaves heaped on the car’s hood. Everything whispers to us of tomorrow’s misfortunes. This is the tragicomedy of growing up: fourteen-year-old Chihiro will eventually become an adult and collide head-on with her parents. This time, might it not be Chihiro’s own turn to become a pig?
Perhaps Miyazaki really did say these words: “Life has not yet made them complicated. They obey and revere adults with innocent hearts, believing wholeheartedly in the simple, old-fashioned principles taught by their parents.” Perhaps, in Spirited Away, our young heroine does indeed find salvation through this “almost instinctive” tenacity. But is there not an inherent contradiction here? Growing up—growing into an adult—but adults are symbols of evil. So when, exactly, did we turn bad? When, exactly, were “the precious things switched for something else”?
In Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, the void taunts Nausicaä savagely:
“Look at what’s at your feet! At your own feet! Among these corpses are people you killed! Are you still going to pretend you don’t know? That’s absurd! You can’t go on pretending to be an innocent little child! The Ohmu will no longer forgive you! You’re just another foolish, filthy human being! You’re a human adult! A woman who has inherited the blood of a cursed race! Go on wandering in torment with the dead!”
In Miyazaki’s dreams, growing up has a particular tragic meaning. It separates two diametrically opposed worlds: one bears all of humanity’s goodness and innocence, the other all its evil and filth. The narrow “tunnel” connecting these worlds is precisely “ignorance of humanity.” Growing up, then, means becoming conscious of the sins one bears—realizing that it was Chihiro herself who brought No-Face into the bathhouse—and then being mercilessly driven out of childhood’s Eden.
Children are destined to be expelled from Eden. This is a fate everyone must face, a curse from God. No one can stay holed up like Boh in a room piled with toys, because eventually even ignorance itself will become a form of evil. Boh grabs Chihiro’s arm and says, “If you go outside, you’ll get sick too. Stay here!” Chihiro snaps back, “Staying here is what would make me sick!” Ironically, neither of them is wrong. Outside the nursery lies the bathhouse: a great pot of bathwater thick with flakes of skin and sludge, a dye vat steeped in every kind of desire. And inside? Things are scarcely better. A false sun shines on false animals. The room is a hunting ground set aside for children to vent their brutality. Chihiro is caught in the gap between these two worlds, unable to move. Disgust with humanity reaches its peak in this scene. A phantom from the past begins to eat into the dream world and, in tears, burns down Miyazaki’s last fortress against reality: the innocence of childhood.
II. Beneath No-Face’s Mask…
The strangest turn in the film must surely be No-Face’s pursuit of Chihiro all the way from the bathhouse to the enchanted forest. This pathological fixation is often understood as a desire to “repay the girl’s kindness,” yet too much remains unexplained. Why, for instance, is Chihiro initially the only one who can see No-Face? Why does he follow Chihiro, of all people, into the bathhouse? In fact, No-Face has already repaid her kindness in the scene at the counter, when he brings her a whole basinful of tokens for medicinal baths. Yet this does not quench the fire of his desire; it only makes it burn more fiercely.
Another interpretation holds that No-Face symbolizes greed: his nature is to tempt people wherever he goes, making them suffer the consequences of their own actions. But Chihiro tells us that “No-Face only turned bad after coming to the bathhouse,” while his good nature is evident in how well he behaves on the train.
I puzzled over this endlessly, until I happened to remember a remarkably similar scene in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. In the abyss within an Ohmu’s heart, Nausicaä encounters her former mortal enemy, Miralupa, now reduced to skin and bones by the ravages of the void. She faces a difficult choice: should she save her enemy and take him to the end of the forest? Selm tries to dissuade her: “This forest exists within your heart. Those who come from darkness should return to darkness.” Nausicaä objects: “There is darkness in my heart too. If this forest is the forest within me, then he [Miralupa] is part of me as well.”
Stripped of his powers, Miralupa is as docile as a child. He spends the journey curled up at Nausicaä’s feet, then vanishes, laughing, on a boundless plain. This episode reappears, unchanged, in Spirited Away. Restored to his original form, No-Face quietly accompanies Chihiro on her journey. At the end of the forest he finds a new home and decides to stay and help Zeniba—undoubtedly another form of deliverance.6
Now, if we accept this analogy, the mystery of No-Face’s true identity resolves itself: lift that uncanny mask, and we will be astonished to see Chihiro’s own face. No-Face is the darkness within Chihiro. They travel together, inseparable.
III. The Fall of Childhood
We all know that Miyazaki sought to make Chihiro an ordinary child, in both appearance and character. This also means she must have the “annoying traits” of children. Accustomed as we are to the doctrine of original sin, we may take this for granted. For Miyazaki, however—and indeed for Studio Ghibli as a whole—it was a painful act of self-betrayal. From Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind to Princess Mononoke, not a single child had made even one mistake. Even Kiki’s loss of direction had to be blamed on society for “not knowing how to behave.” Our little heroes were on the right path from the outset. They could see horizons adults could not see, hear revelations adults could not hear. They symbolized the golden age of myth and carried all of Rousseau’s dreams of nature. But is this really normal?
Only after Princess Mononoke ended all the battles at a stroke did Miyazaki first awaken from his dream and begin to reckon with his former dogmatism. Chihiro is the result of that reflection, but she is not perfect. The girl has received only one single flower, for her birthday, and only one bouquet, on parting from her friends. She therefore has the right to be willful, the right to wheedle and make a fuss with her parents. These are the privileges children enjoy by virtue of their ignorance—just as no one would blame little Mei for innocently wanting to find her mother on her own. The story carries on without a ripple until Boh appears. In the darkest possible way, he fills in Chihiro’s missing childhood. When Boh fusses and refuses to go outside, we seem for a moment to return to the beginning of the story, watching Chihiro complain to her parents with disgust written all over her face. That nursery is Chihiro’s old school; it is also the childhood we refuse, kicking and screaming, to leave behind. In scolding Boh, Chihiro also scolds her former self. And so Miyazaki returns to the kind of characterization he does best. He erases the uncertainty from Chihiro’s eyes and turns conviction into rails running straight ahead beneath her feet. Reflection stops here. Miyazaki betrays his promise and retreats once more into his naïve fantasies about children.
Of course children make mistakes. Why, then, do we all refuse to face this when watching Miyazaki’s films? Because—because the camera deceives us, guiding us with great skill. From My Neighbor Totoro and Castle in the Sky to Kiki’s Delivery Service, the camera steadfastly follows boys and girls from behind. This is a first-person perspective disguised as a third-person one; everything proceeds in orderly fashion within the dictatorial empire of the Same (Levinas, Totality and Infinity). Children have no need to reflect on themselves, because every move they make has a reason designed to support it. Only when Chihiro scolds Boh do we first witness childhood itself scrutinized from a third-person perspective: the face of the Other, symbolizing infinity, manifests itself within the self’s home in the Same. With this epiphany, an ethical relation is born. In shame, the children accept the Other’s challenge and voluntarily relinquish their power to bring everything within totality. This is the beginning of sociality, and the beginning of growing up—only in the adult world do children become evil because they are enclosed within the Same.
On reflection, the irony is sadder still. When night first falls, the adult world shatters Chihiro’s fantasies in the guise of a night parade of a hundred demons. Those supremely bizarre figures represent the greatest evil a child can comprehend. Yet once Chihiro has grown up, everything is reversed in her eyes: the people at the bathhouse are dear to her, while the greatest evil takes the hateful form of Boh, that “overgrown baby.” Adults are the very model of evil in children’s eyes, and children are likewise the very model of evil in adults’ eyes. This fact makes a joke of so-called “growth,” for it amounts to nothing more than abandoning one evil and choosing another. At this point, the foundation supporting the dream—the innocence of children—shatters. The two once diametrically opposed worlds have now been brought onto the same plane. Both are innocent, and both are evil. It is not hard, then, to understand why Miyazaki would betray his own promise and elevate Chihiro from an ordinary girl into another Nausicaä. Go on dreaming: only dreams offer an escape from cruel reality…
IV. Polluted Wings
Although Miyazaki shows only a moment of sincerity in Spirited Away—the sincerity of recognizing that salvation is nowhere to be found—it is precisely from that moment onward that the shadow of the adult world begins to spread across the fairy-tale world. The signs appear in those polluted wings.
With Princess Mononoke as the dividing line, the imagery of “birds / wings / flying machines” falls from grace in plain sight. Back in Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Nausicaä’s flying machine is still the wings of the prophesied messenger, announcing the approach of a thousand-year purification. In Castle in the Sky, the levitation stone brings Pazu and Sheeta together, though it is also the key that activates an ancient weapon. In Kiki’s Delivery Service, the broom is the magical implement Kiki uses to help the townspeople. By Porco Rosso, the airplane has come to embody masculine romance and to serve as a banner of freedom that refuses all compromise with fascism. Even when Miyazaki senses that something is wrong, he strives to keep these misgivings buried in darkness. But with Spirited Away, a tear opens in the seal. Yubaba turns into a monster with a human head and a bird’s body, circling the night sky and watching for lost souls. Though legends of human-headed birds can be found in many places, Miyazaki’s model is clearly the Siren of Greek myth. Consider Haku’s description of Yubaba: “She’ll look for a chance to tempt you into saying you want to go home and don’t want to work.” This evil figure with a human head and a bird’s body returns in Howl’s Moving Castle. It is the hideous form Howl does not want Sophie to see, and it also hints at war spreading unchecked in places we cannot see.
Wings were once children’s most innocent desire, a symbol of childhood. Yet they fell from their original white into deep blue, as though soaked in Ohmu blood. By The Wind Rises, Miyazaki can no longer deceive himself and his audience by saying that airplanes can be innocent, that their allure can be separated from war. This amounts to telling us that even children are not innocent, because ignorance and pretending not to know are both accomplices to evil. When Chihiro, refusing to accept reality, trembles and shouts “Disappear!” at her knees, it is not the world before her that disappears, but Chihiro herself.
Even as a child, Jiro could smell the death that airplanes spewed out, but he did not want to think about it. When those ministers of war laid out their requirements for his airplanes, he kept himself aloof and turned a deaf ear. He also knew that keeping Nahoko by his side would worsen her illness, yet he still refused to heed Kurokawa’s advice. This has to be called a form of selfishness. Yet it was a selfishness Nahoko tacitly accepted; she even wished for it—to show her husband her most beautiful self, then vanish with the wind. All along, Jiro struggled in anguish with these two contradictions. Though it was all destined to fall apart in the end, he ultimately chose to do everything he could, to give it his all.
Pointing to the meadow where he and Jiro first met, Caproni says, “This is our kingdom of dreams.” Jiro replies with self-mockery, “It feels like hell to me.” He had always known that he was making instruments of slaughter for executioners the world over; he had always known that his wife was dying day by day because of him. Even so, he chose to live with evil. This is Miyazaki’s “growing up,” and the revelation Nausicaä entrusted to San:
“Why did those people never realize it? Purity and impurity together are what we call life. Suffering, tragedy and folly cannot be eliminated even in a pure world, because they are part of humanity. Even amid hardship, human beings still have joy and radiance.”
Growing up, then, is never a matter of “choosing” to grow up; we are “forced” to grow up. Without warning, we plunge headlong into the bathhouse and see the evil that fills the world. Without warning, we veer from our original path and are spirited away from “reality.”
V. A Way Out of Being Spirited Away
Here, metaphor once again reveals its murkiness. Beyond symbolizing the helplessness of growing up, the process of being “hidden away from reality” is far more complicated than we imagine. Through the uncanny terror of being “spirited away,” Miyazaki lays down three laws for children. First: those who do not work can only end up as pigs for others to slaughter at will. Second: those who do not eat the bathhouse’s food will become transparent and finally disappear. Third: under society’s battering, people will forget their names, losing what they once treasured without even realizing it. Like four prison walls, these four metaphors lock us inside society with no means of escape, echoing Rousseau’s famous words: “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.”7 Children are forced into society and put the chains on themselves. We silently repeat: we must contribute to society, or that merciless machine will crush us. We mock ourselves: keeping our own virtue intact while standing apart will not work, because sustenance can be found only within society. Yet once they accept these two premises, boys and girls become cogs, one after another, their edges worn smooth, their faces hidden, their names stripped away.
Is this not a cycle with no way out?
…
A conductor who is nothing but a shadow moves quietly through the carriages: “Now, please wait calmly in your seats. The train that sank to the seabed is about to surface.”
If the preceding pages have done everything possible to heighten the darkness of Spirited Away, it was also to clear the stage for “light.”
The Master of the Crypt roars at Nausicaä: “You are dangerous darkness! Life is light!”
Nausicaä replies: “No! Life is the light that flickers in darkness!”
It can flicker only in darkness, so light is always murky; yet it is precisely this murkiness that soothes lost souls. Miyazaki can never be beaten down, because he can always recover light from the deepest darkness, just as Nausicaä, wounded all over, can still smile at the earth. If the earth is polluted, why not live with the pollution? As long as we go on living, hope will come in time. Even if we become soot sprites, we will not lose the power to play. Here the preface’s foreshadowing pays off: if metaphor is murky, it is because the reality it reflects is itself murky. The adult world and the fairy-tale world have been brought onto the same plane. If the shadow of the adult world is destined to obscure the fairy-tale world, then the light of the fairy-tale world is also destined to illuminate the adult world. This is the salvation Chihiro brings to the bathhouse.
Afterword: All the Beings of the Bathhouse—Names, Labor, and Mutual Aid
To the ancients, “names” held mysterious power. With his spell of “the things themselves,” Plato held posterity in the palm of his hand and toyed with it; in The Golden Bough, Frazer recorded several kinds of magic that worked through names; Gold Horn and Silver Horn of Journey to the West knew that calling the right name could subdue that unruly Monkey King. The account most familiar to people today is probably Natsume’s Book of Friends. The whole story goes back to that irresponsible grandmother: she wrote the names of the spirits she defeated in a book, thereby gaining the power to control them. Spirited Away, meanwhile, turns names into magic that children can use against the adult world.
Miyazaki would not, of course, bother to spell out the meaning. Just as everyone has a name of their own, each person must also recover “the meaning of names” for themselves. Some say it is “the self,” some “dreams,” some “the simple, old-fashioned principles.” If these have anything in common, it must be something that can be lost in society.
And when we turn to society’s most direct means of exploitation, we have to talk about working as a wage slave. Yubaba’s “sweatshop” clearly alludes to something beyond itself. Perhaps more interesting, though, is to see Zeniba as a representative of a smallholder economy. Her self-sufficient utopia deep in the forest changes Boh and gives No-Face a place to belong. It would undoubtedly be absurd to infer Miyazaki’s philosophical position from this, but we can plainly see the two sides of labor in Spirited Away.
Chihiro’s constant fear along the way undoubtedly helps give labor its oppressive cast, and Yubaba’s terrifying, fire-breathing figure intensifies it. By any reckoning, her search for work in the bathhouse feels forced on her, with no alternative. Chihiro works hard to rescue her parents; Yubaba amasses wealth wherever she can to make Boh happy. This forms another pair of symmetrical metaphors: children are forced to work to support their parents—the parents become hostages; parents are forced to work to support their children—the children become hostages. Those dearest to us are abducted by this society and held hostage. This is why labor so often carries something of a spirit of righteous self-sacrifice, something Miyazaki presumably admires as well. In this metaphor, people are cursed to become animals not merely because they are greedy, but still more because they are selfish. They have little they care about, so naturally they have no need to work; they simply spend their days guarding their own little patch. Society, however, consists of the ties between people, so they are bound to be banished and become animals. This brings us to the other side of labor: mutual aid and love for one another.
If dreaming alone brings ridicule, then invite everyone to join in the dream.
Looking back over the whole story, it is not hard to see that the bathhouse is transformed precisely because Chihiro brings her own name with her when she is spirited away. The butterfly begins to beat its wings; the wind slowly gathers strength and blows away the clouds above the bathhouse. It is because Chihiro remembers her own name that she can find the strength to help the River Spirit. The River Spirit washes off the sludge and gives Chihiro the dumpling in thanks; only then can No-Face regain his original innocence and goodness, and Haku break Yubaba’s curse. Because Haku has broken the curse, he can bring Yubaba to her senses and make her see the falseness around her. Because Yubaba rediscovers what she holds dear, she allows Haku to go and meet Chihiro in that distant place from which there is no return journey. And only after Haku overcomes countless difficulties and reunites with Chihiro does he finally recover his own name from his beloved.
It is Chihiro’s arrival, then, that breaks the bathhouse’s lifeless equilibrium. And once we realize that the order of an entire society can be sustained so easily by one little girl’s sincerity, why should we, as adults, fear the road ahead?
Editor’s note: Must we really pin our hopes on the innocence and tenacity of a little girl (as a metaphor, of course), or is this the only light in the darkness? Can we still find other paths? I think we can.