Transcript Spirited Away - Clark University

Japanese Identity as Represented in
Miyazaki’s Spirited Away
Aliza Belcourt and Eve Rabinowitz
Japan: Facts and Figures
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2nd largest economy
4th largest importer
5th largest exporter
1639 – 1854 - Closed Country period, ended with
US navy forced entry, led to Meiji Restoration
 1868 – rulers wanted to use Western style free
market
 1940 – invaded French Indo-China, frowned upon
by rest of world, resulted in US placed oil
embargo
Japan: Facts and Figures Cont.
 1941 – attack on Pearl Harbor, declared war on
US, UK and Netherlands
 1945 – US atomic bomb on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, later that year Japan agreed to
unconditional surrender
 1947 – Pacifist constitution; renounced right to
declare war
 1960-1980 – period of economic growth
 1990s – decline in economy, “lost decade”
Western Influence and References
in Spirited Away
 Character appearances
 Audi, Adidas
 Western Architecture
 “Finish what you
started, human”
 Live pigs and dead fish
 Time cards
Western Representations through Yubaba
 Top of hierarchy, called
“Head Honcho”
 Watches over the
bathhouse
 Office is decorated in
Western style
 Very greedy
 Spoils her oversized child
Loss of Identity
 Chihiro turns invisible
 “Sign your name away”
 Chihiro becomes Sen
 Koreans in Japan forced to
take Japanese names
 Haku does not know his real
name
 Job becomes identity
 Human smell from food
Loss of Identity: No Face
 No name, masked face
 Unable to speak until
transformation
 Manipulated by
surroundings
 Overtaken by greed of
bathhouse
 Tries to make Chihiro
greedy
 Upon leaving bathhouse,
returns to former self
 Warning for Japan
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Greed
 “Don’t worry, you’ve got Daddy
here. He’s got credit cards and cash”
 Willingness to take what is not
theirs, thought they could as long as
they had money
 Gold is Yubaba’s top priority
 Stink/river spirit
 “Something precious to you has
been replaced”
 Mayhem at prospect of gold
 Chihiro is only not greedy
character
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Baby as Japan
Baby as US
 Closed Country
mentality
 Fear of things that are
different
 Took outside
influences to realize its
problems and to
change
 After seeing error of
his ways, became a
pacifist
 Only communicates
through threats
 Fear of things that are
different
 Wants to make
everyone the same as
them
 Spoiled
 Oversized
Japan and the Environment
 Environmental issues include:
 Air pollution
 Waste management
 Poisonings from industrial waste
in 1950s and 1960s
 Chronic arsenic poisonings in 1970s
 Largest importer of fossil fuels
 Leaders in developing environmentally friendly
technology
 5th largest emission emitters in the world
 Under treaty obligations to reduce CO2 emissions and
to take other steps to curb climate change
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Pollution and the Environment
 The bathhouse is a place
where spirits come to be
cleansed
 The Kohaku River was
destroyed leaving Haku
homeless and confined to
spirit realm
 Leads to questions about
other spirits in the bathhouse
- how they got there, where
they came from
 Polluted river spirit thought
to be stink spirit
The Confused National Identity of Japan
in Spirited Away
 As a result of being a closed
country for 200 years, Japan does
not know where it fits in with the
rest of the world
 Freud: you have to identify who
you are not in order to identify
who you are