My research question was “What aspects of Spirited Away look Japanese?” In this project, I will discuss the architecture in the movie as well as Shintoism, the Japanese religion that the movie is based on. I chose to do my final project on Spirited Away because I grew up watching it and it is a prominent example of Japanese film in popular culture. Hayao Miyazaki, the artist and writer behind the movie, used his experiences growing up in Japan and Japanese culture to create his fantasy world in the film, taking inspiration from Shintoism, different buildings he visited, and societal problems in modern-day Japan.
As mentioned before, Spirited Away is based on an ancient polytheistic Japanese religion called Shintoism, meaning “way of the Gods” in Japanese. Shinto has been a major influence to Japanese culture since ancient times. Even today, the religion has a large following in Japan with over 100 million people. Two of the main aspects of Shintoism are harae, or cleanliness, and worship of ancestors and spirits, called kami. When a loved one dies, they are believed to continue living on as a spirit, protecting their living descendants. Shrines are built to honor these ancestors. In addition to spirits of ancestors, anything in the natural world, whether it’s animate or inanimate, has a spirit in Shintoism. There are kami for objects such as rivers, the Sun, trees, and mountains. Examples of kami in Spirited Away include Haku (a river kami) and the radish spirit. Even the soot leftover from coal in Spirited Away have spirits.
If you have ever been to Japan or are familiar with its culture, you might have noticed their emphasis on cleanliness and avoiding contamination. It is commonplace for sick people to wear masks (even before the pandemic), shoes are almost always taken off in the home, and taxi doors are opened automatically to avoid touching them. This is because of harae and Shinto’s significant influence on Japanese culture. Harae connects to the movie as most of it takes place in a bathhouse. In the more modern forms of Shinto, there is also an emphasis on protecting the environment from climate change. Throughout the movie, the bathhouse is faced with multiple “attacks” of contamination. When the main character, Chihiro, first entered the spirit world, the residents were offended by her human scent and avoided her as much as possible, fearing her stench would contaminate their surroundings. Later on in the movie, when a river spirit that was severely affected by pollution enters the bathhouse wanting to get cleaned, again, the bathhouse residents tried their hardest to avoid contamination by him and tasked Chihiro with taking care of him. The river spirit had so much garbage attached to him, that it was confused for a stink spirit by the residents. This scene is also an example of modern Shinto’s emphasis on protecting the environment. Like most other places around the world, Japan’s rivers are extremely polluted (such as the Yamata river), and it has been a prominent social issue in Japan for decades.
Spirited Away is known for its bright and cheerful art, especially when it comes to its architecture. Based on the Edo Tokyo Museum, the bathhouse shares many similar features. Visiting the museum often, Miyazaki viewed it as a magical safe haven. When asked in an interview where his vision for the bathhouse being a place for the gods came from, he said: “It’s the same as when we go to hot springs. Japanese gods go there to rest… I was imagining such things as I made images (of the film).” In Japanese Architecture, there are eight elements that make it distinct from other architecture. Some of these elements include: wood, roofs, engawa, and a relationship with nature. The edges of roofs in Japanese architecture are traditionally more dramatically extended over the edge. They are designed this way because of the intensity of Japan’s summer rainy season, to protect windows from the rain.
In Shinto, there is a belief called kamikakushi, which is the death or disappearance of a person after they have upset kami. Kamikakushi literally translates to “Spirited Away.” in Japanese. In fact, the Japanese title of the movie is “Sen and Chihiro’s Kamikakushi.” In the beginning of the film, both Chihiro and her parents experience kamikakushi after her parents eat the kamis’ food. As punishment, the parents are turned into pigs and all three of them are banished to the spirit world. Kamikakushi is mostly relevant in Shinto mythology as opposed to real-life practices, so it makes a great plotline for one of Miyazaki’s otherworldly films.
For my textual sources, I used various texts from JSTOR as well as the Association for Asian Studies about Shintoism and Hayao Miyazaki’s artistic and thought processes behind the film. These texts provided me with relevant information about not only Shintoism, but its influence in Spirited Away as well. In the Napier and Newell texts, the authors focus less on the artistic aspects of the movie but about how the movie’s focus is on Shintoism, specifically harae. Before reading these texts, I passed off the stink spirit example as just another example of simple harae. Napier explains how this scene, among others, were commentaries on some of the issues facing Japan today, particularly pollution.
My visual sources include examples of kami in Spirited Away as well as various pictures of some of the architecture in the movie. To compare the architecture in the film to Japanese architecture in real life, I also included a picture of a real structure in Japan – the Shuri Castle. I included two pictures of the exterior of the bathhouse – one of the structure in its entirety and the other close-up in order to analyze its small details. I included a picture of the bathhouse’s interior to analyze its Japanese features as well.
Image 1
Source: Arch Daily
This picture features the exterior of the main bathhouse where most of the film takes place. To the ordinary person’s eye, this building looks Japanese, but why? A major aspect of Japanese architecture and interior design is a connection with nature. The bathhouse is surrounded by a beautiful vast sea and tons of trees. It also features multiple engawa, which are similar to porches. The addition of the engawa is another way to incorporate the outside and it’s nature with the inside of the building. As for the building itself, It features many typical characteristics of Japanese architecture, such as O-daruki (extensions under the corners of a roof), katōmoto (a bell-shaped window exterior), and its color, red, which is common in Japanese architecture is it is believed to ward off evil spirits.
Image 2
Source: Imgur
This is a closer look at the exterior of the bathhouse. Under the roof, you can see many wooden beams organized in horizontal rows, called taruki. In addition, there are lots of gold details such as the O-daruki, the leaves under the katōmoto, and the gargoyle. In Japan, gold is common in architecture as a symbol of wealth.
Source: Art Station
This is part of the interior of the main bathhouse. Like the exterior of the structure, the ceiling is red with ornaments of gold. The floors and walls are made out of wood or bamboo, which is a feature in most Japanese architecture as Japan is prone to natural disasters such as tsunamis and earthquakes, and they can absorb water well and withstand seismic activity. The walls also feature trees in the traditional Japanese art style, going back to the connection with nature in Japanese architecture.
Image 4
Source: Screen Rant
This is a radish spirit, an example of a kami in Spirited Away. Even though in the real world, radishes aren’t sentient beings, they still have a soul in Shintoism and therefore live in the bathhouse. Kami of different animals live in the bathhouse too, such as ducks and frogs. As mentioned before, humans can also be kami. The human kami are ancestors of the people living in the real world. The human kami and the non-human kami coexist in the bathhouse.
Image 5
Source: Aberdeen’s Kitchen
Even objects as insignificant as soot from coal come alive in the spirit world. The existence of the soot sprites highlights the extreme diversity of the kami. Despite being so different from each other, Haku the dragon river spirit, the humans, and the animals are all considered kami in Spirited Away.
Image 6
Source: Wikipedia
Location: Okinawa
This is a picture of Shuri Castle in Okinawa. The exteriors of Shuri Castle and the bathhouse in Spirited Away share many common characteristics distinct to Japanese architecture. You can see some of these characteristics that were mentioned before, such as its red color, gold accents, and katōmato, a bell-shaped window exterior.
Bibliography
Chart, David. “Kamikakushi & Kamikakurë.” Mimusubi, January 20, 2021. https://www.mimusubi.com/2019/08/21/kamikakushi-kamikakure/.
“Edo-Tokyo Open Air Achitectural Museum.” Atlas Obscura, March 30, 2017. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/edotokyo-open-air-architectural-museum.
“The Eight Elements of Japanese Traditional Architecture.” Toki, January 27, 2023. https://www.toki.tokyo/blogt/2020/4/8/eight-elements-of-japanese-architecture#:~:text=They%20are%20important%2C%20not%20only,hogyo%20(square%20pyramidal%20roof).
HOLTOM, DANIEL CLARENCE. “Shintoism.” In Great Religions of the Modern World, edited by Edward J. Jurji, 141–77. Princeton University Press, 1946. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt183prdb.8.
“Interview: Miyazaki on Spirited Away.” The Hayao Miyazaki Web, n.d. http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/interviews/sen.html.
“The Japanese House: The Basic Elements of Traditional Japanese Residential Architecture.” Meguri Japan, September 11, 2021. https://meguri-japan.com/en/knowledge/20210627_1697/.
Kidder, J. Edward. The art of Japan. London: Century, 1985.
Kitasawa, Shinjiro. “Shintoism and the Japanese Nation.” The Sewanee Review 23, no. 4 (1915): 479–83. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27532848.
Le, Linh. “Shinto Religion in Japan: The Ultimate Guide.” Sakura, December 13, 2022. https://sakura.co/blog/shinto-religion-in-japan/.
Lisina, Elena. “Symbolic Colors in Japan.” Japan Travel, January 5, 2020. https://en.japantravel.com/blog/symbolic-colors-in-japan/61005.
Moser, Zachary. “The Japanese Folklore That Inspired Spirited Away.” ScreenRant, March 5, 2023. https://screenrant.com/the-japanese-folklore-that-inspired-spirited-away/.
Napier, Susan J. “Matter out of Place: Carnival, Containment, and Cultural Recovery in Miyazaki’s ‘Spirited Away.’” Journal of Japanese Studies 32, no. 2 (2006): 287–310. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25064646.
Newell, Charles. “The Films of Hayao Miyazaki: Shinto, Nature, and the Environment.” Association for Asian Studies, June 16, 2023. https://www.asianstudies.org/publications/eaa/archives/the-films-of-hayao-miyazaki-shinto-nature-and-the-environment/.
“Six Elements of Japanese Architecture.” J Life International, October 15, 2021. https://jlifeinternational.com/blogs/news/six-elements-of-japanese-architecture.
“Traditional Japanese Houses (Saobuchi-Tenjo).” Suikoushya, January 21, 2021. https://suikoushya.com/2021/01/21/saobuchi-tenjo/.
