Understand the River Spirit episode and connect it with the theme of ecology (rivers polluted with trash) and with Sen's growing reputation.
The god mistaken for a stinker
The River Spirit and the mountain of trash
A monstrously smelly guest comes to the bathhouse — a lump of mud and slime dripping with sludge. Everyone thinks he's a “stink spirit” and shrinks from him. Serving him falls, of course, to Sen.
Sen draws him an enormous bath. Noticing that something is stuck in his side, she pulls, with all the workers helping, and drags out mountains of trash: a bicycle, fishing gear, boards, scrap. When the filth washes off, the guest turns out to be no stink spirit but a powerful River Spirit (a river god), buried under human trash and gone wild from the filth. Clean again, he flies off with a joyful roar and leaves Sen a magic bitter dumpling, a medicine (nigai dango).
This is Miyazaki's direct statement about ecology: rivers that people have turned into dumps lose their divine power. The scene itself grew out of the director's own experience — he took part in cleaning up a trash-filled river. After this, even those who used to laugh at Sen came to respect her.
Lesson notes
The River Spirit and the mountain of trash
A monstrously smelly guest comes to the bathhouse — a lump of mud and slime dripping with sludge. Everyone thinks he's a “stink spirit” and shrinks from him. Serving him falls, of course, to Sen.
Sen draws him an enormous bath. Noticing that something is stuck in his side, she pulls, with all the workers helping, and drags out mountains of trash: a bicycle, fishing gear, boards, scrap. When the filth washes off, the guest turns out to be no stink spirit but a powerful River Spirit (a river god), buried under human trash and gone wild from the filth. Clean again, he flies off with a joyful roar and leaves Sen a magic bitter dumpling, a medicine (nigai dango).
This is Miyazaki's direct statement about ecology: rivers that people have turned into dumps lose their divine power. The scene itself grew out of the director's own experience — he took part in cleaning up a trash-filled river. After this, even those who used to laugh at Sen came to respect her.