Bring together the main themes of “Spirited Away”: name and memory, food and greed, work and growing up, ecology, and the world of kami.
What this film is about
Five keys to its meaning
— NAME AND MEMORY. Yubaba takes away names to enslave people. To forget your name is to forget who you are and never get home. To remember a name (your own and Haku's) is to win back your freedom. Name = memory of yourself.
— FOOD AND GREED. The parents stuff themselves and become pigs; No-Face devours everything in sight and swells into a monster; the workers fight over fake gold. Greed strips people of their identity and dehumanizes them. What saves Sen is that she wants nothing she doesn't need.
— WORK AND GROWING UP. Listless, fussy Chihiro becomes brave Sen through honest work and caring for others. In Miyazaki, people grow up not through magic but through work and responsibility.
— ECOLOGY. The River Spirit, buried under human trash, and Haku, the spirit of a river that people filled in and destroyed. In Miyazaki, nature is alive and sacred, and people are in its debt.
— THE WORLD OF KAMI (Shinto). The bathhouse is a place where gods and nature spirits (kami) come to rest. The film is steeped in the Japanese belief that everything — rivers, stones, food — has a spirit. And there are almost no “villains”: the characters are complex, able to change, and keep their word.
Lesson notes
Five keys to its meaning
— NAME AND MEMORY. Yubaba takes away names to enslave people. To forget your name is to forget who you are and never get home. To remember a name (your own and Haku's) is to win back your freedom. Name = memory of yourself.
— FOOD AND GREED. The parents stuff themselves and become pigs; No-Face devours everything in sight and swells into a monster; the workers fight over fake gold. Greed strips people of their identity and dehumanizes them. What saves Sen is that she wants nothing she doesn't need.
— WORK AND GROWING UP. Listless, fussy Chihiro becomes brave Sen through honest work and caring for others. In Miyazaki, people grow up not through magic but through work and responsibility.
— ECOLOGY. The River Spirit, buried under human trash, and Haku, the spirit of a river that people filled in and destroyed. In Miyazaki, nature is alive and sacred, and people are in its debt.
— THE WORLD OF KAMI (Shinto). The bathhouse is a place where gods and nature spirits (kami) come to rest. The film is steeped in the Japanese belief that everything — rivers, stones, food — has a spirit. And there are almost no “villains”: the characters are complex, able to change, and keep their word.