The film “Spirited Away” is 20 years old: deciphering the meanings

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"Harry Potter" - the hidden meaning of the film and book

The incredibly beautiful and equally crazy cartoon “Spirited Away,” created by the master of anime Hayao Miyazaki, fascinates with a string of fabulous transformations and at the same time puzzles. Only Miyazaki knows what the cartoon “Spirited Away” is actually about, but, nevertheless, many of the images of this extraordinary anime can be deciphered, which means that it is quite possible to understand the meaning of “Spirited Away” a little deeper. And I will help you with this.

Why did Chihiro turn into Sen?

Why is this animated film called “Divine Hiding” (in the Russian version – “Spirited Away”)?
The main character's name is Chihiro, she is a ten-year-old girl. According to Miyazaki's director Hayao, he chose her because today's ten-year-olds are "quite tenacious."

You can also say about her that she grows up with parents belonging to the middle class. This can be seen in the all-wheel drive Audi, in the paper bags from an expensive department store, and in the fact that at a relatively young age they were able to afford to buy a separate house outside the city. Both the parents and Chihiro are selfish, impolite, and prone to immediately gratifying their desires. They can be considered stereotypical Japanese from a period of economic prosperity when many enjoyed life and ignored traditional Japanese spiritual culture.

Chihiro ("thousand fathoms") turns into Sen ("thousand") due to the fact that Yubaba, the owner of the bathhouse, takes away her real name. Yubaba subjugates Chihiro by taking away part of her name.

Here we can recall the first book about Harry Potter, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”: when Harry, trying to save the philosopher’s stone from Voldemort, says “The one you know who” in a conversation with Dumbledore, Dumbledore names Voldemort. Mort and convinces Harry to use the correct words for what is called, since the fear of naming something by its name makes people afraid of themselves.

Names are very important. In historical examples we see that the appropriation and deprivation of names is associated with relations of dominance and subordination.

In Japanese tradition, words are believed to have spiritual power, kotodama. The idea is that certain words have special powers, and by speaking them you can influence the real world in different ways. We can say that the idea of kotodama still lives in active creativity in the creation of tanka and haiku poems in Japan.

The main themes covered in the cartoon "Spirited Away"

Many people know the cartoon “Spirited Away”.
What topics do the creators touch upon, and what is the cartoon itself about? A very colorful and slightly crazy cartoon “Spirited Away” was created by the master of anime Hayao Miyazaki. The cartoon puzzles and fascinates with fabulous events.

What is the true idea of the cartoon, only its creator knows. But most of the images can be decoded, so if you try, you can get to the very essence of the anime.

The cartoon touches on the following main topics:

The power of name and word;
Growing up and entering adulthood;
No division into good and bad.

"Divine Hiding" and Journey to Another World

The expression "divine concealment" (kamikakushi) refers to the sudden disappearance of a person without any clear reason. Since no one knows the reasons for the disappearance, this act is attributed to the deities, or by transferring responsibility for the disappearances to the gods, people sought to come to terms with reality.

Most often, children disappeared, and parents were very afraid of this. In reality, the problem was that in the old days, cases of human trafficking were not uncommon in Japan, so abduction could often be behind such disappearances. It seems that the memory of these fears has not been erased even after a very long time.

What happened to Chihiro in the concepts of religious studies corresponds to a trip to another world. It's about moving from the real world to another, passing through it and returning to the real world. In the history of mankind, we can see descriptions of visits to heaven and hell - these are typical examples of such travel.

In this film, a journey to another world begins when the father turns onto a dirt road by mistake. This development of the plot, when they take the wrong road and end up in another world without noticing it, is very reminiscent of Dante’s “Divine Comedy”.

However, Chihiro's journey is not as extensive as Dante's - instead she finds herself in a surprisingly well-depicted spiritual world, typical of Japan.

What does a person's name mean?

The sorceress changes names when making a deal with her. For what? The name contains information about our capabilities, about the program - the purpose with which we came to Earth. This is our “passport” in the Universe. By changing a person's name, a person's destiny is changed. Yubaba gives shortened names, as if depriving the souls who came to her of their capabilities.

But she is not able to destroy their memory completely: as soon as the soul remembers its real name, potential abilities are restored. Our name gives us answers to the questions: - who am I, what am I and why am I here?!!

Old tree and lightning

The first thing the family notices when they mistakenly turn down the wrong road is the old cryptomeria sugi against the blue sky, the torii gate leaning against it, and the stone shrines stacked underneath it. All this is connected with the Japanese belief in gods.

If we look closely at the old cryptomeria, we will see that the top of the trunk is broken. Similar old trees are found in shrines in every part of the country; such trees grow in the vicinity of Kamigamo Shrine in Kyoto and in Kasuga-taisha Shrine in Nara. These old trees are very important, as evidenced by their location on the territory of the sanctuaries.

What is the importance of these trees? The fact is that in ancient times these trees were considered the place where the deity descended. What deity are we talking about? This is lightning, that is, due to the lightning strike, the top of the tree breaks, this is the tree on which the deity has descended, and therefore it is a very sacred creature that was treasured.

The Old Testament also says that when Moses received the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, thunder struck, and in Indian mythology Indra was originally the god of thunder. However, in both Abrahamic and Indian religions, the origin of the deity from the god of thunder has already been forgotten - God was separated from natural phenomena and raised to the level of an absolute entity that surpasses human understanding.

Spirit of garbage dumps

Next came the spirit of the garbage dumps. There was a strong stench coming from him. Rin and Sen tasked him with cleaning it.

Sen coped with the task. Faceless helped her. When the client was cleansed of all dirt, it turned out to be a strong Spirit of the Rivers. In gratitude, he gave the savior a magic cake that removes witchcraft. The Spirit of Rivers is an image of the planet’s information channel, which is polluted with all sorts of incorrect aggressive information that incites people’s hatred towards each other, interethnic hatred, which gives rise to wars. The ether shapes our thoughts, so it is necessary to cleanse it. “If the mind grows cold, nature becomes dead; if love dries up, the oceans dry up.”

Countless Japanese Gods

However, in Japan, the relationship between the gods and nature, including lightning, persisted for a long time. One confirmation is that the number of gods is indicated using the counting word “pillar” (柱, hasira) - for example, in Kasuga-taisha they worship “five pillars”, that is, five deities. The reason is that the deities were considered to descend to earth from heaven in the likeness of a pillar. The "Sacred Pillar Festival" Ombashira Matsuri at Suwa-taisha Shrine in Nagano Prefecture, considered the oldest shrine in Japan, is the best example of such performances.

For the same reason, the Japanese recognized and valued the spiritual significance of trees. When Buddhism came to Japan from the continent, the first Buddhist statues were made from camphor wood (kusunoki), since this wood was considered “divine” (kusu - 神々しい, divine, ki - wood), and for the same reason Totoro, who was probably , the spirit of the sacred tree in the film My Neighbor Totoro by Miyazaki Hayao also lives in the camphor tree of the shrine.

In relation to Japanese gods, the characteristic expression used is yaoyorozu, “countless” (八百万, lit. “eight hundred tens of thousands”). In this way, Japanese beliefs are completely different from monotheism. In Spirited Away, the countless gods are shown many times, and in the bathhouse Chihiro ends up in, gods are everywhere.

It is worth noting that these gods are not very powerful. Perhaps the god of some river, full of dirt and cleansed thanks to Chihiro's resourcefulness, after which he flew home, was a rather large god, but the rest look like ordinary people - moreover, most of them arrive in groups.

This perception of deities can also be called traditionally Japanese. Of course, some gods, like Amaterasu-oomikami, considered the ancestor of the emperors, seemed very powerful, but many of the deities that ordinary Japanese are accustomed to are nearby and have very sociable characters, like Totoro, that is, the boundary between deities and people is very arbitrary.

Purgatory

With the help of the boy Hako, she was able to cross the bridge that separates the world of illusions from purgatory. We met Faceless on the bridge. This is the soul of a person who has lived his life in some empty dreams, instead of concrete actions. He wasn't even allowed into purgatory. In purgatory - the baths of Aburaya, negative qualities are worked out that prevent the soul from returning to Eden, where it was born, that is, home. He hasn’t even accumulated any negativity: an empty soul. “You are a “one-day moth” in your bodily attire. Here is your practical lesson, your homework.” (Monastery “Collection of spiritual poetry”). His soul did not complete his homework.

Hako, assistant to the main sorceress Yubaba, helped Chihiro get to Kamazi's grandfather in the boiler room. Grandfather Kamazi, a spider with three pairs of arms, was in charge of the boiler room. These are the souls of people who try to “keep everything under control.” Here the water was heated and cleaning mixtures were prepared for “washing clients”, that is, a plan for cleansing a specific soul was prepared.

. Grandfather Kamazi sympathized with Chihiro and gave advice: to beg a job from Yubaba, thus “working off” the sin of gluttony of his parents. Purgatory worker Rin—her name means majestic, unfriendly—brought lunch. Kamazi's grandfather asked her to help the girl.

A fusion of animism and advanced thought

Such a perception of deities in religious studies is called animism. Anima means "life" or "spirit". By the way, animation is also a word derived from the word anima. The general idea is that everything in the world has “life” and “spirit”. This “everything” includes stones, mountains and rivers - what is usually considered inanimate, in animism has its own life and spirit.

Animism is often seen as a primitive form of religious consciousness, but in Japan it was absorbed into extremely advanced Buddhist ideas.

Here's a typical example. Monk Kobo Daishi (Kukai) said: “Everything that consists of the five basic elements - earth, water, fire, wind and emptiness, sounds, telling about the truth... The Ultimate Buddha Dainichi-nyorai (Sanskrit: Mahavairocana) is the whole world, such as he is."

Singer Matsutoya Yumi, also known as Yumin, describes this in words that everyone can understand in the song “If You Are Shrouded in Kindness”: “If you open the curtain and plunge into the tenderness of the quiet sunlight, everything you see is a message to you.”

Zen Master Dogen said, “Even tiles and stones can gain enlightenment and become a Buddha.” Thus, great people belonging to the spiritual world that emerged in Japan, by merging animism with Buddhism, created advanced ideas that cannot be found anywhere else in the world.

Here I will have to explain a little more. In Buddhism, which appeared in India, the idea of saving all living beings was proclaimed, that is, it was believed that only living beings with a “soul” could become Buddhas. Other natures do not have a soul, and therefore they believed that they could not achieve Buddhahood. However, in Japanese Buddhism, the idea arose of the enlightenment of “inanimate beings,” that is, that nature, which in India was not considered animate and therefore incapable of becoming a Buddha, was considered in the same way as living things, that is, in fact having a soul. This idea would not have been possible without the animistic view of nature that existed in the minds of the Japanese.

Tibetan Buddhism, which is a direct descendant of Indian Buddhism, insists that only the living can become Buddhas. However, in recent years, the Dalai Lama, the supreme leader of the Tibetan Buddhist world, has demonstrated a deep understanding of the ideas of Japanese Buddhism and has begun to move towards recognizing nature as a sentient entity.

When considering the environmental problems of the 21st century, it is clear to everyone that the idea that nature can achieve Buddhahood and that it is in the same position as humans is extremely effective in this regard.

Treaty with Yubaba

Chihiro begged Yubaba for a job by signing a contract with her. The sorceress gave her the job, but with the caveat that she would change the girl’s name to Sen and she would not be able to return back to the human world. By changing our name, we change our destiny. The name Sen means Tree Spirit.

Our name is our passport in the Universe; it contains information about the program that we must complete here on Earth. Sen was assigned to Rin's assistant and was given the dirtiest work. Night fell, clients arrived: souls - masks. These are the souls of people who were unable to make their specific choice and establish themselves in some specific capacity while living in the physical world. They looked the way they did (put on masks) in a way that suited them. There is an expression from Luuli Viilma (“Soulful Light”): to be or to appear?

Liberation from Greed

Hako changed from a dragon to a human again, but was unconscious. Rin tells Chihiro that Yubaba cannot cope with the Faceless Man and is looking for her.

Sen entered the Faceless Greedy. He handed her the gold, but she did not accept it. She advised him to return to his home, to his dad and mom. The faceless man probably didn’t remember his parents and was saddened. Chihiro gave him a piece of the magic pie and everything that filled his womb began to fall out of the Faceless Man. He became empty and pathetic again.

Sam goes to the bottom of the swamp, the enchanted child and the bird are with her, Faceless too - her kind heart attracted him.

Twin sisters

Yubaba, a sorceress and mistress of purgatory, has a twin sister, Zeniba. Dzeniba lives at the very bottom of the swamp, where the “darkest” souls, burdened with the “heavy baggage of sins,” end up.

After the fall from Eden, we received three additional bodies: physical, astral (body of desires), mental (body of thought) to undergo training in a world divided into good and evil. In the world of desires (astral) the impulse for development is two forces: the force of Attraction and the force of Repulsion.

These are the twin sisters. And our Interest gives rise to the forces of attraction and repulsion. What interests us in life? Where do we direct the aspirations of our soul? How do we spend the strength given to us by the Father of the Universe?

Our aspirations are our life luggage

Along the way, people gradually got out of the carriage at different stops: each with their own “baggage” of negative accumulations.

Dzeniba was already waiting for them. She was very amused by how Chihiro dealt with her “powerful witchcraft” - she simply crushed the worm of greed, did not allow it to germinate in her soul, and freed the soul of Hako and other inhabitants of purgatory from it. All night Zeniba, the baby, the mosquito and the Faceless One lovingly wove a ribbon - a protective amulet for Chihiro!

The best defense is love! The dragon arrived - Hako. He took everyone except Faceless with him. But the Faceless Witch left behind; she needed a housewife. He's glad that someone needs him. The Faceless One will begin his journey of finding his real name from the very bottom, but he himself chose such a fate for himself, living in the physical world. Yes, we make a choice here and with it we move on throughout all the worlds of the Universe.

Our choice

Hako is a young man who is Yubaba's assistant. I wanted to learn witchcraft, that is, gain power over others. Thirst for power. Having signed a contract with the sorceress, he lost his real name and now cannot go back. But he remembered Chihiro's name: perhaps they had met once. Hako helps Chihiro, feeling sympathy for her.

Yubaba forced Hako to steal the seal from her sister Zeniba. A terrible spell was placed on the seal: whoever takes it will die. Hako turned into a dragon and flew on Yubaba's missions. Zeniba takes revenge. Under the guise of a paper bird, she snuck into her sister's chambers and turned her son into some kind of small creature, and the witch's bird - an obsessive thought - into a mosquito.

The three jumping heads in Yubaba's room are perhaps an image of scattered thoughts that a person cannot put together: it is difficult to make a choice. If we cannot or do not want to make a choice, others will do it for us and most often to our detriment. This is a motive that encourages us to learn and take responsibility for our destiny. Who am I? What am I? Why am I here?

Zeniba turned three heads into Yubaba's child. Yubaba's favorite creature is her child, a purified state of the soul after purgatory. She does not release him into the world so as not to “get dirty.” But at the same time, the joy of life is lost.

Yubaba has returned and wants to destroy Hako. Sen tries to save his friend. There is a struggle going on. He and Hako the dragon fall to the very bottom of purgatory and end up with grandfather Kamazi. Grandfather tells Sen that something is gnawing at Hako from the inside, some kind of worm. Sen remembered the magic pie that the spirit of the river gave her for her good work, and shoved it into the dragon’s mouth. Some kind of box and a worm flew out of the dragon’s mouth. The box turned out to be Zeniba's seal, and Sen simply crushed the worm, and this, it turns out, was the witch's spell. Sen decides to go to the sorceress at the bottom of the swamp, give her the precious seal, so that Zeniba will remove the spell from her friend.

The film “Spirited Away” is 20 years old: deciphering the meanings

2021 marks the 20th anniversary of the release of director Miyazaki Hayao's Spirited Away, and his work continues to captivate audiences.

For a long time, it ranked first at the box office in Japan, and 20 years later it again attracted attention due to the fact that it lost the first place in the box office to the film version of the endless train manga "Demon Slaying Blade". In 2021, it received high praise overseas, ranking 4th in the British BBC-sponsored 100 Great Films of the 21st Century. nippon.com writes about this and deciphers the meaning of the film.

Why did Chihiro turn into Sen?

Why is this animated film called “Divine Hiding” (in the Russian version – “Spirited Away”)?

The main character's name is Chihiro, she is a ten-year-old girl. According to Miyazaki's director Hayao, he chose her because today's ten-year-olds are "quite tenacious."

Chihiro ("thousand fathoms") turns into Sen ("thousand") due to the fact that Yubaba, the owner of the bathhouse, takes away her real name. Yubaba subjugates Chihiro by taking away part of her name.

Names are very important. In historical examples we see that the appropriation and deprivation of names is associated with relations of dominance and subordination.

"Divine Hiding" and Journey to Another World

However, Chihiro's journey is not as extensive as Dante's - instead she finds herself in a surprisingly well-depicted spiritual world, typical of Japan.

Old tree and lightning

If we look closely at the old cryptomeria, we will see that the top of the trunk is broken. Similar old trees are found in shrines throughout the country, such trees growing in the vicinity of Kamigamo Shrine in Kyoto and in the center of Kasuga-taisha Shrine in Nara. These old trees are very important, as evidenced by their location on the territory of the sanctuaries.

Countless Japanese Gods

A fusion of animism and advanced thought

Animism is often seen as a primitive form of religious consciousness, but in Japan it was absorbed into extremely advanced Buddhist ideas.

Essential Elements of Spirited Away

Here I will highlight the most important elements of the film.

Chihiro's journey through other worlds

In his journey, Chihiro from the real world ends up in a world with a bathhouse, then in another world, again in a world with a bathhouse, and returns to the real world. Another world here is the place where she gets on a train that travels among the water. In this scene, the train moves through water, reflecting a rather bleak landscape, and the passengers entering and exiting the train are dressed in old clothes and appear as shadows.

These features suggest images of the past or the afterlife. The route from life to death and return to life is closely connected with deep religious experiences. Chihiro was able to grow spiritually, perhaps not only because of her experience of hard work in the bathhouse, but also because she was able to walk the path from life to death and back again.

From the moment of entering the wrong road until returning to the real world, it takes approximately three days (two nights) for Chihiro, but for her parents this time felt very short. They also do not remember how they were turned into pigs because they ate the meal prepared for the gods without permission.

However, if you pay attention to the difference in damage to the wall during the entrance and exit of the tunnel, the height of the grass and the dust and dirt accumulated on the car, it becomes not entirely clear whether the Chihiro family managed to return to their own original space-time.

Bath garden

In the garden of the bathhouse, the flowers of the four seasons bloom at the same time, that is, there the seasons exist simultaneously. This shows that the bathhouse is not in the real world. Miyazaki Hayao not only came up with this technique, but since the Heian period (794-1192) in Japanese Pure Land Buddhism (belief in the Buddha Amida-nyorai during life, transport to the land of eternal joy, the Pure Land by the power of Amida) a Buddhist paradise has been depicted. Miyazaki Hayao not only masterfully uses elements inspired by Japanese traditional culture in this work, they are present in many of his works.

Kaonasi, "Faceless"

Kaonashi has no voice of his own, he swallows others and uses their voices. The lower part of his body is translucent - all this may indicate that he has not cultivated his true self.

In the second half of the story, with his own hands, from which any number of treasures appear, he scatters a lot of money (actually counterfeit), thanks to which he can eat and generally do whatever he wants, his figure takes on disproportionate eerie forms with a huge body and extremely small head resembling a spider or tick.

The gigantic body and very small head probably symbolize enormous desires and a weak will that is unable to control them. In addition, he spits out the previously swallowed frog in the same form as he swallowed - perhaps this is an expression of his inability to truly make his own knowledge and experience that does not belong to him. The scene in which the frogs are swallowed, but are spat out, may symbolize that knowledge and experience cannot belong to them. In fact, Kaonasi may be an allegory for us humans.

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