Spirited Away : Conceptualizing a Film-Based Case Study through Comparative Narratives of Japanese Ecological and Environmental Discourses

Introduction

This article investigates representation and critiques of environmentalism in Miyazaki Hayao’s Spirited Away (2001), and considers three main aspects through two methodological tools. The first methodology is a textual analysis of narratives and ideas about environmentalism in Japan. The second utilizes fieldwork based on responses provided by individuals who have some expertise in analyzing the film as instructors in colleges and universities, some of whom include Spirited Away in their syllabuses and curricula. These methodological tools are used to investigate three core questions. First, I am interested in looking at the themes of over-consumption, greed and development, and how they incur nature’s response through symbolisms and analogies found in the film. Second, I am keen to examine the theme of interdependence and co-existence between nature, human communities, the spiritual world and their possible representations in the film. Third, I will examine features in the film, highlighted by my fieldwork respondents, that partially or completely negate ecological and environmental interpretations of the film. Here, I will frame some Japanese animation scholars’ and critics’ voices as well as narratives on the environment for discussion. After the introduction, I will discuss some of the fieldwork responses, the methodology used and its limitations. The responses by the expert informants established the prevalence of environmental and ecological themes in the film. I will then provide a short synopsis of the film before moving on to textual analyses of the selected environmental and ecological themes. These analyses are also compared and corroborated with the fieldwork responses.

For the fieldwork, I searched online sources to find informants for my emailed questionnaire on Spirited Away (see Appendix). I had three criteria in mind. First, I was keen to locate individuals with expertise in the subject matter, either academic scholars or those who include Spirited Away in their teaching materials in colleges and universities. Second, in order to maintain some objective distance from the official interpretation of the film, the informants could not be directly involved in the production of the film. Third, they should be sensitive to the film’s environmental and ecological themes. I received seven responses in total. ¹ The fieldwork conducted for the article is also limited by word length and so it does not claim to be comprehensive but serves as an ongoing project with some insights for further discussion on the subject matter.

Most of the respondents indicated that they thought the film had environmentalist overtones. At least one opined that the environmental theme was overtly highlighted as with Miyazaki’s other films. One respondent argued that this was a creative space that Miyazaki was trying to craft for himself in the world of animation. But another respondent felt that values about the environment and nature were inherent and in-built, and required no obvious highlight and emphasis in the storyline. This individual was not alone; some respondents felt that this linkage was an integral part of social obligations, the need to maintain sincere and serious attitudes towards nature. One respondent cautioned against excessive reading of the environmental theme in the film and suggested that it is just one of the many complex narratives that the film tackles.

Before proceeding with the analysis, a brief overview of the plot of Spirited Away is provided for readers unfamiliar with the film. The protagonist Chihiro is a young girl whom we first see in a car with her parents on the way to a new city they are moving to. The audience is given a glimpse of Chihiro’s personality as a sulky and selfish only child. Losing their way, the family drive into a side road where they discover a hidden entrance to what appears to be an abandoned town. Chihiro’s parents rapaciously devour food found in an eatery devoid of other figures, and turn into pigs. Trying to find her parents, Chihiro enters a phantasmagorical world of fantastic beasts and figures. She then has to fend for herself in this ghostly town where all kinds of spirits come to enjoy a hot bath. She finds unlikely allies in the bathhouse steam room where she finds work: a young man Haku, a many-limbed elderly man Kamaji, and others like the helpful bathhouse staff Rin (or Lin) who got her the job in the bathhouse operated by Yubaba, a dictatorial elderly lady with extraordinary powers. At the bathhouse, Chihiro becomes involved in cleaning the filth off some spirits (including a Stinky Spirit), and also meets a white river dragon, who we later find out is an incarnation of Haku, put under a spell by Yubaba. These encounters as well as those with other characters she meets at the bathhouse eventually harden Chihiro’s resolve to become courageous and independent in coping with personal challenges in her life. As a kind of rite of passage, she succeeds in overcoming many obstacles, so that she eventually escapes the spirit world and becomes reunited with her real parents.

Environmentalism, Shintoism and ecology

Amongst the respondents were individuals who hesitated to link the film with environmental themes, and completely or partially negated ecological and environmental interpretations of the film. While agreeing that some scenes depicted such ideas (e.g. the white river kami that washes away the filth of pollution), they claim these are not consistent throughout the film. For one respondent, the idea of environmentalism is associated with pollution. While this individual denies the proposed link between environmentalism and the film, the association with consumption and materialism is more prominent, especially with representations of excessive mass consumption in the film, e.g. toys, obesity, egoistical behavior, self-contained worlds, etc. These symbols are contrary to the values of thrift and non-wastage socialized in Japan’s population, as many were taught not to waste items like food, and these values were internalized in their consciousness. Amongst the respondents who did not recognize the environmental element in the film, one felt that the theme of religion was more obvious than an environmental focus but with a caveat. Shintoism is seen as an integral part of Japanese cultural fabric and traditions rather than a doctrinaire religion with orthodox teachings and theological principles, especially for younger generations of Japanese. Therefore, in accordance with this view, religion and environment are integrated as a single entity rather than mutually exclusive spheres that are inter-connected. In other words, there is no overt need to associate Shintoism with nature and environment as the relationship is implied and understood (at least following this individual interpretation). Respondents in favor of the association of Shinto with the film recognize that bathing is significant as a rite and ritual for purification. These activities relate to traditional festivals, not necessarily with a direct link with environmental themes, at least not in the way that the West conceives them. Consequently, one respondent felt the link between Shinto and nature was between tradition (rather than religion) and nature. Another respondent replaced the word ‘tradition’ with ‘myths and legends’.

Finally, some respondents chose to remain neutral in assessing the association of the film with environmental and ecological themes. Without subscribing to or refuting an environmental or ecological interpretation of the film, one argued that the film’s creator Miyazaki was respectful of the environment but took a neutral stance, as neither critical of modernization nor uncompromisingly sticking to the orthodoxy of traditions. In the words of one of the respondents: ‘Miyazaki made no judgment about the ownership of responsibility for environmental issues.’ In summary, there are some detectable commonalities amongst the respondents. Most of the respondents who see an environmental link within the film seem to be fixated on the issue of pollution as the major environmental theme. This applies especially to the scene in which the Stinky Spirit or River Spirit is associated with filth and trash. Haku, in the form of the River Spirit that manifests itself as a dragon, was named by many respondents as the objectification of the natural environment. The second commonality is the way many respondents avoided commenting on culturally specific readings of the film: only one utilized the word ‘unique’ to describe the Japanese perspective. There seems to be a conscious effort to de-privilege any Japan-centered perspective.

Despite this, interestingly, many respondents’ comments hinted at the possibility of a cultural reading centered on the bathing-room activity scene. Many acknowledged that this was different from other comparative examples and cases that they were aware of. The concepts of purification, cleansing and bathing were associated by many respondents with the idea of Shinto. One attributed this aspect to Miyazaki himself who, according to the respondent, analogizes the private act of bathing with the Shinto expression that cleaning the external environment starts from one’s personal and private activities. A number of respondents pondered over the definition of Shinto and its fit with the term ‘religion’. One wondered about the connection between the fantasy-driven development of the characters in the story and Shinto orthodoxy.

In regard to the developmental needs of the modernization process, one respondent argued that environmental issues are mainly the concerns of developed economies. Even if environmental themes were built into the film, not all agreed that the tensions between environmental integrity and economic development were obvious; in other words, they may be based on individual reading. A number of respondents felt that the linkage was irrelevant. With the exception of one informant, most did not see a complete dichotomy between development and environmental preservation, although many argued that a balance needed to be struck between the two. Many were careful in interpreting this and saw both environmental preservation and economic development as necessary processes and so were reluctant to conceptualize this as a zero-sum game. One respondent suggested looking at the corporate policies of Ghibli Studios for clues, as it was attempting to conserve an area of Japanese forest and organizing other environmentally-friendly activities. According to Denison (2010: 550), the environmental theme and messages of Miyazaki’s film are integrated into the designs of the Ghibli Art Museum, which has a ‘green’ layout that distinguishes itself from the built-up surroundings of Tokyo city.

Interdependence and co-existence between nature and human communities

Bearing in mind the respondents’ environmental and ecological readings, and their interpretations of Spirited Away, I will proceed with a visual analysis of the film, corroborated and contrasted with textual analysis and respondents’ ideas. I begin with a discussion of human relationships with the natural environment through a review of Japan-centered texts on this subject. In Enerugī mondai no saikentō (Reexamination of energy issues), Shimonoseki Sangyō Bunka Kenkyūjo (1986: 268) argues that, for an economy like Japan, with its desire for accelerated modernization that places a premium on industrialization, the extraction, transportation, processing, and waste disposal challenges of minerals, coal, and other natural resources can result in the destruction of living habitats. This is the price to pay for the rights and justification for mechanization, civilization, and commercialization to facilitate human activities. ² The idea of contestation between modernization, its use of resources and the associated environmental impacts it has on human communities has an equivalent analogy in the film. Like the environment of post-1868 and contemporary postwar Japan which was tainted by modernization, the central position of the bathhouse in the film represents a platform in which productive activities from inside (soot-fired oxidation) and foreign objects from outside cause pollution. The ritualistically pure and symbolically clean concept of a traditional Japanese bathhouse is soiled in the film by the colossal Stinky Spirit figure, an embodiment of polluted filth and sludge. It is a slow-moving creature that deposits filth and mud patches along the way, and its emissions also cause surrounding flora to wilt. It is probably the closest symbol that one can find in the film that collectively represents discharge, pollution, waste products, trash, and poisonous emissions.

When the bathhouse is overrun by filth and dirt, the Stinky Spirit is effectively resisted by mortal Chihiro, the young protagonist. At this point in the film, she becomes selfless and courageous, washing the Stinky Spirit with soap and clean water, and neutralizing the polluting agent that disrupts the bathhouse’s activities. It is tempting to interpret this encounter as a clash between forces of pollution and purity. Napier (2006: 290) argues that the bathhouse, ‘in its very function, serves to emblemize cleansing and purity of a quintessentially Japanese kind’. Chihiro then works closely with other anthropomorphic non-humans that resemble animal-like creatures found in natural environments (e.g. frog-like bipeds), as well as with human bathhouse staffers, to collectively get rid of the smell and filth of the Stinky Spirit’s polluting effect. This scene is one of the film’s highlights of collective human–nature collaboration.

Another example of human–nature collaboration noted by one of the respondents is the scene when Chihiro helps Haku remember his original identity. Chihiro liberates Haku from Yubaba’s spell, the same kind of spell that was cast on Chihiro. An ultimate benchmark for victory and representation of triumph over evil forces in the plot is the recovery of one’s identity and name from Yubaba. Chihiro recovers her own when she discovers the courage and strength to be independent and unselfish. With the same goal in mind, collaboration between Chihiro and Haku is needed in order to restore environmental pristineness of the film’s ‘world’ and to repair the damage that resulted from human-driven economic activities such as water sources pollution (through the symbolism of the river dragon). Chihiro and Haku share one characteristic: both are self-centered, but it remains unclear if this was the reason why they eventually came under Yubaba’s control, and this remains open to interpretation. Like Chihiro, Haku sometimes displays short-tempered impatience, particularly with Chihiro in scenes where he explained the workings of the bathhouse to her.

The emancipation of Haku with Chihiro’s help is crucially important. For another respondent, Haku – as the white river dragon – is the very embodiment of nature and the environment, and saving him is synonymous with saving and preserving the environment. This interpretation holds if this incarnation of Haku is acknowledged as an embodiment of the cleanliness and purity of flowing river water that lost its way when it became sullied and contaminated. In Reider’s (2005: 17) take on Spirited Away, as well as according to the individuals that I have interviewed, Haku’s representation as a white dragon is relatively unproblematic, although the same does not apply in regard to the character’s association with nature. ³ Is Haku an anime character who happens to be a mythical dragon that is taking administrative charge of the river (in the same way as the Chinese hailongwang or Dragon Lords of the Sea) ⁴ or is he an actual embodiment of the water and nature found in the river? Shinto beliefs tend to attribute a spiritual presence to every object, inanimate or animate, and following this reading, Haku may symbolize the natural element itself.

Regardless of the symbolic representation of water, it is clear that human–nature cooperation can only be possible if the individuals within the human community reach a consensus to protect the environment. In East Asia, the community’s needs are often placed above those of the individual. In East (including Northeast) Asian interpretations of the environment, the nuanced relationship between nature and culture is relationship- and contextually-based. ⁵ The concept of idealized harmony with nature starts at the grassroots. Perceptions and reflections of ‘nature’ are underlying, adaptive interactions that arise out of communitarian consensus to maintain harmonious relationships between individuals in the community. When the self is embedded and subsumed into the community, there is little that separates the private and the public. The most dramatic example of the absence of boundaries between self and community is the central transformation of Chihiro from a self-centered, disengaged, spoiled brat into a responsible individual with courage, loyalty and strength to save her parents and friends (Haku). The disinterested private self soon engages with acts that put her own life in danger (self-preservation is probably one of the most private priorities) to save her friends from harm (putting the lives of others before her own life is an ultimate commitment to the community she cares about). Not all acts are so dramatic, others are ritualistic and instinctual as even private acts of cleansing are carried out in community spaces. One respondent argued that the Japanese bathroom is designed for community-oriented lifestyles, where even functional rituals such as bathing and social activities like relaxation are situated within the public sphere, unlike the private sphere of isolated or solitary bathing and showering found in the West.

There are examples of communitarian social mobilization in Spirited Away. For instance, when the Stinky Spirit comes into the bathhouse and Chihiro tries to pull out a bicycle embedded in the Spirit’s grotesque form, Yubaba mobilizes all staff and guests in the bathhouse to help Chihiro. Although the mobilization efforts are directed to serve Yubaba’s self-centered interest of clearing the bathhouse of the Stinky Spirit and its filth that were damaging her business by scaring clients away, the cooperative fighting spirit embodied by the collective team who motivate Chihiro to pull out the bicycle (an example of human-generated trash found in the Stinky Spirit) is unmistakable. This scene represents the coincidence of common and mutual interests amongst the environment’s stakeholders. There is plausible evidence to support the idea that money-minded Yubaba represents capitalism and development, as she is fixated on the resumption of her lucrative bathhouse business after the removal of Stinky Spirit and its pollution. The other non-humans and spirits in the bathhouse, that have shapes and forms inspired by nature, share the same goal of getting rid of stench and pollution, desiring the continuation of purity in the baths that was interrupted by the Stinky Spirit’s pollution. Likewise, human staff members in the bathhouse are keen to remove the Stinky Spirit so that they can carry on with their livelihood. Chihiro, with her pure, untainted desire (that suggests hardworking ethics of the past in nostalgic revivalism) to simply assist in removing undesirable elements from the bathhouse, finds common ground with other stakeholders in desiring a clean environment. Together they potentially represent how cleaning up the environment is a ‘no-detriments’ policy for all, regardless of individual agendas and interests.

Here the ambiguity of Yubaba’s intentions behind her support for Chihihiro’s heroic act lends speculation as to the role the former plays in this incident. The scene has overt environmental overtones: Stinky Spirit’s overwhelming filthy sludge and smell and the collective’s urge to cleanse and protect. Yubaba’s strong-handed ways are softened by her cooperative handling of the incident. The dichotomous boundaries between the superior and her subordinates, the employer and her employed, Yubaba’s social mobilization and Chihiro’s civic act, are broken down in the incident. The preponderance of power and policy in Yubaba’s regime is mitigated by Chihiro’s individual efforts to clean up the pollution. It is tempting to analogize how this scene and its characters parallel the transformation of the confrontational relationship between Japanese civil society and the state in issues of environmentalism in the 1960s and 1970s with the harmonious relationship between state and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), non-profit organizations (NPOs) and civil society in contemporary Japan. Big businesses (employers) and bureaucracy (state and policy) used to dominate environmental agendas, but now state and civil society find themselves bound together in a mutually reliant relationship based on state financial support and civil society’s local knowledge and management efforts. Since a detailed discussion of this relationship is outside the scope of the article, readers can refer to an important new work in this area by Simon Avenell (2010).

Natural and spiritual worlds

In addition to parallels with contemporary Japanese life and ecopolitics, Spirited Away also reminds us that the idea of interdependence and co-existence does not exist only in the mortal world or the physical realm of existence in Japan. The usual dichotomy and schism found in issues of environmentalism in Japan tends to be between the state and civil society, a mainly human-centered approach. But Spirited Away offers additional insights into a further dimension – that of nature’s autonomous response and inputs to this dichotomy through spirits whose forms and shapes are derived from nature. Spirited Away emphasizes the importance of the spiritual world symbolized by Shinto, for instance the animistic objects which Chihiro and her parents find scattered on the ground on the way to the tunnel at the beginning of the anime. These objects indicate that, even before Chihiro and her parents pass through the tunnel and enter the spiritual world, physical material objects in the mortal world signify and symbolize the presence of spirits, albeit in the form of material artifacts found in the human world. The co-existence of the spiritual world with its mortal counterpart is a feature of animistic traditions of Shintoism which attribute a kami (deity or spirit status) to animate and inanimate objects found in the natural world. The correlation of flora and fauna with spirits co-existing with their human counterparts is commonly found throughout East Asia, including those depicted in Asian popular culture such as the likes of banana tree spirits in Southeast Asia, or fox spirits in Northeast Asia.

In Spirited Away, the presence of supernatural creatures like the radish spirit in the elevator indicates the presence of elements of nature in the bathhouse that are re-configured in humanoid forms and with a spiritual presence; this is different from anthropomorphization as it is commonly used in animated figures. The physical size of the radish spirit and the awe it commands from Chihiro and other humans like Rin (Lin) is a reversal of a human-centered reality. Here, the non-human ecologically-based spirits like the radish are the dominant masters while humans faithfully serve their needs. Sometimes, Rin (Lin) even seems to indicate a hint of fear and anxiety to not antagonize the spirits, e.g. her warnings to Chihiro at the elevator when they encountered the radish spirit. Here, human mastery and subjugation of the natural environment are figuratively subjugated to an autonomously powerful and awe-inspiring Mother Nature and her representative. Noriko Reider (2005) gives a detailed treatment of the folk origins of the spirits and deities present in the film and hints at the possibility of incorporation of East Asian continental ideas of traditions and symbolisms. At the level of the most basic aesthetic representation, there are certain features that resonate with audiences in East Asia. However, beyond the basic observable features of oriental temples and polytheistic religious practices, this may be a very superficial form of parallels drawn, given the wide diversity of indigenous traditional practices and forms of ancestral worships found in the region.

Another example of spiritual association with the natural environment in the film is Chihiro’s hero Haku, who as the white river dragon he becomes through Yubaba’s spell is a river spirit compelled to live in the spirit world when his river is covered up for infrastructure construction. The most explicit explanation provided for human activity in the river is by Boyd and Nishimura (2004) who point out: ‘the river had been filled in and covered with buildings (likely Miyazaki’s critique of the over-building in Japan at the expense of nature).’ This provides the context for the first and subsequent meetings between Chihiro and Haku as he guides and navigates her through the bathhouse’s complicated hierarchy and social relations. While doing this, Haku himself is robbed of his own previous identity and is only aware of his time of employment under Yubaba. Odell and Le Blanc (2009: 20) are more direct in linking up the environmental theme in Spirited Away with Shintoism, explaining how the natural world is alive with intimately linked entities that needed to be ‘respected’. ⁶ Abuse and exploitation of the environment can result in pollution of natural resources such as rivers. At one end of the spectrum, the river spirit is a deity that represents freshwater resources. At the other end, stands the Stinky Spirit, an animated embodiment of clutter, pollution, dirt, filth, and stench of industrial and household effluent flowing into natural waterways. These are two autonomous entities representing the extreme ends of the representations of nature in its most pristine form and in its most polluted manifestation.

Along with interpretations of environmentalism symbolized through the presence of the spiritual world, one of my informants in the fieldwork responses introduced the idea of environmental salvationism. Amongst my informants and in the literature that I surveyed, this interpretation probably represents the furthest extent of ideas about the spiritual world and environmentalism in the film. The respondent claimed that Miyazaki’s films tend to deal with broader themes like global salvation. This interpretation may be true if representations in the film are magnified to consider them in global contexts: for example, if the Stinky Spirit can be regarded as a representation of world-wide pollution and warming, or if Chihiro symbolizes humankind’s overall egotistical consumption and production activities. If these conditions are met, then Chihiro’s epic battle with the Stinky Spirit in the bathhouse can be analogous with two dialectic powerful forces at work in the real world: the human will to clean up the environment versus the pollution they cause through consumption and production.

Representations of capitalism and consumption in Spirited Away

The battle between pollution-causing activities and clean-up efforts is currently being fought in the physical world. We witness it daily in mass media but one wonders if there is an intangible ideological dimension to this process. Can the idea of salvation also be represented by anti-materialist, consumption rejectionist post-modern thinking and sustainable development? Natalie Op de Beeck (2009: 275) offers an interesting alternative interpretation of the association between the individual and the post-industrial world in Spirited Away; she posits ‘how Miyazaki’s Spirited Away foregrounds economic concerns and financial greed, albeit with an environmental twist’. While Op de Beeck’s interpretation seems to be more radical, with both worlds indulging in corporate materialism – ‘Spirited Away examines ethical concerns through a portrait of a spirit domain that mimes everyday business enterprise’ – one wonders if they represent counter-reactions against a corporate world economy based on mass-produced instant gratification. This then leads to the question of whether corporate goals are necessarily antithetical to environmental integrity. As Chihiro’s character matures in the film, a rejection of modern values of consumption and material progress is detected. Through her trials and communal engagement in the spirit world she transforms from a spoiled, wilful brat who deeply resents being moved to a new neighborhood and school, to a post-industrial, postmodern individual. She refuses gold and the materialism that it represents from the No-Face spirit and is disgusted by her own parents’ gross over-indulgence in food meant for the deities and spirits.

Chua Beng Huat is a leading scholar in the field of consumption related to lifestyles and cultural products, and his illuminating article Consuming Asians: Ideas and Issues (2000) succinctly explains specific ideas of Asian consumption. In the following, I will refer to three points Chua mentions that are relevant to my discussion of Spirited Away. First, he notes that other scholars highlight how individuals today are organizing their lifestyles around consumption, and that this activity has even become autonomous of industrial production (p. 3). With its many symbols and icons of contemporary consumption (prestigious foreign cars, consumption of meat, gorging, gold), Miyazaki’s film recognizes this point. but it is most concerned with a critique of excessive consumption. Here we can see some ideas about the separation of production and consumption into autonomous entities. The variety and diversity of food products at the unmanned stall where Chihiro’s parents gorge themselves suggests that production has become so excessive that it provides consumers with excessive choices: consumption can now determine and drive the mode, patterns and trends in production. Production is now driven by the choices that consumers make, whereas in the past, mass production (most aptly represented by Fordism) prescribed how consumers should consume (e.g. Ford’s Model T vehicle as a socioeconomic prescription for emerging middle-class mobility).

The second point of Chua’s that I am interested in is his examination of other studies of how retail outlets have incorporated presentation to accentuate the attractiveness of consumption, with building layouts, shopping spaces and technologies deployed to maximize the lure of consumption (p. 4). In Spirited Away, some of the film’s aesthetic highlights are the hedonistic gaudy colors and bright lights of the bathhouse and the boat that brings its customers ashore. They attract and enhance the consumption of bath facilities, of food served and hospitality services offered in the consumption space of the bathhouse. By making products and services as pleasurable as possible, consumption in this sense is reactive to the clientele’s needs. Finally, specific to an Asian setting, Chua’s third point reveals how consumption has also disrupted the clear lines of Asian ‘traditional cultural practices’ and ‘Western cultures’ (p. 8). This disruption is less obvious in the film: only the conspicuous presence of a foreign-made car (the film shows four overlapping circles that seem to suggest the German brand Audi although there is a lack of textual evidence to confirm this) ambiguously suggests a possible reading in this direction. But, overall, the East–West dichotomy may be less obvious in the film, given that there is no clear and unambiguous cultural differentiation between what is ‘Asian’ or ‘Western’. Reified critiques of pollution (the Stinky Spirit) and over-consumption (pigs gorging on food) seem to be more obvious than East and West dichotomies. Even in this aspect, over-consumption can be interpreted as referring to the Showa fast-growth period in Japan (from the 1960s to the 1980s) rather than a general critique of Western-centric industrialization.

Returning to the theme of modernity (in the case of Japan, since the 1868 Meiji Restoration), East Asia’s state-led accelerated economic development based on global importation of resources (due to domestic scarcity), identification of strategic industries and export-led orientation was based on the postwar Japanese model of economic development. ⁷ Along with increasing prosperity and higher standards of living combined with the emergence of a middle class, the natural environment bore the burden of increased consumption and fast development. Rifa-Valls (2011: 96) labels Chihiro’s family as ‘bourgeois’, and greed and consumption are represented by the smell of cooked food luring Chihiro’s parents to the big (supersized?) plates of delectable dishes ⁸ (Kiridoshi, 2001: 318). The scene in which Chihiro’s parents started gobbling down food meant for the spirits in the spirit town provides a commentary on excessive consumption without respect to the spirits of nature – the rivers, the amphibians, the vegetation – all of which are personified in the anime and appear in the bathhouse. The fact that in Spirited Away Chihiro’s parents started gorging on food, especially meat, is an important commentary on contemporary over-consumption of resources, as resource scarcity and Japan’s reliance on imported resources for its economic development is a constant source of anxiety in Japan. Another major representation of over-consumption is one of the film’s major characters, No-Face, who gorges on food and even other spirits, eventually bloating itself to the extent of vomiting up all the contents of its stomach. The greed factor in over-consumption is symbolized by No-Face’s opulent gifting of gold nuggets to the other spirits in the bathhouse.

Besides food and precious metals, the advent of technologies is also associated with material consumption. When Chihiro’s father encounters the prospect of driving through unfamiliar woods, he insists they can place their trust in his prestigious four-wheel drive, foreign-made vehicle (Osmond, 2008: 57). In his search for instantaneous entertainment in an unused amusement park, Chihiro’s father’s insistence on looking for a shortcut through the natural wooded location (Geortz, 2010: 69) is suggestive of modern tendencies for people to search for instant gratification in a highly commodified world of consumption. Such a nexus and association between modernity and environmentalism and concepts of nature provoke a form of counter culture or mindset backlash against unrestrained modernity (Lim, 2011: 3).

After her parents are transformed from humans into greedy gorging pigs, Chihiro wanders aimlessly and watches in disbelief as spirits wander around the town or arrive in brightly-lit boats. She stumbles upon a bathhouse facility and it is relevant that she enters it through the hottest and dirtiest section: a boiler room that makes hot water for the bathhouse. In the boiler room, the order-giving Kamaji and his soot-covered workers are probably the most representative characters of the Japanese bubble economy period. Their constant backbreaking work to feed the boiler with coal to keep the bathhouse water hot is analogous to the coal and oil energy needed to feed the strategic postwar recovery industries like steel and shipbuilding in the 1950s and 1960s. These oil-dependent, manpower-reliant heavy industries, followed by electronics industries in the 1970s, fuelled Japanese industrial development throughout most of its fast-growth bubble period.

Conclusion

In this concluding section, I will discuss some possible implications of the three main discussion areas above. First, what are the implications of environmental and ecological interpretations of Spirited Away in Japanese popular culture? Miyazaki’s film has drawn ambiguous reactions and responses in this area. On the one hand, ecological and environmental issues are global concerns intensely discussed in international mass media. Therefore the respondents’ and other authors’ readings of such themes in the film lend credence to the idea that Spirited Away has themes of environmental concerns that resonate with global audiences. The ideas of Koichi Iwabuchi are important here: he argues that ‘cultural odor’ refers to the manner in which a product reflects the culture, lifestyles, values, and ideas of a country (Iwabuchi, 2002: 27). In this sense, the film is both ‘odorless’ and ‘fragrant’, as a product that is socially acceptable to a global audience, and because its critique of environmental and ecological destruction, and salvation are familiar and topical themes. Stretching the idea of ‘cultural odor’ to the limit, at least to experts interested in these issues, the film’s environmental and ecological themes resonate and correlate with Japanese efforts in environmental protection and conservation.

But the reactions of other respondents also seem to indicate the limitations of this environmental and ecological reading, and two questions come to mind. First, if the film does not reflect environmental and ecological themes, is it less ‘fragrant’ in terms of Iwabuchi’s concept of ‘cultural odor’? Spirited Away clearly has other strong appealing features and content for global and regional audiences that are not dependent on environmental messages. Therefore, environmental and ecological readings and interpretations are especially relevant for a section of the audience demographic that is self-selecting and has chosen to read such messages and ideas into the film. The second question is: if one does not consciously choose to read environmental and ecological elements into the film, are there still self-evident features and representations in it to suggest some form of thinking in this area? From the fieldwork responses, particularly amongst expert opinions, some environmental features appear to be evident through visual symbolism, through characters and through analogies made in the film. The superlative and extreme depiction of dirt and sludge in the Stinky Spirit, for example, stimulates some form of association with unclean elements of the natural world even if one does not overtly accept ecological and environmental interpretations.

Rejecting the idea of passive audience reception of media materials and cultural products, Chua Beng Huat (2008: 74) argues that one should not conversely ignore the process whereby the producers of the materials embed some form of definitive ideas into their products. These ideas are then reconfigured and re-interpreted or co-opted into the ideas of the indigenous audience. This point is also relevant for Spirited Away, since it is unclear if the film’s producers embedded any overt or hidden messages about environmental thematics in the film. The neutrality argument put forward by one of the respondents seemed plausible – that Miyazaki, as creator, director and animator, had reverence for the natural environment but did not intentionally embed an environmental agenda into the film. If we accept this argument, then environmental and ecological interpretations are appropriated and co-opted by the receptor parties of the film – its viewers – particularly by individuals who are interested in contextual readings of the film. Japan’s environmental record and initiatives, as well as its products and technologies, have become so well known and associated with environmentalism that some audiences are likely to read these ideas into the film.

It is also important to note that the appropriation and co-option process itself does not follow a standard template for interpreting the film: there are large variations and pluralism in these readings by different receptive audiences. The ‘nostalgia’ thesis that Iwabuchi discusses in some length in his 2004 article ‘Time and the neighbor’ contains some interesting ideas for application here. He observes nostalgia for bubble-era fast growth in Japan when the Japanese turned their gaze upon other still-developing capitalist economies in East Asia (p. 155). In Spirited Away, the element of nostalgia is ambiguous. On the one hand, there are some possible representations in the film that appear to yearn for a desire for an environmentally friendlier era in Japan. In Spirited Away this can be seen in the natural pristineness of the peaceful grassy patch (just before the tunnel entrance to the spirit-operated town) with its scattered Shinto religious artifacts on the ground: this contrasts with the technology and environmental implications of Chihiro’s parents’ foreign-made, gas-guzzling car. The grotesque forms and behaviors of No-Face and the Stinky Spirit also critique the excesses of consumption, typically characterizing Japan’s postwar years in the fast-growth Showa bubble period. There is ambiguity here in the sense that there are some indications of yearning for a better environment untainted by the excesses of development, yet there are no straightforward notions of an alternative scenario. We cannot rule out the possibility that, despite all the above analyses and interpretations of the film, Miyazaki himself may personally hold respectful recognition of the importance of environmental conservation but does not intend to advocate any strong environmental views and agendas.