![]() This is one example showing that trees have been revered for their divine nature. In the Onbashira Festival at the Suwa Shrine complex in Nagano Prefecture, which is said to be one of Japan’s oldest such sites, sixteen huge pillars are dragged to and raised at the corners of the four shrines. The fact that kami are counted using the word hashira (pillar) conveys an association of being rooted to the ground. In Japan, however, the gods have long maintained their connection with the natural world. However, in many religions, the gods’ origins in thunder and lightning have been forgotten, as they have become detached from natural phenomena to become omnipotent deities transcending human understanding. In Hinduism, Indra derives originally from a thunder god. In the Old Testament, when Moses brings the Ten Commandments down from Mount Sinai, there is thunder and lightning. This divine connection makes these trees sacred. They are revered, due to being seen as locations where kami descended from the heavens in the form of lightning. These kinds of old trees are often found at shrines in Japan, such as Kamigamo Shrine in Kyoto and Kasuga Taisha in Nara. All these are connected with Shintō.Ī close look at the old cedar shows that it is broken at the top. The lost family first encounters an old Japanese cedar ( sugi) stretching upward with a torii gate built in front of it, and stone hokora, “houses for the guardian spirits,” piled up beneath it. While Chihiro’s voyage is not on the same scale, it does an excellent job of presenting Japan’s unique spiritual world. This pattern of traveling along a mistaken path as a route to entering an entirely different world is very similar to Dante’s Divine Comedy. ![]() (© 2001 Studio Ghibli/NDDTM)Īt the start of Spirited Away, Chihiro’s father gets lost and takes the wrong road. This is the classic form for such a voyage.Ĭhihiro explores a new world. There are many stories of journeys to heaven or hell and back in human history. In theological terms, Chihiro’s experience is of a voyage to another world, and then a return to our own. Frightening memories of these kinds of incident lingered into much later periods. In the Japan of the past, at times when human trafficking was relatively common, kidnapping was a very real possibility. Parents feared kamikakushi as it was often children who went missing. Or it might be that identifying the kami as the perpetrators was a way of finding acceptance. It was apparently due to the absence of a known reason that such events were attributed to the kami (gods). Wrong RoadsĪ kamikakushi refers to the sudden vanishing of somebody for no reason. The idea of kotodama could still be said to feed into the creative background for Japanese poetry. According to this belief, when certain words are spoken, their hidden power can affect the real world in a variety of ways. ![]() In Japanese tradition, words are thought to have a spiritual power, which is called kotodama. ![]() The witch Yubaba controls people through their names. (© 2001 Studio Ghibli/NDDTM)Ĭhihiro (千尋) becomes Sen (千) when Yubaba, who runs the bathhouse in the story, takes one character of her name and gains control over the girl. They are typical of the Japanese people of the time, who ignored the country’s traditional, spiritual culture to sing the praises of economic prosperity.Ĭhihiro, the 10-year-old central character in Spirited Away. The couple and their daughter Chihiro are selfish, ill-mannered, and devoted to their desires. She is the daughter of middle-class parents, as is apparent from the four-wheel-drive Audi they own, the upscale brand of the supermarket bag inside, and the relatively young age at which they have been able to buy a detached house in the suburbs. Miyazaki said that girls of that age are tough these days, which is why he chose one as the heroine. The original Japanese name for the film is Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi, which might be translated literally as “The Spiriting Away of Sen and Chihiro.” But why this title?Ĭhihiro is the name of the main character, a 10-year-old girl. Director Miyazaki Hayao’s film has also received critical plaudits around the world and won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. It soon became the country’s highest-grossing film ever, and was only toppled from this position last year by Demon Slayer the Movie: Mugen Train. It has been 20 years since the film Spirited Away was released in Japan in July 2001.
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