Anime

Hayao Miyazaki was born in 1941 Japan. He is a manga artist, film director and animator. He co-founded Studio Ghibli where he made Princess Mononoke which became the highest-grossing film in Japan. In 2001 Miyazaki wrote and directed Spirited Away which topped Princess Mononoke and won awards at both the Japanese Academy Awards and the American Academy Award.

Miyazaki’s films both familiarize and defamiliarize traditional Japanese mythology, history and culture. Miyazaki’s films have traditional Japanese Shinto, which is an ancient Japanese religion that continues to be practised today. The faith worships Kami which are Gods for example God of the forest, animal Gods etc. According to Wright (2005) ‘Miyazaki is cinematically practicing the ancient form of Shinto’. Miyazaki based Princess Mononoke in the time period of Muromachi which was between 1392 and 1573, in Japan. However his story does not fully depict history. Miyazaki defamiliarizes women in Japanese culture as he has strong female characters and during this time in history women were quite submissive.

Miyazaki has spiritual themes in all his films. The film Princess Mononoke is set in a time of great change; forests are being destroyed to get to the iron in the mountains that is to be mined. The Gods of the forest and animal spirits are fighting back against the human’s industrialisation, as humans turn their back, on nature and religion in favour of industrialisation and technology.

In Princess Mononoke Miyazaki has strong feminist themes, Lady Eboshi, is the leader of Irontown and she is at the forefront of industrialisation, leading the charge against the Gods. She boasts that she shot the Boar God, creating his hatred of humans and the eventual demonising of him. In the story Lady Eboshi empowers women; she takes women from brothels and gives them a better life in her town, paying them well for their services. The women run the town and use the men for their strength, for protection. Women are the ones who work to make the bullets and gunpowder. Women are also able to use the weaponry.