Although Kintaro is a Japanese hero, Boh is very cruel and spoiled – until he goes on a sort of redemption arc through the movie.

At the start of Spirited Away, Chihiro’s father gets lost and takes the wrong road. 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. While Chihiro’s voyage is not on the same scale, it does an excellent job of presenting Japan’s unique spiritual world. Thunder and Lightning of the Gods When Chihiro changes clothes for working in the Bathhouse, Sootballs will also take care on other her clothes she wore outside, her striped shirt and her shorts. The susuwatari also make an appearance in other Ghibli movies like My Neighbor Totoro – see if you can spot them!This Japanese deity makes a brief appearance in Spirited Away. Although, American audiences will know this spirit as the Radish Spirit. It is a visitor at the bathhouse and is a tall, large, and very pale creature. In Japanese folklore, Mizuchi are water dragons and are loosely linked to water deities. In Spirited Away, the Mizuchi serves as part of the inspiration behind the character of Haku. Kintaro is less of a Japanese yokai and more of a figure in folklore tales, but he still makes an appearance in Spirited Away. In Japanese folklore, Kintaro is a superhuman child raised by a yama-uba.

You can see it taking up all the space in the elevator – forcing more Chichiro to squeeze her way in. The character No-Face (Kaonashi) has no voice of his own, instead, using the voices of those he swallows. The lower half of his body is also semitransparent. These aspects may symbolize that he has no real self. The susuwatari are tiny soot sprites that appear in the boiler room. They are a type of yokai that have been completely invented by Spirited Away’s creator, Hayao Miyazaki.There is a tendency to view animism as a primitive belief system. However, in Japan, it can be found incorporated into highly sophisticated Buddhist thinking. In truth, the Oshira-Sama we see in Spirited Away more closely resembles the dolls linked to it rather than the spirit itself. Despite this, the original Japanese version of Spirited Away refers to the spirit as Oshira-Sama.

The Story of Yanagawa's Canals (1987) • Miyazaki and Kurosawa Fireside Chat (1993) • Ghibli Was Born This Way: A Birth Story Spelled Out With Reproduced Images (1998) • World Journey of My Memory / Journey of the Heart (1998) • How Princess Mononoke Was Born (2001) • Lasseter-San, Arigato! (2003) • Hayao Miyazaki Produces a CD (2004) • Yasuo Otsuka's Joy of Motion (2004) • Hayao Miyazaki and the Ghibli Museum (2005) • Ghibli: The Miyazaki Temple (2005) • The Work of Toshio Suzuki (2006) • Scenery of Ghibli (2006) • A Ghibli Artisan – Kazuo Oga Exhibition – The Man Who Painted Totoro's Forest (2007) • How Ponyo Was Born (2009) • Poppy Hill - 300 Days of War Between Father and Son (2011) • Ghibli's Bookshelf (2011) • The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness (2013) • Until The End of The Creation of When Marnie Was There (2015) • Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki (2016) • NHK Image File: I Want To Meet This Person - Isao Takahata, Animation Film Director (2018) • 10 Years with Hayao Miyazaki (2019)As a result, a lot of people found out about kami and yokai from Spirited Away. These Japanese spirits are everywhere in Spirited Away. Some have large roles, others have small cameos – but which yokai make an appearance? This attitude to kami could also be said to be Japanese tradition. It is true that some are powerful, like the sun goddess Amaterasu, who is said to be the ancestor of Japan’s emperors. Most kami, however, are familiar, approachable beings like Totoro, and there are loose boundaries between their world and the one where humans live. Animism and Buddhism A kamikakushi refers to the sudden vanishing of somebody for no reason. It was apparently due to the absence of a known reason that such events were attributed to the kami (gods). Or it might be that identifying the kami as the perpetrators was a way of finding acceptance. The Yama-uba inspired the villainous character Yubaba. The Yama-uba are a type of yokai that appear as mountain crones or old hags (see also ‘ Can A Human Become A Yokai? – What You Need To Know‘). Tales tell of their cannibalistic nature and they are often compared to witches in western cultures.

Chihiro (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 soon appear as cloaked figures. They have a close link to the Kasuga shrine in Japan and are likely kami that represent this shrine in Spirited Away. 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. All these are connected with Shintō. They work in the Bathhouse in return for small star-shaped food, called Konpeitō. They are seen carrying coal to help power the boiler in Kamajī's Boiler Room. The have super strength relative to their body weight. Even Chihiro Ogino couldn't take a piece of coal without overextending herself. When Chichiro first appears in the spirit’s realm, she sees multiple different shadows appear in the town as it comes to life. These dark shadows are the yokai Umi-Bozu – sea spirits which appear as dark shapes or outlines with white glowing eyes.

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The river spirit stinks out the whole bathhouse. Later, Chihiro soon realizes that the spirit is hurting from all the pollution trapped within it. Their cameo in Spirited Away is relatively minor but they also serve an important signal for the story. In folklore, Umi-Bozu appear when a calm sea becomes tumultuous. Chihiro is the name of the main character, a 10-year-old girl. Miyazaki said that girls of that age are tough these days, which is why he chose one as the heroine. 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. The couple and their daughter Chihiro are selfish, ill-mannered, and devoted to their desires. 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.