Miyazaki
Hayao's Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi: Escaping Japan?
Miyazaki Hayao's
animated films, with their fairytale storylines and whimsical visuals, may
seem more appropriate to a conversation on children's literature than a discussion
of nation. Yet, Miyazaki's films are a national(ist?) phenomenon: Mononokehime
(1998), his previous feature, was the largest grossing Japanese film in the
nation's history. That record has been broken by his latest production, Sen
to Chihiro no kamikakushi (2001), a tale about a reluctant, contemporary
Alice named Chihiro in a Wonderland populated largely by deities strongly
reminiscent of creatures in Japanese folklore.
The distinctive
iconography of the film playfully references the repertoire of Japanese pop
culture; the result, however, is a cultural and historical pastiche that portrays
a spatially and chronologically fractured Japan. This dismemberment of nation
is further manifested in the confrontation between the realistic suburban
landscape from which the protagonist strays and the fantastic otherworldly
realm in which she loses her schoolgirl identity and becomes known simply
as Sen.
Native ethnologist
Yanagita Kunio has pointed out that kamikakushi, being "hidden by the gods,"
was not merely a superstitious belief, but a coded way of referring to the
fate of those who disappeared from within established social boundaries. Miyazaki
remains true to this folkloric interpretation, removing his heroine to a liminal
space outside her native middle-class habitat. My paper will explore whether
Miyazaki's imag(in)ed landscape truly presents a reevaluation of the national
cultural space, or whether Chihiro's journey to another (Japanese?) world
is really just a gaze into - not through - the looking glass.