Post-colonialism in Miazaki’s “Spirited Away” 1

In Search of Identity in the face of Post-colonial Society from the Perspective of Miazaki’s

“Spirited Away”

Sadia Sarmin
2021-3-71-001
ENG 602
Post-Colonial Theory and Literature

Jayed-Ul-Ehsan
Senior lecturer
Dept. of English Language and Literature

Date of Submission: 6th June 2022

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Introduction:

While reading post-colonial literature we often realize that the author is trying to tell a

story. Post-colonial writings examine the social and political relationships including social,

political, religious and cultural impact on both colonizer and colonized. Most of the time we

get to see how the colonizer impose their own cultural values, laws, religion and make

politics for the indigenous people in their own favor. Colonization displayed two kinds of

people in front of us, one kind who accepted the change in their life, society and social norms

and tried to change their own life according to the western culture, another kind who rejected

the change and influence that the foreigners were making in their life and wanted hold on to

their roots and own cultural norms.

Spirited Away by Hayao Miazaki, contains folklore centrals to its core, through the

protagonist Chihiro he is portraying Japanese society as a lost child struggling to regain its

identity and forgotten true selves in post-colonial society in the face of globalization,

industrialization and foreign influences. This movie is mainly discussed on the basis of quest

for identity and understanding roots which has been forgotten in the long run in the face of

western influence. My main motif in this paper is to represent the movie Spirited Away from

the perspective of a society and culture that lost its originality and own cultural identity while

adopting foreign culture after being freed from a long-term colonization. While discussing on

the identity crisis in a post-colonial society reference from Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall

Apart and Ben Okri’s, The Famished Road calls for necessity along with the movie analysis

from this perspective.

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Post-Colonialism in theory and literature:

Postcolonial theory mainly concerned with the political, historical, cultural and social

impact of European colonial rule around the world. It deals with theorizing how colonization

effected on cultures and societies of the colonized. Postcolonialism asks a reader to read a

text from postcolonial lens which demand the reader to analyze the text and explains the

impacts of colonization in nature, culture and literature into that certain nation. Colonialism

creates struggling impacts on person, nation individually also in a merge. A person suffers

from dehumanization of self, they suffer from insecurities for inability of protecting

themselves and their family, major depression and many. As a nation it faces challenges of

maintaining faith, value, cultural norms and unique indigenous political system, suffers from

shifts of value, sudden language prioritization and thus it goes through loss of identification.

Postcolonial literature addresses problems and consequences of decolonization of those

nation that were colonized and how those people struggle to maintain their political stability

and how long-term colonization impacts on people’s cultural norms and belief that can no

longer find meaning in their life when they get to live in a free country, they feel lost and

struggles to find back their identity and beliefs in their new decolonized nation. Almost every

postcolonial writer had some similar motifs or theme in their postcolonial literature which are

representation of cultural dominance, racism, quest for identity, political instability,

discrimination or inequality. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and The Famished Road

by Ben Okri, are two major postcolonial text to discuss on, where the writers portrayed

colonial domination, struggles of decolonized nation, and struggles of regaining nations or

individuals’ identity in the face of drastic change after colonization in the nation.
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Understanding Spirited Away:

Hayao Miazaki’s masterpiece Spirited Away is considered to be an episodic film where

the progress of the protagonist Chihiro can be found in repetitive and symbolic quests. The

title Spirited Away references how Chihiro the protagonist enters into the spirited world and

lost her identity in the realm of spirits and magic. In the film it is represented that Spirited

Away is not associated with gain but with loss, specifically the loss of identity. In a foreign

land feeding in frenzy Chihiro’s parents lost their memories and turned into pig, both Haku

and the character No Face have forgotten about their identities thus they can not return home.

Our protagonist Chihiro symbolically purged them over and over to restore their forgotten

selves.

Now, like any great film or literary piece Spirited Away has a number of possible

interpretations to describe the situation. Anime critic, Susan Napier interpreted Spirited

Away as an allegory for modern Japanese identity, where Chihiro’s quest to rehabilitate

characters who have forgotten their true selves in a metaphor for Japan’s struggle for

regaining its unique cultural identity in the face of postcolonial social conflict, globalization,

industrialization, and corrupting foreign influences.

Identity Crisis in Spirited Away related to Things Fall Apart and The Famished Road:

In Japanese language the Chihiro is formed by the kanji Chi, means ‘thousand’ and hiro,

means ‘to search or seek’. When Chihiro enters the bathhouse in the spirited world, the witch

Yubaba takes away the second half of her name that symbolizes that she not only reduced

Chihiro’s name in a number but also stripped away the part of her name that seeks and

creates meaning. In a farewell card the name of Chihiro is an important recurring image in
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the film, that represents Chihiro’s very real fear of losing her former self, her identity with

the recurring fearful encounters with creature that forgotten their identity wo they are. These

figures are characterized by instable hunger is also a symbolism by Miazaki, for example the

figure No Face, who not only has no face but no voice; he consumes people to take on their

voices and characteristics, implying that his hunger for more and more food, and consuming

others creatures too is not his hunger for food but really his hunger for an identity of his own.

Philip Cushman a psychologist in his seminal 1990 article, ‘Why the self is empty’, argued

that consumer culture has fundamentally changed how people in the 20th century approach

the problem of identity. Dramatic rise of industrialization, urbanization, colonization and

social isolation in the 20th century led to a mass crisis of identity. Consumer culture always

encourages consumers to see themselves as perpetually empty vessels, always in need of

fixing or filling.

Miyazaki purges Chihiro thus she purges the characters, he has shown her in such situation

and fearless action mode where he helps her to confront the fear of emptiness that maker her

so passive and helpless in the beginning. Only through experiences and overcoming her fear

can she realizes that she is not empty or helpless at all.

Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart is a major postcolonial text to discuss on identity crisis

that people of a colonized country or nation go through. This is a story about personal beliefs,

customs and also a story about identity confliction. There is a struggle between family,

culture and religion of the Ibo tribe in the face of foreign interference in their tribal matter.

The novel concerns the life of Okonkwo the protagonist, a leader and a local wrestling

champion of the tribe Ibo, Umofia village in Nigeria. Throughout the novel, Okonkwo is

internally challenged and slowly becomes someone who is no longer recognizable among his
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family or friends. When Okonkwo face change and his inability of accepting the change or

not being able to get along with it resulted his identity to fade.

In Ben Okri’s, The Famished Road violent history of Nigeria, its identity crisis and

existential crisis got focused. The entire novel is a dramatization of Azaro’s existential

confusion. The idea of cyclical transformation and rebirth of Azaro explains the inability of

Nigerians to carry out themselves from the burden of both pre-colonial and post-colonial

impacts, their inability to give birth to themselves. Azaro and his community feels they have

no agency or means to change their reality, all they can do is to wait for the realization of

people to find out their real self, their identity themselves in the world of domination and

discrimination.

In both of the novel Things Fall Apart and The Famished Road, the search of identity as an

individual as a nation is portrayed. The postcolonial writers tried to explain their thoughts

from different perspective and way of method, on the change of the situation and people not

being able to accept those or coming out of those change as individual nation or with its own

unique identity. In the film Spirited Away such crisis of identity and in search of one’s own

unique identity is represented as a search of Japanese traditional lifestyle, its own unique

social identity. The national crisis is portrayed beautifully in an individual.

Conclusion:

As a postcolonial explanation of the movie with the theme of identity crisis and regaining

it the movie can certainly be discussed with Things Fall Apart and The Famished Road. The

relatability of the film with these novels is that likewise those movies the protagonist and

characters of the film suffers from domination, struggles to maintain their unique identity and
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struggles to regain one’s identity. Search of identity or the identity crisis as an individual or

nation is the prominent relatable discussion among these literary works. Oher than that the

film Spirited Away contains some more relatable themes as such, class discrimination or

domination of a certain powerful someone within the lower class. The character witch

Yubaba can be related with Madam Koto from the novel The Famished Road, both of them

dominates over the lower class and stripe away identity or freedom from others. The

represent the dominating class or a community that always dominates over other, the rich

over the poor. Chihiro like Okonkwo tries to purge the characters to realize their identity,

realize about themselves like Okonkwo tried to make his clan people to understand their loss

over foreign domination and they must protect their own identity.
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References:

1. H. Miyazaki, 2001, “Spirited Away”

2. “Understanding Apirited Away: Consumption and Identity”, 2019,

Plainfavoredenglish.com. Retrived from:

https://plainfavoredenglish.com/2019/09/18/inderstanding-spirited-away-consumption-

and-identity-transcript/

3. A. Mahmutovic, 2010, “History as the road of existential struggle in Ben Okri’s The

Famished Road”, Journal of Postcolonial Cultures and Societies, Vol 1.

4. A. Jweid, 2016, “The fall of national identity in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart”

Retrived from:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/The_fall_of_national_identity_in_Chinua_Ache

be’s_Things_Fall_Apart
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