First Page
19
Abstract
In 2003, Hayao Miyazaki’s animated feature Spirited Away (originally released in Japan in 2001 as “Sen and Chihiro’s Spiriting Away”) won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. To this day, it is the only non-English film to be given the accolade, and in subsequent years it has only grown in acclaim. Despite its popularity in the West, Spirited Away is a distinctly Japanese film, heavily featuring traditional architecture and customs as well as foregrounding Shinto imagery and ideals in its plot. In an interview for The Art of Miyazaki’s “Spirited Away,” Miyazaki confirmed his intentions to headline these traditional concepts. He stated, “Surrounded by high technology and its flimsy devices, children are more and more losing their roots. We must inform them of the richness of our traditions.” His comments reflect that, despite popular representations of classical Japanese culture such as Spirited Away, Japan has become more and more secularised since the mid-twentieth century, and younger generations are increasingly growing up without knowledge of traditional Japanese customs, especially those of Shinto. This decline is in part due to the growing inaccessibility of physical Shinto spaces in modern Japan, a phenomenon that is reflected in the representation of Shinto as surrounded by modernity in Spirited Away.
